The Road Trip Experience: A Recap

After the slightly spazzy post, it's time to tell the tale of my adventures of road tripping. It's kind of hard to blog from a phone, ya know? Still, I had to say something with that little tease. Let's start with a little background.

For all of my life, I've been a very follow the rules type of gal. I don't usually do anything daring, or super adventurous. Let's be honest, every actions I take comes with five thousand thoughts about it beforehand. I am not one who makes rash decisions. So what decision occurred a week ago was a bit out of the ordinary.

I don't know how it came about, but my sister and I were talking about me seeing one of my friend's school. She goes to school on semesters, so our schedules have always clashed. This term, I ended up getting done a week before she did. That's when my sister offered this suggestion:

"Why don't you offer to give her a ride back to Oregon?"

And then I thought, why not? Although it wasn't really for her. It was for me. I've never driven a road trip myself before. It would be something interesting to do. I'd be able to something that wasn't simply "safe".

Teenage rebellion? Sounds like it, but I don't think it was. Besides, don't you have to be a teen for teenage rebellion? The whole thing was more of a being able to do new things like driving far distances. Sure, that sounds like an odd thing to get experience with, but from what I've experience already in my life I think it's a good skill to have.

My mother was convinced I was going to die. She told my sister and dad to say goodbye "Perhaps for the last time." A tad over-dramatic, don't you think? It could have been bad because it was over the pass. Sometime, the pass is pretty snowy. However, on my trip it was completely clear. It was fine.

Total driving time in two days? 14 hours-ish. What was supposed to be apparently a 8 hour and 22 minute trip back home turned out to be cut down by a whole hour. Nice. The trip back was also supposed to commence at 9:00 AM, but that certainly changed when I was wide awake at 5:00 AM. Ended up getting home at 1:15, which was very nice.

As for my short amount of time in Moscow, it was nice. I met my friend's friends from over there, who were all very nice. Saw a very large, very soft dog named Zola. Ate dinner at 9:30 PM (OH GOD SO LATE). Saw the largest collection of the VHS movie Speed. One of her friends had about 250 copies of said movie. Why? Who knows. But it was just a wall of orange. Bizarre.

I didn't see a lot of U of I, but what I saw seemed very nice. My friend suggested that we stay a day, but honestly? I wanted to just get home. Plus, I wanted to get done driving.

Issues arose during the experience, stemming from paying for gas. As in, at first she didn't want to help. For such a long distance, it's going to take gas. I personally think that with offering a ride, I should get help with said gas. From this came the complaint that she didn't have money, despite not having to buy a ticket for the bus. Um, I saw the prices for a bus ticket. Plus, my car gets really good mileage. I only had to fill up twice. My total gas cost was slightly less than half of what a bus ticket was, but after the whole debacle she helped pay for half. If that. She mumbled how "she could have just taken the bus". The thing is, she thinks that I'm rolling in the dough, but I'm not. I'm extremely frugal is all. I didn't offer to give her a ride just because I wanted to do something out of the blue, I thought it would be a nice gesture. You can probably sense that I feel a bit insulted and disrespected.

The thing is, I'm beginning to see more and more of the bad qualities of this friend. And our relationship is beginning to be strained. Honestly, it's beginning to be hard to actually see the friendship. But that's an issue for another day.

'Scuse the little rant, but other than that it was a cool deal. Plus, I came home to find out that I won a blog giveaway from Gingersnaps! I've never won one before, how exciting! I need to email her. It's funny: when I read the name of the winner, because I though, "That blog sounds so familiar... Wait! That's me!"

Welp, I seriously need to go to bed. I am le tired.

What's the last road trip experience you've had?

Road Trip Recap

I can't believe it's already Saturday again. I didn't feel like I was gone for about a week, but here we are.

Now that I'm at my own computer again, I can write posts that have (some) sense in them. Truthfully, while I was on my trip I didn't want to be writing at all, but the whole thing involved a lack of planning. Anywho...

If you've seen any of my gibberish from this week, you might have known my sister, mom and I road tripped it up towards the north. On our first day, we ended up not actually getting to, you know, road trip status. We went to where I pretty much go every weekend, my cousins' house. The reason we ended up staying the night was because we ended up being part of a cleaning spree that happened in my grandma's room while she was away. I don't know if it's age, or collecting tendencies, but if my grandma lived alone she might end up having a house on Hoarders. I found a ton of empty containers, a good amount of toothbrushes... Ridiculous.

