MONDAY

US: 9:40am

AUS: 12:40am…ish

We actually left at 6am. An hour late, and none too soon. I sat in the front while most of the siblings in the house we’re hauling on the back. I’m writing this en route with a pencil and notebook full of paper. You have got to see the setup in this thing, its hilarious- I’ll see if I can snag a picture of it. We’ve been driving for three hours now, and most everyone is awake, probably for the sake of hunger. The road is bumpy and its hard to write legibly but its okay. We’re already scribbling down lists of things we need because we forgot them at home. We packed so much stuff, you’d think we were taking a caravan and we were the supply tram riding in the back. Between ourselves, the luggage, and the camper shell, its probably about a minimum 1.5 tons resting on this truck barreling down the road at 100kmph.

It was the strangest thing, we passed through the biggest fog on our way through Kansas. It was wide and thick and big enough that we were driving in it for an hour at least. The sucker was huge, couldn’t see a thing in it. Which meant nothing to me because until ten minutes ago I wasn’t wearing my contacts and I was blind as a bat.

We didn’t finish our packing till midnight last night, my dad was sleepy and it showed the next morning. That’s why I sat up front and stayed awake instead of sleeping in the back like the rest of them: to make conversation and keep my dad awake, that, and to secure the job of checking the map every four minutes.

The goal is to reach the Colorado Rocky Mountains by nightfall. The mountains are beautiful, I’ll have to get you a photo of them as well.

Also, for no reason at all, about two hours into the trip, my dad’s cell phone stops working. But my brother and sister have cells so we’ve got adequate backup.

9:54am

The number buttons on my dad’s phone are working again, everything else is still broken. I think its just intentionally being obnoxious.

10:47am

We just stopped at a Walmart to grab all the stuff we forgot, while parked I got into the refrigerator for the breakfast of champions. A single bowl of cereal and one hardboiled egg. (I boiled the egg last night ^_^) Turns out that my sister Natalie left all of her money at home. She’s bummed. We’re going to see if we can call back and have someone mail it forward to California for her.

11:28am

This could be something worth mentioning. But probably not. (shrug) My brother’s eye is all red and burning. We don’t know what it is. My eye did this last year on the New York Trip. Whatever it is- it hurts like heck… Eesh. I do not envy him. But if its what I think it is, it will subside before tomorrow night, at least- that’s how long took.

1pm

We stopped on account of hunger at this place called the Golden Corral. Flat fee, everything you can stuff in your stomach, buffet style. It was the last stop we would make for a while so we were encouraged to eat as much as we could while we were there. I had no problem with that, I ate three stacked plates, a salad, extra pizza, and an ice-cream cone. (what porky Americans! :P) Now I feel like I weigh a million pounds. 55 minutes later, we’re on the road again, the next stop: Denver, Colorado.

P.S. Nathan’s eye is doing a little better. Stull burning but we bought some eyedrops and they seem to be helping a bit.

4:24PM

Good morning Jess, I’ve been asleep for the past three hours. We were awoken suddenly when one of the windows on the camper was discovered to possess the ability to unlatch itself and fall off the outer frame.

Wind exploded into the little house L We tried to fix it but when it turned out to be futile Bethany began using it to crawl from the camper to the truck. While driving at 100kmph.

On a creepier note: shortly after the window incident, we noticed blood sluicing out of our refrigerator. And the refrigerator kept opening itself. The second problem was mended with a generous supply of duct tape. The blood meant that the refrigerator had lost power, and everything in it was thawing, more specifically, the hamburger meat we had intended to grill. So here I sit in a little traveling house filled with wind. I’ll bet you can’t guess how fun it is to write in this hurricane homestead.

5:38pm

Hilarious… we pulled into a truck stop to buy more fuel, we’ve been driving through Kansas for five hours now. Its amazing, when I stand up and look out the window, I can almost see my house. Kansas is a most unique state, let me use my crazy drawing skills and try to draw the terrain for you-

There, a perfectly accurate depiction. About a hundred Km’s ago, we passed a bush. We all looked out the window and pointed in excitement because it was the first bush we’d seen in three hours and the lat one we’d see for at least three more. There is absolutely nothing here, just… grass and highway. Forever. And the ground is so flat that you can almost see the curvature of the earth on the horizon.

