Follow That Setting Sun...

This will stand as the first chapter in Emmah’s MAW (Make-A-Wish) trip… there’s a lot to tell and a lot to remember and for me to sit and type everything out and have you read it all at once is going to be a bit over the top, so piece by piece it’s going to be. I won’t exactly know how many pieces until I get there.

Exactly… now how was the west won?

Why it was with a carload of kids and stuff… and stuff. Stuff that filled every single nook, niche and cranny inside the car, a fanny pack (a roof pack) and a hitch tray. It was almost comical, the truck looked like it had two abscesses, one on top and one coming off the back end. We stashed stuff anywhere and everywhere that didn’t interfere with the driver’s area, I mean we stashed stuff IN stuff. I knew of nothing that went on behind us, for all I knew the road was caving in after we rolled over it. My rear view mirror was a useless instrument; at least for what its intended purpose is, it pretty much ended up as the eye in the sky for all the back seat passengers. I honestly wondered if we’d have to weigh in at the stations along the way. At one of the stops for food (one of many… imagine that) we stopped at the place that has that clown with the big red shoes and the yellow jumper as the face of the company. The girl working the drive up said that we must be on vacation. I wonder what ever gave her that idea… can’t fool them… no sir.

Turns out the easiest way to fool these people, is to actually place your order.

A few thousand miles later (4985.7 to be exact), we are indeed back from Emmah’s Make-A-Wish trip having traveled through a total of 12 states. Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, and finally back into Illinois. New Mexico was a cheapie since we only took a short road to get to and from Four Corners. Nonetheless, our tires were rolling along New Mexico land and the money that exchanged hands to get into Four Corners was exchanged in New Mexico. A lot of the aforementioned states were seen in various states of darkness.

I realize that doesn’t exactly sound like a winning combination to tame the west… you’re right, it’s not. Makes it sound like we were sneaking across the country with all this darkness of night stuff. Truth being told we weren’t exactly inconspicuous or subtle with our arrivals or our departures, but it just wouldn’t be a Gudeman Family camping trip without setting up the tent (almost every single time) during the hours of the recently vanished sun. As if the image of the rolling circus (that would be us pulling in, disembarking and then setting up) wasn’t enough to grab the fellow campers’ attention… of course, you would have had to have some type of night vision to see us… Ana was always quick to oblige at getting their attention by announcing to the beautiful silence that she had in fact arrived too. Ana had back up, The Hungry Hound Gang singing their title track... What’s for dinner, I’m Hungry? It is their new smash follow up hit to three of their most popular songs, I’m Tired and I Gotta Go Potty and I’m Thirsty… all three have gone double platinum already. If that wasn’t enough to rankle the campers within earshot, then those people should be canonized. There were a couple of times we pulled in really late… not just late, or later but really late.

…we did all those other kind of lates too by the way.

The trip started out by us packing as most trips do even before embarking on something as small as just a weekender, though this was going to be no weekender. This was going to be the opposite of a weekender… it was going to be a weeker, a three weeker. Three weeks, eight people, half our house and one SUV. The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed, if not for the courage of Mom and Pop the mission would be a bust. After finally getting everything squirreled away including the kids (we had to pack them too) Julie and I plopped our well worn rears into our seats. Julie was to drive us as long as she could and I was going to take over then… meanwhile, as she was driving I was to nap. We steamed out of our alley 2 no 3 hours after the original departure time of 4pm.

See we had this idea (mine actually) that since we’ve been unsuccessful in every single other trip departure in getting out on time, we decided to change it up. Normally, we’d plan on leaving very early, say like 4am for example. Drive all day and then collapse that night at our destination… exhausted. Your day then was naturally shot being spent on the road. Sadly, in all of our other attempts to get out on time we never made them either. For those that really know us, I realize that isn’t a great shocker. So leaving hours and hours after your dream start time, um… puts you further and further behind schedule. This time was going to be different! I said let’s turn it around, we leave in the afternoon and drive all night and arrive at our destination before noon and still have most of the day left to enjoy. The kids should sleep most of the drive then too thus reducing the necessity for potty break stops.

