Road Trip II, Days Eight – Twelve

August 10th, 2006 · No Comments

A quick recap of the last days of the road trip, before they fade from memory… We left Sheridan and headed into Montana, our destination for at least the next few days. We spent the morning at the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monument, and spent some time looking around at the memorials and gravesites. The car was beginning to chug worse than ever at this point, and we couldn’t figure out why, so once we reached Bozeman, we stopped for lunch and got in touch with the local VW dealer, who couldn’t help us. We had the name of a VW specialist in Helena, and decided it would be better to press on towards people who could come get us in their rental cars. We headed up to Helena with fingers crossed, and didn’t stop until we got to V-Dub’s and More, where the wonderful Eric hooked the car up to the computer as soon as we pulled in, and immediately identified the likely cause: bad sparkplugs or wires causing a mis-fire in the second cylinder, leading to a loss of power. Bingo. He ordered the parts right then and there, and they’d arrive in time to be installed on Friday before our Saturday departure. Hooray for Eric, for Helena, for Montana!

Eric checks out the Passat

We enjoyed the wedding weekend immensely, surrounded by friends and family and not driving at all. It was a beautiful weekend, and in between events we had time to enjoy a breakfast (or two) at No Sweat Café and a milkshake at the Parrot. Helena was a charming little town, and the wedding was as great event.

Saturday morning we rose bright and early, bade farewell to the bride and groom and Aimee’s family, and headed south on I-15, our home for the next two days. Through the beautiful mountains of Montana, down through Idaho, with a delicious stop at the Snakebite in Idaho Falls, through northern Utah, with a stop at Hires Big H for a root beer freeze in Salt Lake City, finally stopping in Cedar City after 10 1/2 hours of driving – which actually didn’t seem that bad.

Clouds and light in Utah

We spent the night in Cedar City, and spent Sunday driving through southern Utah – one of our favorite Frostops was gone – cutting through Arizona, and into Nevada, including a major detour Aimee devised to get us around the traffic mess of a major accident on the CA/NV border, a detour that took us through Searchlight, home of Sen. Harry Reid, and lots of beautiful Joshua trees.

We headed over the pass into the valley approaching LA, and the car thermometer read 64°, which was pretty unbelievable, considering the record heat and humidity we’d seen on the news. We lucked out, and the weather broke just before we got into town.

Ah, Zzyzx.

We pulled in around 4 in the afternoon, but with nothing to do and nowhere to be, we decided to see the neighborhood, and enjoyed dinner at Zeke’s BBQ down the street, followed by some time-killing lounging at the Virgin Megastore, and then a crazy, over-the-top screening of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, complete with pirate-garbed ushers, props and costumes on display, a theater organist playing Disney tunes, and lots of hullabaloo. Leave it to the El Capitan.

We slept on the floor, which was very much there despite our sleeping bags and Thermarests. The next morning we rose to greet the last day of July, a full month after we set out on the first road trip across the country. This trip then ended as it began, with Tom and his giant truck, pulled up on a leafy street, wheeling our possessions up the driveway.

Our stuff pulls up at our new home

(Note the more than passing resemblance to this photo of the truck loading up our stuff in Rochester).

In the middle of the move-in, I had to head to work for my first day on the job, and now it’s been nearly two full weeks of work. It’s been great, the people are very nice, and I think it will be a lot of fun and an interesting experience. Outside of work, here’s what we’ve done so far: we’ve had four visits from three different cable companies, with a fifth (from yet another company) due tomorrow, with the result being still no cable and no internet after two weeks. Don’t try to get cable installed during a major merger, if you can help it. We’ve also made three trips to to DMV offices, with one more coming up tomorrow, by which time we should have licenses, registration, and plates to prove we live here. Aimee will undoubtedly let me know if I don’t note that she passed the surprisingly challenging written exam for the California driver’s license the first time, while I needed two of my allotted three chances to pass. Forgive me for not knowing the fine for dumping a dead animal by the side of the road.

We’ll see if tomorrow’s cable person can do anything for us; hopefully we’ll at least get our new cell phones, and officially leave 617 for 323. Maybe soon we can stop unpacking, and start exploring. We’re looking forward to it.

Tags: Los Angeles · Travel