causeways, posts by tag: driving - LiveJournal (original) (raw)
I'm staying in pretty much the most bizarre hotel ever right now, the Canyon Motel & RV Motor Park. It's in Williams, Arizona, and I am nearly positive that Sam and Dean have stayed here, because it seems like just the kind of place that Dean would LOVE: weird little cabin-like things with their own individual driveways in front of them. You can also stay in a couple of rooms that are in former Grand Canyon Railway cabooses. Tragically, I think those were full. At any rate, it's on the edge of the old Route 66 downtown area, and earlier I sat in a restaurant and drank a Corona with lime and worked on my 
spn_remix fic -- I have no idea why I am feeling so compelled to get this done so early, but I've somehow gotten it in my brain that if I don't finish it before I get back to school, I will never have time to finish it ever. I recognize that this is silly, because I fully intend to write eighty bazillion words of angsty genderswap while I am at school, hopefully before S3 starts to air, even, but whatever, it's a compulsion, okay? Anyway, writing outside while listening to live music was lovely.
There was some seriously gorgeous scenery while we were driving through New Mexico and part of Arizona today. I kept thinking of the one line of 
nutkin's from Waiting Games about the landscape being like a continuous Flintstones backdrop -- I'm sure I just mangled that line (sorry, Addie!), but so true nonetheless. We drove through some of the most awful rain just after Flagstaff, though, which wasn't fun, even though the lightning was pretty phenomenal. I just would've rather gotten to watch it from inside somewhere instead of while on the road.
Speaking of nutkin, I'm going to take a page out of her book: y'know that postcards meme thing I posted earlier? Fuck that five-person-limit business. If you want a postcard from the Grand Canyon, drop me an email at katjakfd [at] yahoo [dot] com with your address and I'll send you a postcard. Just so long as I get your email before I head out tomorrow -- probably around eight or nine Arizona time, which is WEIRD and its own thing (they're technically on Mountain Time, but they don't participate in Daylight Savings, so basically it is the same as Pacific Standard Time right now. WTF, Arizona?) -- I will be happy to send you a postcard! Otherwise, I'll still send you a postcard, it'll just be from somewhere that is not the Grand Canyon. Yay postcards. :D
day four: albuquerque, new mexico!
August 28th, 2007
We weren't really expecting to make it all the way from Tulsa to Albuquerque today, but we did, hooray! So I mentioned there'd be more photographic evidence of my travels. Here we go!
I think I might've neglected to mention that we went to Graceland yesterday morning before we left Memphis. What a patently weird place. It was the thirtieth anniversary of the King's death last week (it's called Death Week, no joke) and so there were all kinds of crazy floral arrangements around his grave and the driveway. I'm sure they're around all the time, but they were especially prominent now:
( Flowers around Elvis's grave.Collapse )
The inside of the house is the most amazing kind of kitsch ever -- people should not have been allowed to decorate during the seventies, for serious -- and yet it didn't seem particularly weird to me at all, because it looked just like the interior of the house my mom grew up in, only more so. More shag carpet, more hideous stuffed animals, more mirrors. If my mom's parents had been as rich as Elvis, I think they would have done even more ridiculous things with Graceland than Elvis did.
Also near Graceland:
( Why yes, I do wear my dorky on my sleeve.Collapse )
Anyway, then we were in Tulsa, like I wrote yesterday, and I didn't take any pictures. Oops. I tried to make up for it today, though!
( Dean totally stopped here.Collapse )
( There's a reason Sam's scared of clowns.Collapse )
( Coolest beer label EVER.Collapse )
( And last but not least, the classiest tan line ever.Collapse )
Anyway, I'm about to pass out, as seems to be the norm on this trip. And again, if anything important happens with you guys, let me know or drop me a link or something!
quick update from tulsa, oklahoma!
August 27th, 2007
So, after three days of driving, we're in Tulsa, Oklahoma! Doing pretty well for ourselves here, I think. We unexpectedly stayed with some friends in Memphis last night (by which I mean, we called them when we were an hour outside of the city and they said, "Hey, come stay with us!"), and they took us out for delicious fried catfish and then we walked along the banks of the Mississippi River and stayed in their awesome old house. Good times!
In Tennessee we saw such wonders as tractor-trailers without the trailer that were instead towing other tractors, and in Arkansas we saw flatbed trailers with houses on them being driven down I-40. Also good times! And we just got back a little while ago from meeting up with flamehail and her boyfriend for dinner, yaaaay! There will be more photographic evidence of the trip to follow, I'm just about to pass out here. Oh, but quickly one more fun sight: a sign on the Muskogee Turnpike between I-40 and Tulsa informed us that a McDonalds was, sic, '18 miles a head'.
. . . Thank you, America.
I am trying to write fic as I go here, but am failing rather miserably at that, since I'm driving half the time and the other half the time I seem to be doing a whole lot of staring off into space / at scenery / at sights like 'McDonalds 18 miles a head'. Eh well. I'm enjoying myself anyway, although driving wears you out after a while, yeesh. How do Sam and Dean do it all the time?
Anyway, I just tried to skim the last two days' worth of my flist, and have come to the conclusion that I am never going to get caught up, so if anything hugely important happened to you guys recently, drop me a line, mkay? (Other than the bandom wank. It was impossible to miss the bandom wank.) Hope you're all doing well, anyway!
August 24th, 2007
Ack, I am in the middle of crazy packing mode. I think I mentioned this once before, but I'm leaving in the morning to drive cross-country with my mother -- heading back to college for my senior year, except this time, with a CAR. I'm suddenly really excited about the prospect of school starting up again, after having spent the whole day dropping my eighteen-year-old brother off at college for his freshman year and listening to various college types talk about how awesome the class of 2011 is going to be, how much fun they're going to have, etc. I think I would be so good at being a college freshman now, if I were able to go back and do it again knowing what I now know, but I guess that is kind of the point of being a freshman, is being all new to the whole college thing and walking around looking clueless and hoping you figure everything out eventually. But yeah, I'm just having this whole rush of affection for all of the college freshmen right now. <3
But I am getting distracted from the point, which is: driving across the whole of the continental U.S.! Starting TOMORROW! I'm literally starting from as far east in Virginia as you can get and ending up in Southern California. My college isn't quite right on the coast, but my mom and I are talking about maybe just zooming right past our supposed stopping point and making for the Pacific, diving in the ocean and then retracing our steps a little. Sounds way more appealing than ending the trip in the DESERT, and I feel like if you're gonna say you've driven across the whole country, it's cooler if you can add, "From ocean to ocean, LITERALLY." :D!
So I'll probably be scarce around these parts for the next week or so (we're leaving tomorrow and planning on arriving on September 1st) but I'll hopefully pop in from time to time. I mean, Sam and Dean get wireless all over the country, right? Surely I can get some wireless SOMEWHERE. But I'm meeting up with the lovely balefully for lunch tomorrow and the also-lovely flamehail whenever we get to Tulsa, so YAY! And I'll be writing porn the whole way, don't worry. Probably genderswap. (I'm totally using that idea, sanyin, by the way.) I am really stupidly excited about the genderswap. It is stealing the thunder of everything else I am writing.
Except for theoret's and my sooper sekkrit project, but that is a totally different kind of fic than the long angsty genderswap and therefore unaffected by the thunder-stealing. \o/
Wow, I'm rambly. Anyway, hope you all have a lovely week or so, and I'll catch up with you when I get back. ♥