Home, v 2.0

There was a certain stillness that came from being alone in a car for hours (and miles) on end...
I knew that this machine and I were a team, and that we only had each other to rely on.
Not to be dramatic, of course. ;)
I also had my in-dash navigation and my android with google maps, so we were not exactly two lone soldiers, lost in the wilderness of the American Interstate Highways, haha!
We were...well-equipped.
And from Maine through Iowa there were plentiful rest stops, with food choices, and clean, lovely bathrooms...
(Wyoming westward is another story...and do NOT get me started on Nevada! Eeek!)
I also had my husband on speed dial, who could call hotels in the dark of night, as Nebraska's flatness spread out behind me, Wyoming's mountains approaching on the distant horizon.
He could call, and find out that the closest Holiday Inn with a vacancy was across the border and too many miles away in a Wyoming town I didn't have the energy left to reach.
That was the moment I knew I had driven too far, gotten too tired, because I wanted to cry.
So I would settle for a run-down, musty, dusty place that felt like the opening scene to a B-movie, or a depressing documentary, or maybe even a horror movie.
It was still $89 for this room with its polyester bedspread and crunchy carpet, but I hoped to be tired enough to get some sleep.
Instead, I tossed and turned, waking in a panic at 3 a.m., still caught in the guazey web of a dream about a western-movie version of this same hotel, wherein I had been taken from my room, undressed and redressed, and left in another room; the manager would not listen to my hysterical explanations, and I began to realize he was in on it--whatever "it" was. So I turned on lights and put on my shoes to go pee--shoes, because of the aforementioned crunchy carpet, lights because of the dream, the dream, the dream that wouldn't stop churning through my not-awake-yet brain.
And then I turned on the TV and let "How I Met Your Mother" soothe me back to sleep, and when I woke at 5:00, I was not rested, but it was light out, and that's sometimes close enough.
And Wyoming soon greeted me, looking more like Nebraska than it had any right to.
And then its mountains shoved into view, and billboards announced that Sierra Trading Post had a factory outlet in Cheyenne and I nearly peed my pants! That is my favorite outdoor supply store, online! Oh, to go to the actual store!! But, alas, they would not open for over an hour, and I was only just ahead of schedule, which would turn out to be actually on time--
as I rushed to Utah, to scoop up my little boys and head down to the other valley to celebrate their birthday with my brothers.
I made it, too.
I picked them up, and picked up groceries, and we dropped off an ipod for a repair, and we arrived in time to cook burgers and chop watermelon and they blew out candles and we talked and laughed, and I was Home.