Day Nine: CALIFORNIA

retro hummer???

Nevada City,  CA: TREES!!!Welcome to California sign. Its that blue blob if you can find it...the scenery only got WAY better from there.

one of the more scenic Nevada views, from a Western Nevada rest stop
another Motel 6! Elko, Nevada
Day nine (today!) began with me waking up at the ungoddessly hour of 3:38 am.  Why?  Because last night I crashed at 8pm. After deciding a three am wakeup was not needed, I slept in till the luxurious hour of 6:30 am.  Had some motel 6 coffee (much better in Elko, NV, than Des Moines....) chatted with other early risers, and was on the road by 8:30 am.  

Nevada is vast.   And mountainous.  And dry .  And very empty feeling, except for patches of towns with neon signs for motels, and gambling, and less obvious signs for brothels.  It strikes me as evidence of universal humor, or perhaps irony,  that its next to Utah.  Near Winnemucca passed the signs for the Pussycat Ranch and the Mustang Ranch.  Hint: neither is about kittties or horses.  Nor is either one a ranch.  Some gas stations in Nevada have gambling areas.

Crossing through the rest of Nevada felt pretty much like an exercise in time consumption- as in- "how long till I get to California?"   

And then it happened.  At about 2pm, after starting out at 8:30 am (note one hour off road for gas and lunch), HILLS appeared. and actual trees.  To the right: a blue sign that read : Welcome to California.  It was 2pm pacific standard time and I was listening to Bel Canto's "Shimmering Warm and Bright."  There is significance in this....but that's another, not terribly interesting, story.

What Nevada was to dry and endless, my entrance to Northern California was to vast, majestic mountains and trees. I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains!  It was beautiful. It was spacious.  I didn't take the photos I wanted because I was tired and cranky and all of a sudden, there were actually other drivers!!!  I pulled off the road and sat by a beautiful lake for awhile.  Contemplated driving to Sacramento, started that process, and realized I was thirsty for actual - trees.   A tree?  Oh, yes, that thing I hadn't really been embraced by since Pennsylvania.....

Energetically, the vibe here, at least in the trees and hills, pre city , feels so right.

Night nine found me at my most decadent stop yet, the "Outside Inn" a cute motel in Nevada City/Grass Valley, Northern California.  Trees.  And now, perhaps, sleep.

Tomorrow:  Probably the last installment!   More trees, zooming by Sacramento, and into the Bay area. (unless I take a vacation day in the trees)

Stats: Miles driven...approx 350. 

Music:  the entire "dream" section of Jonathans ipod, eg Dead Can Dance, Bel Canto, Cranes, Delerium, Sinead O'Connor

Biggest Surprise: transition from Nevada into California

Day Eight: Ecstasy and Exhaustion

the gambling bus on the Nevada/Utah state line at Wendover (exists in both Nevada and Utah)Utah Salt Flats with odd thing rising up out of them
Park City, Utah
Late Wyoming into Early Utah- Note the transition

Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada: Ecstasy and Exhaustion

 

Day 8 of my pilgrimmage saw me waking up in Rock Springs,Wyoming (at another Motel 6!) to torrential rain and temperatures in the fifties.  Didn’t make it on the road till 10:20 am, and had slow going through Wyoming in the rain.  Almost immediately when I crossed into Utah, about 90 miles later, the rain cleared and a blue sky came out- and the landscape burst into lush, open, mountains. 

 

It seems to me that each state has a DISTINCTLY different feel than the one before, especially the further west I go.  Its as if someone drew a line EXACTLY where the terrain makes a dramatic shift, and said “here.  Here’s a new state.”

 

This was less true closer to the East coast, but starting with Iowa:

 

Iowa: bright, green, rolling hills flecked with pastures, farmhouses, and cows.  A bit flatter further west.

 

Nebraska: dry, flat green to almost brown landscape, bales of hay, and wind blowing one way.

 

Wyoming: A distinct shift from green to BROWN , with almost- perpetually cloudy skies.  We are now seriously in the west, folks.

 

 

Utah: two parts: Part One: Lush, green mountains, with big blue skies.  Part Two: The vast salt flats, feeling like…the moon.

 

Nevada: Back to brownish green, but this time mountains that are brownish green. This literally happens one mile out of Utah.

 

Its totally mind blowing how the scenery changes so dramatically at each state line. 