Our next stop was in the next state, Washington. As I said, drivers up there be crazy! We talked about how maybe the cops don't care as much about speed laws because they have sales tax, so money distribution with taxes is different. I dunno.

I don't know who out there is from Washington, but we've decided y'all are scrappy. Along with your zippy cars, my mom and sister spotted signs that apparently said "Don't litter, or we will hurt you." Something along those lines.

We were able to stay the night at my aunt's house up there, which was really nice. They live by some pretty nice houses. (Their house is nice too.)

While we were in Washington, we spent a day in Seattle. I've never been to Seattle, (except when I was really young), so it was fantastic. While there, I bought a nice cheese. Then my mom bought me two more, some salami, and a mini baguette. Another nice thing about traveling with family? I think so.

Buying my cheese.  It was called... Manchego? It was from Spain! Delish.

Oh, and a trip up the Space Needle!

Geez, I need to start wearing some color on my lips. And cut my hair. And other stuff.

It's funny how dependent we are on technology. While we were on our trip, we used our phones for directions, looking up places to go, information... until we crossed the border. Once we passed that border, it became: "Would you like to pay a fortune on phone usage?" I think not.

My comment on the people of Vancouver still stands. Obese people do not exist up there, and there are hardly any slightly overweight people. It was a bit intimidating, but at the same time kind of motivating. So if you want to stay thin, go to Vancouver and live there.

Being on a running schedule is kind of weird on vacation because you have to plan around it. There were times that I hated it because I felt like everyone was waiting on me to get my run done to do anything, but I'm glad I did. Running in Washington was extremely hilly, but not a bad run at all. Then there was my run around Stanley Park in Vancouver, which was fantastic. Seriously, if you're a runner and you go up there on vacation, go there. It's about 6 miles, but if you take a wrong turn and keep running on the beach, you can get your 8 miles in like I did. Another nice thing about my Stanley Park run was my sister rented a bike and went along with me. I've been running alone all this time, so it was really nice to have some company.

A lot of this trip involved visiting markets of some kind. They were cool markets!

Good gosh, I love cities. I told my sister to punch me if in the future I don't end up living in a city for at least a year of my life.

I could go on and on, but I should get going. I had to drive the car home from my cousins' house last night, so the mom and sis do not have a way to get home... Yeah.

In other news, today's run was good. 20 miles running, then a 2.8 mile walk/jog back home. Did not plan very well for that. Still, I just wanted to get 20 miles in, and I did. Yes!

What was the last trip you took? Was it with family or friends?

Oh Canada!

The thing about vacation? There's no time to blog, and no one really wants to. Unfortunately, I did not plan ahead so I have no one else to write. (or pre-written posts). What can you do, eh?

Speaking of eh...

Currently I'm in Canada. Even though it shouldn't be a culture shock, there is still a bit of it. My sister was commenting on how there are no fat people here. ...I don't think that's what culture shock means, but still it's odd.

So we're off again. What kind of post is this? I dunno. It's just seeming like a travel log without pictures... which isn't fun! There will be pictures when I get back, don't worry!

The Way They Drive Up North

The adventure continues up north, and now we are hanging out right outside of Seattle.
The driving habits of other states are strange indeed. In Oregon, it's easy to get pulled over by the cops. Speeding? Don't even think about it. Today, we ended up having a situation none of us ever thought would happen. My mom, first of all likes to speed. She was only going five miles over when she saw a cop. Sure that she was about to be pulled over, she immediately went to the speed limit and moved to the far left lane so the cop could move over. The cop moved into the left lane and said through his speaker:
"Please move over to the next lane unless you are going to pass."
The main point is my mom pretty much got sassed by a cop for going too slow. That's ridiculous for my mother.
It's crazy how many people we saw going ten, twenty miles over the speed limit... and not being pulled over. What is this? Maybe that's just how Washington rolls.
The plans for tomorrow? Not quite sure. The idea is that we're going to explore Seattle, which I am excited for.

What's something that you've found strange while in a different state?

And Now, Back to Our Regular Programming...

...Well, I suppose not exactly.

For right now, I have to continue the packing up process from my home, then be ready to drive back to school early tomorrow morning. It's been a long two days, that's for sure.

I will be sure to divulge in all of my epic adventures tomorrow, but for now I'll leave you with a basic gist of what went down in the past week:

• Sunshine
• Whales
• Wacky Family Members
• Eating Habits 180'd
• Sunglasses Everywhere
• Airline Glitches
• Impromtu Road Trips

...Spanish is not looking like a happy thing to wake up to tomorrow. Ah well.