All great in theory… it’s putting the great theory into practical use or practice that spoils the glory of a grand idea. So as I stated, we are all now rears down and buckled, ready to roll… let’s get this heap’o’stuff rolling down the alley. There was much rejoicing as we said see ya all later, spirits were high and kids were hungry. Then the old voice in your head (which turns out to be my own old voice, not sure who you all hear when you hear voices) sez something like is the stove off? Or… is that window/door locked? You get the idea. So we turned around having traveled a couple of miles to double check the house. House secured.

Okay, let’s get rol… “I gotta go potty!”

“Me too!”

“I’ll try as long as we’re here…”

“Me too!”

Ooohkay the seats were just starting to warm and just like that they were empty cooling off. Okay… everyone done? Good, let’s get in and let’s get goi…“I’m still hungry…”

“Me too.”

“Can we stop at McDonalds?” Sure…

So McDonalds it was… screwed up the order, not once but twice. Okay, food’s keeping the kids quiet and content, let’s get going for real now. Julie puts it in reverse and starts to pull out and asks me if I had the atlas. I looked at her with a look that told her that I did not pack said atlas.

Hahahahahahahahaha! sniff… cough… sniff… Hahahahahahahahahaha! sniff… cough… cough…

After we stopped laughing a decision was made. Instead of going home, losing another half hour in travel time with the potential to lose more time (as there would have to be some kind of treasure hunt to find our atlas) we thought it best to go to the Target right next door and pick up a new one. At long last, we are finally heading south on I-55, destination Missouri (about five hours after we wanted to be on the road by) but hey… who’s counting? Now that I’m done eating (but sharing my Mcgas with the rest of the car) my job has now become to get some sleep. I know you’re all ahead of me on this one; I couldn’t sleep a wink… even after such a feast too! Leave it to me to screw something as simple as sleeping in a car up. I sense this is going to end up being a problem at some point. As fate would have it (and fate has a very high success rate in things of irony) I started to maybe get to a point were I was perhaps feeling like I could potentially snooze a tad. Okay, I was getting sleepy, but there was a problem, Julie and I had already switched. See I thought I may as well drive as long as I couldn’t sleep so I talked Julie out of the driver’s seat. That strong-arming (as Julie calls it) took place in the lovely little town of Lincoln, IL, a town between Bloomington and Springfield, somewhere around or just past 1am.

What were we doing there? Well people needed to go potty! We saw a sign for a gas station and got off… in the darkness of the middle of nowhere Illinois. At the end of the ramp another little sign pointing in a left direction to said station. Turning left… driving… driving… driving… Where the hell is the station already? There’s the Lincoln Bank, Funeral Home, tractor dealer… okay, ya got me… but still no sign of the Citgo. Oh wait, I see another small sign, another left needs to be made leading us headed into a residential area. You’d think that the station would stick out, well; perhaps in the daylight it would have been easier. Better yet, it might help if the lights to the place were on and it was OPEN! The only place that was open (and not really an option) was a bar adjacent to the station out of which the locals were making their way out of... performing the last call shuffle.

This is where the beauty of being a male comes in handy (perhaps one of only a few, but it’s a damn good one in situations like these) come with me boys, we're going to go mark our territory. The girls on the other hand haven’t been shown how to… um… squat and go without a bowl. So it was pee on a pull-up time for the girls. Emmah had a bit of a problem and got back in sans pants… they needed some drying out time. I get the feeling that the aiming thing comes a tad easier for those of us equipped with um… hoses. There, that takes care of everyone… everyone ‘cept Julie. She is on a find and seek mission to find somewhere for herself to go. See we had kind of assumed when we pulled up that the location (and thusly the access) of the bathroom was in the locked building. Stood around a bit, eyed a door between the station building and another building, the two building creating a dark hall and it was this hall that the door was. Moving on and trying to find someplace else was NOT an option and so came the plan. Julie in a last ditch effort thought “why not try the door, maybe it’s unlocked” that’s right folks… it opened right up.

Who knew? I mean after all it was... um... dark.

Can you believe it, all that and we’re not even past Springfield let alone out of Illinois.

KUIYTAP

Next up... getting out of Illinois and to Cascade, Colorado

To read the next chapter follow this link... (Finally) Here Comes The Sun