 

When I got to Nevada and Pacific time, it struck me: I’m almost there.  I could be in San Fran tomorrow, if I wanted to, but I’m going to take an extra day to breathe and integrate.

 

Stopping in Park City, Utah, for lunch, I connected with my friend Elizabeth, who I met while living in Maui about 5 years ago.  She’s in San Fran.  So are several other friends of mine, who moved there after I met them in Boston or Hawaii.  This is truly no accident. 

 

The past year of my life has been difficult, and its about to get way easier, and to explode into bliss.  I logically know it, but more importantly, I feel it. Talking with Elizabeth today – and taking this drive step by step- I feel all the beautiful things that are about to happen.

 

This is about destiny and divine perfection.  When I was ten years old, my teacher gave us an assignment to write an essay about where we would be at age 35, and I wrote that I was a psychotherapist living north of San Francisco, in the redwoods, (with my husband, who I have yet to meet, and two dogs, also yet to meet. )  I also KNEW that I’d drive cross country to get there, and that that drive would happen when I was 30 or 31.  Here I am, 31, driving cross country to San fran to go to graduate school for psychotherapy.

 

When I got to Nevada- all of this began to integrate.  I’m so close that I can FEEL California.  I drove through the first part of Nevada with my shirt partway up, belly to the wind, and shaking/laughing/crying with joy.

 

Day 8: Statistics

Miles driven : approx 340 very long feeling miles (wind, rain, mountains, salt flats,lack of sleep)

Soundtrack: Wah!, Enigma, Dead Can Dance, obscure gothy-stuff

Biggest Surprise:  Several. One: a car in the salt flats.  Two; A street in Utah/Nevada where it changes state in the middle of the street, and casinos pop up on the Nevada side only – but it’s the same town: Wendover.   Three: the transition from Wyoming to Utah, and again from Utah to Nevada.   

Day Seven: addendum

I wanted to blog about, and didn't, in my initial post how self love is a necessary "go with" to reclaiming one's autonomy and power.  More challenging than the anger piece, more necessary, and more powerful.  I was also thinking about this while driving through Wyoming.  And if self love is challenging to find....where does one begin?  My best bets are with nurturing behaviors towards oneself as well as things like nature and the loving kindness meditation.  Just adding.

Day Seven Stats

Soundtrack: Indigo Girls, Euro-dance, Silence, Delerium (the band)

Miles driven: 392

Biggest Surprise: My primal scream therapy session with myself in mid wyoming

Day Seven: Wyoming and Primal Scream

the mayflower:  seafood in cheyenne? How'd the pilgrims get there?
Rock Springs Wyoming sunset
giant boot in Cheyenne
Wyoming license plate

Day seven began at the Super 8 in Ogallala Nebraska.  I had breakfast at a truck stop, and upon chatting with the truckers and mentioning I was going to CA , they said "where, Berkeley?".  I'm not sure if it was ME or the leopard print shoes that gave it away.   

I was tired of the "hauling my life around in a cooler" dietary regime that I've followed all week, so I gave up on it today.  Not again.  Breakfast was--reconstituted eggs at a truck stop. Lunch was the weakest imitation of Asian food ever in Cheyenne Wyoming.  

Dinner was excellent food out in Rock Springs Wyoming.  The cooler is making a comeback. 

This morning saw me driving from Ogallala Nebraska to Cheyenne Wyoming- approx 200 miles, done in two and a half hours.  The speed limit out here is incredible....stopped at the Sierra Trading Post outlet-  nothing of interest.  Walked around downtown Cheyenne- the giant boot photo is from town center, and finished with a late lunch.  If Nebraska was the "gateway to the west" this is an entirely different universe than the east coast: and I love it.  

On the drive from Cheyenne to Rock Springs (about another 200 miles), I had plenty of time to think.  I thought about how the East and east coast symbolize structure. Concrete-ness.  Rules and laws.  And how this part of the country seems to be about spaciousness. Freedom. Not lawlessness, exactly, but a certain looseness-- a higher speed limit, a looser way of speaking, and walking, even.  The pioneers headed west to create something new, and different, and , for some, to create their fortune in California.  Lots of my process was around how traveling this direction is symbolic of hope, freedom, expansion, and a loosening of convention or other binds.

