Here is a photo of Paul and the big rental rig - a 22' long Penske truck - that transported him and our cats Treat and Riley across the country. The dog kennel that housed the cats can be seen peaking over the dashboard. From Chicago to Grand Junction, Colorado they were accompanied by our friend Sue, another recent grad in Paul's program at University of Chicago. Sue took all of the photos in this post.
The Sod House Museum in west-central Nebraska (complete with an American Gothic photoshoot).
Sculptures in front of the Sod House Museum; apparently the buffalo weighs a ridiculous amount and is made of 4.5 miles of barbed wire!
Biodiversity survey en route to California. The bug 'rain' was fairly intense through Nebraska.
Cleaning off the windows so as to better see the road.
Sue, cats, and Paul in the cab of the truck.
All in all the drive was pretty uneventful. Each day was fraught with its own joys and terrors. The photo above was taken during a lunch break after we'd started driving through the Colorado Rockies on I-70. Navigating the truck down the first 6% grade west of Denver was a bit harrowing - a very long steep straight shot into the valley. By the time we stopped for lunch we were all really ready for a break. It was incredibly beautiful despite the occasional scary visions we had.
Steep. The photo doesn't do it justice. The grades didn't seem so bad once we got used to just downshifting and then puttering along pumping the brakes in the right hand lane as we passed the runaway truck ramps... that was until we had the thought that we might be in the way of a faster truck in need of one of those ramps. Yikes.
Beautiful canyon east of Grand Junction, CO.
Paul and Sue taking a break east of Grand Junction. It was really great to have Sue's company on the drive and sad to see her leave the road trip in western CO to meet a friend.
Treat and Riley did great on the drive. They would more or less bunker down during the day - napping or looking quietly around. Despite Lena's joke that they would meow all the way to CA they were all in all pretty mellow. At night they were very busy explorers of all the nooks and crannies in the motel room but it was never difficult to get them corralled in their carrier in the morning.
Paul at the helm en route to CA.
Scenery in western Colorado.
After dropping Sue off and spending the night in Grand Junction, Paul hit the road with Treat and Riley with two days of driving ahead of them. About an hour out, the cats' water dish spilled into the ipod holder and so went the beloved source of musical enjoyment and inspiration. So followed two days of singing, listening to a lot of intermittent NPR in the rural west, and listening to some miscellaneous music loaded on the laptop sitting on the seat between Paul and the cats. From Grand Junction we drove west into Utah, then up to Salt Lake, from there west into Nevada where we spent a night, and then one final push across western Nevada and California. Crossing the Sierras was slightly harrowing due to high wind warnings but we blew along and made it to Palo Alto the evening of Sunday August 30 as the sun was going down. That night Morgan and Lena were dropped off by Mark & Becca, and we spent our first night in our new house sleeping on our friends' sleeping bags.
Here is a photo of Paul and the big rental rig - a 22' long Penske truck - that transported him and our cats Treat and Riley across the country. The dog kennel that housed the cats can be seen peaking over the dashboard. From Chicago to Grand Junction, Colorado they were accompanied by our friend Sue, another recent grad in Paul's program at University of Chicago. Sue took all of the photos in this post.
The Sod House Museum in west-central Nebraska (complete with an American Gothic photoshoot).
Sculptures in front of the Sod House Museum; apparently the buffalo weighs a ridiculous amount and is made of 4.5 miles of barbed wire!
Biodiversity survey en route to California. The bug 'rain' was fairly intense through Nebraska.
Cleaning off the windows so as to better see the road.
Sue, cats, and Paul in the cab of the truck.
All in all the drive was pretty uneventful. Each day was fraught with its own joys and terrors. The photo above was taken during a lunch break after we'd started driving through the Colorado Rockies on I-70. Navigating the truck down the first 6% grade west of Denver was a bit harrowing - a very long steep straight shot into the valley. By the time we stopped for lunch we were all really ready for a break. It was incredibly beautiful despite the occasional scary visions we had.
Steep. The photo doesn't do it justice. The grades didn't seem so bad once we got used to just downshifting and then puttering along pumping the brakes in the right hand lane as we passed the runaway truck ramps... that was until we had the thought that we might be in the way of a faster truck in need of one of those ramps. Yikes.
Beautiful canyon east of Grand Junction, CO.
Paul and Sue taking a break east of Grand Junction. It was really great to have Sue's company on the drive and sad to see her leave the road trip in western CO to meet a friend.
Treat and Riley did great on the drive. They would more or less bunker down during the day - napping or looking quietly around. Despite Lena's joke that they would meow all the way to CA they were all in all pretty mellow. At night they were very busy explorers of all the nooks and crannies in the motel room but it was never difficult to get them corralled in their carrier in the morning.
Paul at the helm en route to CA.
Scenery in western Colorado.
After dropping Sue off and spending the night in Grand Junction, Paul hit the road with Treat and Riley with two days of driving ahead of them. About an hour out, the cats' water dish spilled into the ipod holder and so went the beloved source of musical enjoyment and inspiration. So followed two days of singing, listening to a lot of intermittent NPR in the rural west, and listening to some miscellaneous music loaded on the laptop sitting on the seat between Paul and the cats. From Grand Junction we drove west into Utah, then up to Salt Lake, from there west into Nevada where we spent a night, and then one final push across western Nevada and California. Crossing the Sierras was slightly harrowing due to high wind warnings but we blew along and made it to Palo Alto the evening of Sunday August 30 as the sun was going down. That night Morgan and Lena were dropped off by Mark & Becca, and we spent our first night in our new house sleeping on our friends' sleeping bags.
No comments:
Post a Comment