Sometimes I go on cross-country road trips

The time has come for me to write about le road trip.

June 2nd: began very very early, 4am, so I could wake myself up enough to be functional to check in for my 6:30am flight to Ontario. No problems to report, they didn't lose my bag and it actually came off the plane quickly! woot. Scott holmesed around a bit at his aunt's house b/c his prof was lame and didn't tell him that he needed to officially apply for his summer research position in order to get paid. So I chillaxed at Ontario for a little while. you could sort of see the mountains. On the way down the pilot kept saying things like "clear skies in Ontario" and I kept thinking "you are such a liar, the skies are never clear there" and they especially weren't that day. anywho.
We ventured to Claremont, I got to sit and chat with Hannah and Jessica for a while which was fun (and they should totally come to Portland to visit...) I then proceeded to Keck and said hello to Sydney. None of my professors really seemed to be around so I then meandered around the Scripps campus for a bit and took some pictures. Elm tree lawn was really sad, just a bunch of dirt. It felt really weird to be back, I already felt like I didn't belong there anymore. However, then we got PATTY'S and ate it with Eric, who was a frosh in Scott's suite, and it made everything right in the world (I ate 3 potato tacos and saved one for later). Scott bought a Mudd license plate frame and promptly put it and the Subaru and off we went!
Well, we got about 100 miles in (to Barstow) and the "check engine light" came on, noooooooooo, we hadn't even gotten out of California yet! After many phone calls to Scott's dad and some advice we figured it out and were on our way once again. We made it safely to Williams, AZ and stayed there for the night. On the way, since we were in the middle of nowhere, the stars were super purdy. Scott freaked me out by turning off the headlights for a second to see just how dark it was. conclusion: it was freaking dark.

June 3rd: got up a little later than intended, checked out of the fabulous Econolodge and headed north to the Grand Canyon! We milled around at the grand canyon for a while, we didn't have time to do any hiking into it so we just walked some on the rim trail which was still awesome. that is one big canyon and a great part was that I hadn't spent the night before freezing my ass off! On the way back from the canyon we stopped at a small flight museum in Valle, more or less the only thing in Valle. It was pretty cool, natch something that Scott probably enjoyed more than I did but I like looking at nifty planes I just don't know anything about them. He likes the planes and I like the horses ; )
We continued on, got slightly lost in Flagstaff but found our way back to I-40 and it was all good. Stopped in Winslow, AZ and holmesed for a bit looking for a corner to stand on and found that they have a corner done up just for that purpose so we felt like really silly tourists, took pictures and jumped back in the Subaru. Drove on, originally we aimed for Albuquerque that night but we spent more time and the canyon and stuff than we thought so we settled for Gallup, New Mexico, dined on some delicious Taco Bell and stayed in a room with 2 queen beds because that's all any of them seemed to have available.

June 4th: Drove to Albuquerque to visit the Rattlesnake Museum which was started by this guy who just really likes rattlesnakes and thinks they are largely misunderstood. They also had some other reptiles and amphibians. It was a small place, basically a gift shop and then two rooms with the animals but it was nicely set up. Two of the rattlesnakes were eating, they only feed them dead mice (apparently they gas the mice beforehand) and it is apparently better that way than feeding live ones because sometimes the mice can hurt the snakes or scare them. Since normally the snakes find prey by movement it took them a while because they had to rely on smell but it was kinda fun to see them be all snake like looking for their food. There were tons of different snakes, some poisonous and some not that they have gotten from zoos mostly. Only one of them rattled at us, so we backed away b/c apparently we are pretty scary people and that snake was not happy with us. After the snakes we chilled in a little park for a minute and then ate some enchiladas that almost ended Scott due to a hidden chili pepper. They do their mexican food spicy apparently. It was cool to see that part of Albuquerque, the historic downtown area, I was there once before and didn't see much. Our drive continued, straight through Amarillo, Texas and the "world's largest cross" and we stayed at the Irish Inn in Shamrock, Texas where the hotel employees all had a slight drawl to their speech, but no Irish accents, damn. That night we had a king bed, which really is unnecessarily large, watched some junk TV, and spent a few minutes in the jacuzzi.

