Four Thousand Miles

Have you ever asked a person, that you know sucks at driving if they thought they were good? Ninety percent of the time, they'll say 'yes'. Everybody, but me that is. I'm the person who on the first day of buying a new car came home 'yes honey, I had a great day', 'no, nothing too exciting', 'how did the car drive?....'OH, fine','why so quiet?', 'oh.....no reason....' *long pause* 'okay I did a three-sixty while entering the freeway on-ramp and almost got creamed by thirteen different cars!'silence on the other end. 'In my defense it was raining and nothing happened to the car.'

So you can imagine how daunting a 3,000 mile road trip might seem....alone, with an emotionally dependent dog. So, we washed the car (I know what your thinking, because Mike said the same thing, but I won't start a road trip with a dirty car), lubed it up, and got her loaded. The first thing that became clear when I started the road trip....was that I should have picked up new windshield wipers, the second was that Mufasa refused to sit in the passenger seat. It wouldn't matter how many times I put him in the passenger seat, because he would nose and poke his way back over into my lap.

So here we are at mile 658, at a beautifully glacier-fed lake in the Yukon.

I know this just looks like more of the same, but isn't this what's in your point of view for approximately 98.76% of the road trip?

Mike and I drove together when we moved up to Alaska, and of course he drove during all the snow-storms, but this time around, I was all on my own. So balls to the wall, I white knuckled my first snow-storm zipping around curves at a speedy 41 miles an hour. Oh yea.

I took this picture on day two just before leaving B.C. and this area was super cool because its where I saw black bears, moose, caribou, mountain goats, fox, and deer!

And then I entered apathetic Alberta....and this is pretty much how things looked till I got to St. Louis.

I have to confess. I have a secret obsession with books on tape, which seems innocent enough, except....Mike HATES them. Which poses a problem when you spend 85% of your time with the same person, right? Except on this trip, and trust me, I took full advantage by renting no less than six books on tape....and yes, I finished them all before arriving in St. Louis. Confession number two, sometimes I would drive four hours longer than I really felt like solely to continue to listen to the book. I know, TMI.

Bookworm took a break to visit Mt. Rushmore, and can I just say I was disappointed by it's size.

OMG, I was soo excited to see this man. Four 3/4 days is a long time when you spend all your time together. Obsessed much. This was taken at the St. Louis Zoo, which was free-fifty-free, along with all their other museums and exhibits.

Who doesn't love newborn butterflies, less than fifteen minutes old!

Mike was obsessed with this map, looking at it every 20 minutes to make sure we were making every possible wrong turn, I mean 'scenic' route possible. Never mind the GPS, 'it's taking us in circles'.

Stop and stretch breaks. The Civic has held up fairly well, and cross your fingers...no tickets, break downs, or accidents!We call him our little desert dust boy. Mufasa didn't know what to do with himself when things weren't freezing outside. He's contemplating the Everglades.

Not to leave you hanging, but we arrived safely in St. Cloud, Florida. After pulling into the driveway we stopped the car, turned our heads and gave each other the biggest 'what next' look we've had in three years.