The holidays are going to be a little different this year. I have just finished the fall semester of my last year of graduate school. With the exception of last spring (when Hans and I towed all our worldly possessions on a trailer from Anchorage to Cape Girardeau during winter break, resulting in the eventual death of the Honda Passport) Hans has worked in Anchorage and I have been in Cape by myself. The choice of who to spend the holidays with, the LaVictoires or Weilands, was one that we felt was best left for another year so that we could spend some time alone after four months apart followed by another four month separation.
In the usual tradition of disregard for time, mileage, or weather, we set our sights on the southwest. And we were going to drive there. A romantic Christmas in Santa Fe, spending time with college buddies in Utah's national parks, New Years at the bottom of the Grand Canyon maybe, and all the microbrew we could get our palates exposed to. It's the middle of December, sure, but we'll be in New Mexico and Arizona for most of our trip. Surely we'll be fine in our car without snow tires, right?
I had finished my finals earlier in the week and Hans was due to arrive by plane in St. Louis at around 10 o'clock.
Hans’ plane arrived a few hours later than intended, so after I picked him up in St. Louis we did not get back to Cape Girardeau until 2 o’clock this morning.
We made the executive decision to start driving when we felt like it instead of at 6 am as originally planned. By 11:30 am we were on I-55 headed south until outside of Memphis and then we crossed diagonally through Arkansas. We drove into one of the nicest sunsets we’ve ever seen. Roughly 600 miles from Cape we stopped in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Our Motel 6, while clean and comfortable, was only within the vicinity of fast food joints. It being late on a Sunday night, our choices were limited. Ordering dinner at a shabby KFC quickly began to resemble the Cheese Shop Sketch from Monty Python. We went to bed very tired, and in Texas.
Our itinerary:
View Holiday Road Trip 2008 in a larger map
In the usual tradition of disregard for time, mileage, or weather, we set our sights on the southwest. And we were going to drive there. A romantic Christmas in Santa Fe, spending time with college buddies in Utah's national parks, New Years at the bottom of the Grand Canyon maybe, and all the microbrew we could get our palates exposed to. It's the middle of December, sure, but we'll be in New Mexico and Arizona for most of our trip. Surely we'll be fine in our car without snow tires, right?
I had finished my finals earlier in the week and Hans was due to arrive by plane in St. Louis at around 10 o'clock.
Hans’ plane arrived a few hours later than intended, so after I picked him up in St. Louis we did not get back to Cape Girardeau until 2 o’clock this morning.
We made the executive decision to start driving when we felt like it instead of at 6 am as originally planned. By 11:30 am we were on I-55 headed south until outside of Memphis and then we crossed diagonally through Arkansas. We drove into one of the nicest sunsets we’ve ever seen. Roughly 600 miles from Cape we stopped in Ft. Worth, Texas.
Our Motel 6, while clean and comfortable, was only within the vicinity of fast food joints. It being late on a Sunday night, our choices were limited. Ordering dinner at a shabby KFC quickly began to resemble the Cheese Shop Sketch from Monty Python. We went to bed very tired, and in Texas.
Our itinerary:
View Holiday Road Trip 2008 in a larger map