June 5th: enjoyed some tasty breakfast at the Irish Inn, heard one of the other guests compare all Texas rangers to Chuck Norris from Walker, Texas Ranger which was mildly amusing. We packed up and headed for Oklahoma City where we visited the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. My dad suggested that we go here and I think it was worth it. Very nice museum + lots of pictures of horses makes me pretty happy! We got back in the car and Scott said that it seemed like tornado weather, I was sort of oblivious I guess, I mean it had been windy since New Mexico but turned out he was right...
We turned on the radio and they were talking about a "severe storm warning" with "possible tornadoes" predicted for the Oklahoma City area. SHIT. TORNADOES. DO NOT WANT. So we headed eastwards, called my sister to have her look at weather and learned that most of the severe weather was predicted for western and northern Oklahoma. We kept driving, it continued to be really really windy which was a bit of pain to drive it but almost as soon as we made it into Arkansas the wind died down and there were lots of trees and greenery and it was awesome. Arkansas is my new favorite southern state. We drove and drove, I think this is the day we got lost for a while in some Arkansas town looking for the Arby's that a sign had guaranteed us was there. We found it eventually and drove straight through Little Rock and on to Memphis, or at least almost. We stayed the night in West Memphis, Arkansas

June 6th: Drove bout 15-20min into real Memphis and visited Graceland. It was really expensive but I suppose worth it. Elvis had some crazy ass rooms in his house. I think one of my favorites was the pool room that had pleated fabric all over the walls and ceiling. There was also a stairway that had mirrors halfway down the sides of the walls and on the ceiling that was pretty trippy. The rest was cool with lots of Elvis memorabilia and all of his awards and such. I was hoping to see some fanatic Elvis fans but alas, they did not seem to be a part of our particular tour. It was here that we departed form our beloved (sort-of) I-40 which had carried us from California and we made our way though the northeastern corner of Mississippi, through Alabama, and on to Atlanta. There was an exit for "Holmes Drive" in Atlanta and we knew it must be an ok place. Scott had to call Nate, a Mudder who graduated last year who is his roommate for the summer, to try and figure out how to get onto the street where the apartment actually was because there just happened to be a huge street festival going on on the next street over and so Scott's street was blocked except for neighborhood traffic and we had no way to prove that he lived there. Nate was super nice and complied with the slightly less than nice police officer (though she probably had to sit there all day so I guess some irritability was to be expected) who demanded "where's your ID at?" and eventually she let us through.
After meeting with Nate for a minute we promptly unloaded the Subaru, in which time I managed to get at least 3 mosquito bites, thanks the South. Since Scott didn't have any real food yet we walked down to Trader Joe's (booya walking distance) and got some microwaveable things for dinner and cereal for breakfast the next day. It was nice to finally be somewhere and know that we didn't have to get up and drive the next day.

June 7th: Slept in and it was awesome. Allison (proctor Allison from North last year for Claremontians) is subletting her room to Scott for the summer while she does an internship in Virginia. The apartment is nice, it's the basement of the land lord's house with a good sized kitchen (complete with dishwasher which Scott learned how to use), a little living room area, two bedrooms and a bathroom. We walked down through the festival thing and proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon drinking beer, eating, and watching the Belmont at a sports bar. It was really hot and humid but after a while you are just kinda sweaty and you get used to it. That evening we got totally napped, woke up and ate some Joe's Os and then basically just went back to sleep.

June 8th: Georgia Aquarium day! so many fish. and beluga whales, those were pretty awesome to see. I definitely want to go back in 2010 when they get dolphins! So then that night I helped Scott go grocery shopping and we made my specialty: pasta with stir-fry! It is just so easy and pretty much always tasty. Then Nate gave us an awesome marimba demonstration, 4 mallets and then 2 mallets, which was way cool. I don't think I've ever seen someone play a marimba before. Then I made Scott actually unpack his clothes while I lay on the bed. He thus decided it was a great idea to pile them all on top of me and so I was periodically buried beneath different clothing items. We talked for a while and then went to sleep. Oh, and I forgot to mention that my computer was very unhappy in Atlanta. blue screen of death. but it is fine now and hopefully it will stay that way, please compy, I love you!

June 9th: slept in, ate some cereal and then it was off to the train station and on to the airport. Scott went with me to the airport. Everything went pretty smoothly, I even made my very very close connection in Denver (Denver totally owed me one after I got stuck there during fall break). Got home and I was starving so I settled that, played with the pug and slept some more. and that's that.

Briefly, in other news. Ina came down with a little virus and didn't want to eat her food Monday night and you know there's something wrong when Ina doesn't want to eat. We had Susan give her a dose of banamine, which helped Impy last week who seemed to have the same thing, and she was eating much better today. I'm psyched for the show on Saturday, I'm just hoping that she will be a good girl and not unexpectedly freak out on me, you just never know!
I didn't get the job at the vet clinic that I interviewed for. I was definitely disappointed since it was pretty much exactly what I wanted, part time for now with potential for full time, small animal clinic, and in LO so I wouldn't have to drive. I'm a little miffed that that guy didn't bother to call/email me to say I didn't get it since he said he would call either way and also said that I was one of the best candidates. Oh well. I'm going to work out a small barn a couple days a week and that should be good enough for summer. I think I started this post about 4 hours ago but I got distracted by phone calls and food and TV so here's to finally ending this!