Last night I didn't sleep well, partly from travel and partly because a lot of my own "stuff" was up. Suffice to say the "stuff" coming up had EXACTLY to do with creating more freedom for myself, and loosening of binds.  In more than one sense, the issues coming up last night mirrored that which the pioneers dealt with: claiming life on their own terms, for themselves, and not being bound to what they may have been force fed by Puritanical society.  Westward was a challenge and a dare, and also a dream towards reclaiming themselves, spirit, adventure, freedom, and possibility.   

There were a lot of emotions moving through me today, some of them rage, and reclamation.  I drove through part of Wyoming howling like the wind,  howling the word "mine".   Mine.  This lifetime, this body, this spirit is mine . 

Wild, wild, wild West.

Rock Creek, btw, is fabulous and beautiful and scenic with intense sunsets.

Day Six: Nebraska Winds and Napping Cows

the prettiest lunch at the truck stop
this is a museum in Nebraskaand the coffee joint next door


what to do if there is a tornado while I'm at the motel

Day six saw me crossing state lines (again) from Iowa to Nebraska, but also a much more significant shift.  Iowa is the midwest.  Clearly. There are Hummer stores and Power Tool stores and a different vibe than NY or PA or MA, but its still very much the midwest.  At some point Nebraska shifts from midwest to the "west".  There are signs for pioneer this and that, ye olde western typeface everywhere, even a big, wooden arch over the highway with a covered wagon next to it.  I stopped at "Lasso Espresso" which was next to "The Sod house museum".

This morning began in Des Moines, uneventfully leaving Motel 6 and determined to get back on driving schedule and truck at least 400 miles today.  Doable, b/c the speed limit out here is 75, with 65 in "work zones". (in NYC work zones are like...30 mph).  I zipped out of Des Moines with no events till Nebraska.  I've felt like I was in "corn country" for quite some time, but any hint of hills vanished, and towards the end of Iowa it started to feel western - "ye olde western type face" began to appear around Council Bluffs, Iowa.  I was tempted to stop and be a tourist (this is getting very interesting!)  but committed to staying on track with driving.  Next up was going through Omaha, and a pit stop shortly thereafter.  Nebraska is flat. With bluffs, and cows, and corn, and wind that seems to blow strongly in one direction.  When I stopped, there was a distinctive drawl in people's voices that wasn't present in Iowa, and a sense, that yes, this is the beginning of the west,  but perhaps not the "deep west". (Is there such a thing?).  

Top photo: My lunch at a rest stop.  Long gone are the rest stops with restaurants and starbucks and gas stations-- now its eating spaces and vending machines.  Cooler still stocked from  Chicago, I had the most yuppie lunch (arugula and salamon and middle eastern salads) in Nebraska.  On hot pink plates , no less.  While eating I saw a woman in full on "Little House in the Prairie" gear--- the 1880's prairie dress, long grey braids, and I *think* a bonnet on her back.  Love it! Go Nebraska.

Next pit stop was for gas, where I also saw the "sod house" and "lasso espresso". 

After lunch I drove for about another four hours, crossing into mountain time while blasting Pat Benatar's "Heart Breaker".  The music and the new time zone sent me into bliss---and I spontaneously erupted into a "whoo hooo" (LOUDLY) while punching the air.  

I've been thinking about  a lot of things while I drive. Today, it was intense, like the literal and symbolic meanings of this trip, and how I *knew* I'd make this journey one day. That this is more than a road trip: step by step, mile by mile, state by state I am claiming more and more of me.  ( I "saw" this journey  when I was ten years old).  As well as random things, like "what state did Little House in the Prairie take place in? Gosh, I should re read that....".

I'm tired.  I didn't sleep well the past few nights.  At the same time, there is a profound energetic shift, a letting go and unwinding going on.  Geography is powerful.  As one of my beloveds put it "Jessica, this is your vision quest". 

Tomorrow: the rest of Nebraska and part of Wyoming.

Miles clocked:  425

Soundtrack: Annie Lennox, Amanda Palmer, Pat Benatar, Bananarama, etc

Surprise: Woman in prairie garb at rest stop

day five stats

day five stats

Miles driven: A very long feeling approx 320

Music: Dar, Ani, Scissor Sisters, Rammstein in Illinios while eating snow peas

Surprise: None for me.  I think Joe was surprised a. at my age and b. that I was driving cross country solo.