Hm. There is a storm brewing out there. Up ahead of us. We’re right on the edge of it. Dark skies, no sun, plenty of clouds. Lots of wind… so much that our massive truck is rocking in it while still parked at the fueling station, the attendant said something about a few tornadoes touching down nearby. Either way, our road rides right into the middle of this thing and the window is still broken. So it would get kinda wet in here. Fingers crossed. Except for the wind its dead quiet. Almost eerily so. Kinda creepy if you ask me.

On a simpler, more humorous note- the front of the station has a sign with the homeland security threat level color of the day marked on it. The homeland security threat levels are a color-based system that indicates the terrorism threat for the day. A program created after 9/11. According to the sign, today its yellow: relatively low, business as usual. The amusing part of it is that if I were a terrorist and had to pick the last place on earth to attack- I’d be torn between this place, and the Sahara Desert. Being that both places have about the same population.

6:06pm

Okay… power in the little hose just went out. The storm has been getting more intense over the past few. Whew! Exciting! First shots of lightning, hm. Forget driving into the storm, the storm was impatient, it came to us.

7:00pm

Just cleared the storm, good thing too. Nothing terrible happened. A quick hand and a big roll of duct tape saved most of our more important appliances. Its still light outside- The Rockies just came into view. It’s been years since I’ve actually seen mountains. What a contrast to the flat emptiness of Kansas.

7:45pm

Just stopped on the other side of Denver. We’re not quite over the mountains yet. Apparently the storm that we just drove through at top speed hit here first and produced enough wind to destroy a number of buildings. So hey, I’d consider us lucky. (shrug) We’re going to park it here for the night. We’re getting a hotel, we were going to find a campsite or an RV park and plug in there but it turns out that a hotel costs the same amount and it they have indoor pools. ^_^ Plus, with our refrigerator being broken, we need a place to refrost the food. Tomorrow we begin again bright and early.

TUESDAY

10:09am US

1:09am AUS

Well that was nice. We checked out of the hotel early this morning and now we’re at another Walmart again, buying more essentials. Today we climb up the mountains. Maybe we’ll stop a bit and play in the snow.

There was a wonderful indoor pool and spa and my right ear filled up with water and now I can’t hear a thing out of it and its sore. So that’s a weird feeling, partially deaf. L

Forecast for today, sunny skies and shining blues.

10:22am

Wow… note to self- mountains are beautiful.

11:11am

COLD!!! Freaking really cold! We are way into the mountains now, the air is thin and I’ve just been beaten in the face with a snowball! The sun is still shining and the grass is green and the rivers are flowing and there is snow EVERYWHERE! Trying to fit these mountains, these looming giants into a photo is a crime, it takes being here… These things make you feel so small, so very very small. It makes you feel as if you’re invading the ruins of some otherworldly culture composed of giants and monoliths. It makes oneself feel like you mean nothing. And its beautiful. They make you WANT to respect the,, their might, their persistent eternity. Its phenomenal up here… and yeah- its very cold.

2:15pm

We’re nearly through the mountains when my sister’s phone rings. Strange considering that we’re surrounded by rocks containing elements known to assassinate cell phone reception with unmatched skill. She answers the phone, then looks over at me. “Yes he’s here…”

I take the phone curiously and say- “Hello?”

“I found you Mr. Roy.”

“… Arby?”

5:53pm

I awake from my sleep in the back to see our five gallon cooler full of lemonade that has been duct tabbed and bunji-corded to the wall, snap away and leap across the cabin, crash into the table, and dump five gallons of bright pink lemonade all over me, the floor, the table, the bags, and the food.

5:54pm

The truck burps to a stop and the back door bursts open allowing the stuff to pour into the street.

Oh, hey… where are we?

I hop out of the back utterly soaked to find us parked at the edge of a giant hole. Actually, its more like a giant crack. The Black Dragon Canyon. We’ve stopped for a scenic shot or two and the bucket had coincidentally wrenched itself free and chosen that exact moment to spill… wow, what are the odds?

After doing the best we could (by we that of course means I as my other siblings were profusely entertained by the canyon and my dad wasn’t out of the truck two seconds before engaging in conversation with a young female reporter who happened to be along the same journey doing research about fuel efficiency by driving insane distances in a gas guzzling H2 SUV, she gave the poor nut an honest interview. He ate it up.) to clean up the mess, which was also, ultimately futile, I wandered over to the edge to take a look.

Wow… That’s big.

I proceeded to take pictures. Clickety click. For something of this scale I had to get a depth shot. 3D pictures, a clever little trick of photography I discovered some years ago and have been wielding ever since, it allows even a disposable camera to create pictures that have a literal depth to them. As if you could put your hand through it.

I took my sopping shirt and hung it on the point-of-interest post near the edge and bean to jump pell-mell down the canyon.

WHEE!!!! I was leaping over rocks, bushes, brambles, old dead trees and way more rocks descending at a wonderful pace into the belly of the enormous gorge.

“Caleb! What are you doing!?” Bethany shouts from high above me at the canyon’s edge.

I look back at her, examine myself briefly, look at the distance I had left to go and shouted back, “Is that some kind of a trick question?”

Apparently it was not some kind of a trick question. I would have been stopped by my dad if he’d seen me start down the edge, but he was occupied with Ms. Reporter. So when we peered over the edge and sees his son, shirtless and scrambling around at the bottom of this immense incision in the earth and appearing no later than the point of a pen- he thought it was kinda cool.

Everyone took pictures of the point of ht pen scrambling over the rocks. Nathan threw a rock at me, Bethany screamed, Nathan missed by about a hundred yards. I took a picture of the four little dots that made up my family and began climbing as fast as I could back up from the bottom of the canyon wall.

12 minutes later my hands are covered in stone dust, I’m breaking over the edge of the canyon like the sun over the horizon, and I’m breathing so hard that I want to die.

“That’s deeper than you guys think!”

Nathan then stole a piece of my notebook paper, proceeded to build a paper airplane and promptly threw it over the edge where it immediately was caught by a gust of wind and flown kamikaze style into a bush.

From what I hear we’re somewhere in Utah, we drive on.

WEDNESDAY

12:02am US

3:02pm AUS

We finally stopped. The significance of this is occurrence is, shall we say- significant. In as much as we have been driving since my last entry and have traveled far enough to traverse two time zones and have been having one heck of a time with it.

Have you ever seen those movies where there is involved some incomprehensibly vast desert with a single highway stretching eternally into the distance but never one that actually goes anywhere? It’s a popular location for films where people frequently get lost and die.

We’ve been driving through that for just over four hours. It’s the center of nowhere. Not a single tree nor building, nor civilized human being for… well, forever. I never realized before how immense the middle of nowhere actually is. Considering that this is the first town that exists for hundreds of miles in any direction, its actually pretty big, and the resources are EXPENSIVE, fuel, water, food. I even bought a postcard. Very accurate. You’ll see what I mean.

9:30am

Shortly after my last entry, we parked at a motel six and slept in the back of the truck, just using their parking lot. I awoke the next morning to the sound of movement and voices. Apparently we had pulled out some time ago and now we were stopped in the middle of the highway from hell on account of roadwork. I commemorated the crawling out of bed and having a bowl of cereal.

1:30pm

After another grueling drive through the deserts of Nevada, entertaining ourselves by counting the Casinos along the way, losing count, and starting over after blitzing through the very first town, and generally being bored to death, we stopped just past Carson City to view the acclaimed ‘most-beautiful-beaches-on-earth’ the shores of Lake Tahoe. Whew… they weren’t joking. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. I stole a small piece of driftwood as a souvenir. Everyone else grabbed a pinecone or two or three or seven. The pinecones were all at least a foot long.

Dang its hot out here.

8pm ish

We just arrived at our final destination. I’ll fill you in later. I’m exhausted… D: