It’s not too far of a stretch in a newsletter on the topic of “home” to write about moving from one home to another. Physically traversing what looks like a tiny line on a map (but feels much bigger) is, well, a big deal. Cross-country road trips elicit a whole spectrum of emotions: the thrill of it all, the pull of simply wanting to just get there yet enjoying the world flying by, hours and hours of boredom peppered with the occasional jolt of seeing some new formation in the land you never expected…and on and on…like the road.
And not only that, but 12 days (including a 3-day break in the middle) spent in the interior of the cramped cab of a U-Haul was enough to become like a little home. The views outside the window changed daily, but inside the cab was predictable and routine–even if the “routine” was, at times, slightly terrifying, ungodly sweaty, mundane, intense. I got used to it. If this sounds familiar, it’s the next-to-last line in my first essay: Home is in the routine.
We were moving 3500 miles away, with everything we owned packed in the back of a truck, reliant upon strangers and one another to get us there in one piece. This ye olde covered wagon was home.
Day One: Georgia. Tennessee. A tiny bit of Alabama. And back to Tennessee.
Our last night in Georgia, having moved out of our house, my husband, daughter, mother-in-law (who graciously flew out from Arizona to help us pack and assist with travel) and I booked a room at The Graduate, a trying-too-hard-to-be-trendy motel near downtown, where our room key was a replica of Michael Stipe’s UGA student ID. (I kept it, of course). We ate takeout from The Grit one last time. With Covid, the past six months had felt just like this night—a bit underwhelming, but with undertones of significance. I was grateful for the food and the soft bed.
The next day, after a lot of shenanigans trying to get everything ready to go, and a parade of neighbors waving us goodbye, I climbed into the cab of the enormous 26-foot-long U-Haul truck with a car tow attached to its rear. My seat was way too high—up in the sky—and I could feel a ticking pulse of anticipation underscored by fear: Did I have everything I needed here with me? Would I be able to move this monster? Would I be able to stop it?
I did my best to make myself comfortable. I had my setup. Because of my size and for comfort, I brought two pillows–one for my back, one for the seat, and a baby blanket underneath so I wouldn’t have to peel the backs of my legs off the hot vinyl like Fruit Roll-Ups. Sunglasses and a hat, sunscreen for the left side of my face, my left arm, both hands. Gloves over that to protect my hands from withering and my fingers from sticking to the wheel, a sun-proof shirt to protect my arms and prevent my neck from getting sliced by the seatbelt.
I must admit, I looked insanely cool.
Entertainment-wise, there was only a radio. I wasn’t about to drive a hundred hours alternating between spotty stations and silence. So I brought two cell phones: one with music—REM, Jimmy Eat World, and Cobra Starship—but no service, the other a working phone with a few downloaded audiobooks: Ben Folds, Michelle Obama, and a novel about Hillary Clinton (which I listened to primarily whilst driving through Arkansas, natch). I had an exterior battery for the phones and an exterior speaker (no headphones—safety first!) which was pretty cheap so I had to perfectly position it or it would fall out. At least a couple of times it got overheated I had to throw it in the cooler to chill. It was all pretty straightforward.
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Speaking of the cooler on the seat next to me, I brought enough drinks and snacks for thousands of miles. Along with my requisite carrot sticks and green juice, now was the time to relish in as much junk food as I could stomach. Doritos? Heck yes! Dr. Pepper? More, please! Sour neon gummy anything? An absolute must.
I’d driven big vehicles before. I used to drive an accessible Sprinter van with a lift, in 2003 I had driven a smaller moving truck from South Carolina to Arizona, and, at one point, I had even earned my Commercial Driver’s License Permit to drive a bus. This hulking monstrosity was going to be fine! I rather enjoy driving and the prospect of driving cross-country was a dreamy one, especially in mid-2020 after being stuck within a 5-mile radius for six months. I imagined the panoramic view from the cab, the land scrolling by, delightful picnics at rest areas with finger sandwiches lovingly arranged on a red-and-white checkered blanket.
The first day showed us that that was not exactly how it was going to go. We took off at 11:00 am and were eyeing my brother’s empty house outside of Memphis for our first night. It would have been about an 8-hour drive in a car going at a decent speed with no stops.
I found out immediately, though, that I was terrified of taking the truck over 55 mph. I had read the paltry information given by U-Haul (remember this when you see these things on the road—the drivers have had no training!) and thought that if I went even a mile over the recommended speed, the towed car would start swinging wildly all over the road.
I can tell you that I was the slowest vehicle on the interstate. Not just this day, but every day. I think I only passed one truck the entire drive; everyone else passed me.
The rolling foothills north of town were where I first had to test my ability to speed up and brake and do it over and over again. Over the next several hours, we had those hills, city driving in Atlanta, thunderstorms, and road construction in Chattanooga, and then there was my first mountain-driving test: Monteagle. From Wikipedia: The western downgrade of Monteagle Mountain on I-24 drops 778 feet (237 m) over four miles (6.4 km), with a 5% grade. While not considered as hazardous as the eastbound descent, the westbound descent contains many curves, including one "c-shaped" curve, protracted over a distance of almost one mile (1.6 km). The eastbound and westbound lanes are also located very close together, and crossover crashes and crashes with Jersey barriers located in the median in some places are common on this stretch.
Making it through this section without having to use a runaway truck ramp felt like an enormous achievement, and my reward for this feat was…more road. If you’ve ever driven across Tennessee, you have experienced just how long this state is. We were going to the far west corner, and there was one more surprise before rest could come.
It had been dark for a good three hours, and I had been driving for 13 hours with few breaks, but we were almost to our exit. Because it was late at night, they had closed the exit ramp for road construction. So we continued for a dozen more miles (exits were very far apart) and had to double back through rural roads. I was in no position to be making critical decisions, but we made it to the house, and I prayed that I remembered the code for the garage door. That part, fortunately, went exactly as planned.
The house was silent. My brother, a Naval Aviator (here’s hoping you’ve listened to my interview with him already!), and his family had already moved just a couple of weeks earlier to Newport, Rhode Island for a year-long stint at the Naval War College. They had called their this place home for two and a half years, but it would sell soon. It was still theirs for now, though, and it was in the right place at the right time for a free place to sleep on our long journey.
Walking into the shell of their former home was surreal—we had been there just two months earlier, playing, making plans (this was, in fact, where we were when we made the decision to move to Washington)—and the ghost sounds of the past two and a half years of my brother’s family’s life seemed to echo off the walls. I fretted about my daughter’s response to the eeriness of it all. For my part, I didn’t want to look into the empty rooms; I wanted to remember them how they were. Strange how, even though we’d only visited twice, I wanted to keep those memories intact. I thought they might crumble if I looked too closely.
I was absolutely exhausted and needed sleep, but after a day of sweating, drying sweat, sweating again, etc. I needed a shower more. I jetted upstairs to the “guest” bathroom where I knew the water pressure would be a balm to my soul. One problem—no shower curtain, with no possible improvisations. I mopped up the excess water with some precious toilet paper. The shower, though a bit breezy, still felt amazing.
And so ended the first day.
Day Two: Crossing into Arkansas and on to Oklahoma.
It wasn’t the most restful night (two of us were on an air mattress, the other two on the floor) but after some takeout breakfast burritos, we pulled away from that neighborhood for the actual last time and got back on The Road.
Waving to Memphis on the shores of the Great Mississippi, we were now in Arkansas. We had packed several days of picnicky-food for our travels, to avoid having to spend money and also go inside places where Covid was likely lurking, so we set out our lunch on a table by the highway, paper plates, napkins, tuna salad and “real” pimiento cheese spread from Georgia, bread, grapes, the last of my green juice. These meals kept me motivated.
As I think now, two years later, about the uncertainty of traveling during Covid, some of the precautions certainly seem a little extreme, like wearing gloves while pumping gas, wiping down gas station drinks with my DIY Lysol wipes, and holding my breath while inside rest area bathrooms (for Covid reasons, not for other reasons).
But I also acknowledge that we were just six months into the pandemic. We didn’t have vaccines (we didn’t even think we’d have vaccines for a long time!), and we didn’t know yet that it affected children much more mildly than adults. Remember that at the beginning, people of all ages and constitutions were dying right and left seemingly out of nowhere, and it was truly terrifying. So while it feels a little odd now to have been so cautious, we were (literally) living in a different world then. I’m glad that I can look back at our “extreme measures” and recognize that it was absolutely possible to travel 3,000+ miles and not get sick.
Nothing against you, Arkansas, but this state on this trip was memorable for pretty much only one reason: my inability to successfully drive the truck out of a gas station. With just one day of driving under my belt, I did not realize that I would always have to pull in on the left with enough room to swing out once finished, and I had not yet learned how to maneuver my long tail.
Stopping for gas was, each time, an experiment in strategy, high stakes, and near-crippling anxiety. Towing a car behind the truck meant that my entire vehicle was approximately 40 feet long, and I had to learn incredibly fast just what that means when you pull into a gas station crowded with other vehicles. Positioning isn’t just about making sure you’re not impeding on others’ space (which was enough to make me want to give up entirely, lest I inconvenience anyone else); it can be a matter of whether you get out of there or you’re just…stuck.
At this particular station, I misjudged the angle of the trailer and no matter how much I inched forward and inched back, it became clear that I was getting more and more locked in. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to get out of this; the U-Haul place had hooked up the car in the first place, and I didn’t know if I could unhook and rehook it. Other people filling up started staring. Someone across the way shouted advice; no dice. More sympathetic looks. I was making a scene and knew that people were wondering what a little girl like me could possibly be doing driving such a big truck. I was glad I was pulling a 20-year-old Honda Accord and not a nicer car. You know, just in case I was going to have to abandon it at a gas pump in Arkansas.
Finally, after plenty of embarrassment, a young man walked over and offered to help. I do not mean this offensively when I say that he looked like he’d just stepped off his tractor. I trusted him. Letting him into the cab, touching the steering wheel, good grief, what was I doing?! In that moment, I was grateful that he was going to give it a try, because at this rate, I was going to grow old and waste away in the parking lot of a gas station in rural Arkansas, Covid be damned.
The nice man freed me from the confines of the gas pump. He was my true hero. He wouldn’t take any money for helping, but I thanked him profusely. After I wiped off the steering wheel with my little Lysol wipe and rolled the windows all the way down, we were on our way again.
After that point, I refused to get gas at any gas station smaller than a truck stop. Which sometimes meant driving and circling and waiting for just the right moment, or stopping at a station, only to find it so crowded it would have been impossible to fill up, and move on to the next one. It was not worth the stress of an incident like this happening again.
There’s something truly special about seeing America from the road. Dave Grohl writes, “To really see America, you need to drive it mile by mile,” and that guy knows what he’s talking about. Even though back roads and a slower pace yield more of a personal Americana experience, just watching the land glide by from the top of that cab was a delight. When I could relax–and there were some moments of that–I just enjoyed watching the landscape move and change. It took me back to seventeen years ago, driving this same interstate with my mom, the first time I’d traveled this far west by road.
Along with the changes in the land, you can feel yourself changing, too. In these visceral moments, it’s not hard to identify with how some immigrants felt, migrating in this direction in search of a new start. Maybe it wasn’t so different from what I was searching for; not quite so desperate, and my hardships along the way not even remotely close to theirs, but maybe also the same kind of hopeful anticipation that I was now feeling.
The rest area in Oklahoma had picnic tables under faux teepees, both a charming and stark reminder of people who have experienced a very different life than I. I couldn’t not imagine the journey of the Trail of Tears, their journey originating very close to where ours had also begun, walking all the way here. Not like me, in a bulky truck holding all our possessions, but on foot. It is still striking to me how anyone at all survived that journey. My own struggles seem absurd in comparison.
So I was moving forward, moving West, again, while at the same time I was time-traveling backwards, to when my mom was alive and was with me on this very same road, this very same time of year, hurtling towards a future where we would be more physically separated than we had ever been, and nothing–for worse and for better–would ever be the same.
We’d gotten in late to Oklahoma City the night before, and it seemed like everyone was out on the town that night. The hotel by the highway was surprisingly hopping, despite it being nearly midnight (in the way that a hotel by the highway can), and we skipped dinner. I’d had some kind of lunchable thing from a truck stop in the blackness of the cab while climbing up dark mountains, and took another shower before collapsing into bed.
Day Three: Texas and New Mexico.
The next morning we made our way into Texas. I was excited to reach this leg of the journey–north Texas–because it was where the landscape would really tell us that we were heading West. Gone were the grasslands of Arkansas and Oklahoma, and into the dust and the wind turbines, and the feeling that there is still so much more land left for people to claim as their own–a fable that we continue to tell ourselves. More time-traveling.
On my list of “scariest sections of interstate to drive in a giant truck”, coming down the mountain into Albuquerque ranks #3 (not to worry–the top two are yet to come!). According to a topographic map, you drop 2,000 feet over the course of about 15 miles. The “runaway truck” pull offs are abundant, if you can manage to roll yourself into one. The road is curvy and so, so fast. I stayed snug to in the right hand lane as much as possible, but that meant braking just enough so as not to ram the tractor trailer in front of me who might be going even slower.
As the road began to dip and twist, I immediately had a flashback to driving this with my mom. Now, alone in the cab and flying (or trying my best not to) on top of the road, I remembered, a memory I had forgotten and buried. An endless slide, with mountains of tumbled rocks all around you, under you, and a whole lot of traffic. It was early evening and just dusk, so we were closer to resting than we had been the previous two nights, but all I wanted was for the road to level out and to coast into the hotel. The journey felt like it took an eternity. I relied on anxiously and determinedly chewing on candy to keep me focused but not freaked out.
Once we reached our hotel near the UNM campus, that evening’s itinerary: mediocre pizza in the room, shower, and bed.
At this point in the trip, upon climbing into a new bed each night after driving for hours and hours each day, I felt like I'd been on an enormous ship, lulled (or jerked, actually) rhythmically by the waves, or the Sirens, or some other force outside of my own body. It was a kind of torture, this feeling, but there were elements of pleasure to it, as well. The closest thing I’ve experienced to such a journey is backpacking, another form of “enjoyable” torture. The routine, the daily progress, the specificity of packing, the all-out bodily exhaustion, and the surprising ability to regenerate some energy after resting for a meager 6-8 hours, just to do it all again the next day–it felt just the same.
Day Four: Arizona!
I woke up the next morning still physically exhausted but mentally pumped for the drive into Flagstaff, hoping that it would feel like a breeze (a mere 330 miles) and a relief to this first half of our travels to Washington. I know that Grandma was feeling a little lighter on her toes, having disembarked from Flagstaff two weeks prior by plane, decked out in two masks and a face shield, knowing she would get to sleep in her own bed that night. But 330 miles is still at least a five-and-a-half hour drive with no stops, so as we left that morning, I knew it would still be a good seven hours until we could rest.
We continued to climb in elevation, and because it had been years since I’d driven this section of road, I’d forgotten how desolate the plateau of Northeastern Arizona felt. Of course, it’s dry. The road takes you through the southeastern corner of the Navajo Reservation before it dips further south. Once again, I was reminded of the inhumanity of the desert. Still, there’s beauty in the desolation, but perhaps I can only see it because I’m not scrabbling to make a life there. I can look at it and just walk away.
Up was a perfect blue spotted with white, and down was that instantly recognizable, Southwest sunset-peachy-colored dirt. It had been like this in New Mexico, too, of course, but it was starting to feel different, a slow climb (thankfully) into the high desert of the Mogollon Rim and the largest contiguous Ponderosa Pine forest in the world. I was getting giddier and giddier as we approached Flagstaff. No matter how I get there, it always feels like coming home–a different kind of home, one that I had to learn how to feel comfortable in, but when I did, I fell in love.
At the exit, it was smooth sailing, a straight shot to the house. But with a false sense of confidence because I knew the lay of the land, I got spooked and took a turn: right onto the NAU campus.
Northern Arizona University is Arizona’s third-largest public university, and the campus is situated just south of the center of town. I’d spent five years in Flagstaff–two as the Director of Faith Formation at a Lutheran church, and three as a graduate student in the NAU Master of Sustainable Communities program. Campus was familiar to me, but I still surprised myself when I veered off the main road and headed towards the Sociology building in my rumbling truck.
Immediately, I notice students on golf carts with big signs, welcoming the new Freshman class. Here I was with my ginormous truck, towing a shoddy car, driving through campus alongside 18-year-olds toting mini-fridges and futons. I was probably delirious anyway but had to laugh at their stares–Oops, did I overpack for my first semester?!?
After that brief detour, I expertly pulled back out onto Milton Road in between the Target and Campus Coffee Bean, and ten minutes later we were driving up to the front of the house. We were greeted heartily by Grandpa and Vincent the dog, and we stumbled inside. It was time for a few days of rest.
To be continued…
Reflection questions:
If you’ve ever driven cross-country, was it for a move or just for fun? What do you think some of the differences are between the two?
If you haven’t done a long road trip (or, if you have), what is your dream road trip and why? What spots are on your “can’t miss” list?
Tell me your tales of cross-country tripping in the comments; I want to hear them!
There are hundreds of recognized and unrecognized tribes and nations between Athens, Georgia and Anacortes, Washington. To learn their names and more about them, please see https://native-land.ca/. To learn more about the Trail of Tears, please see Trail of Tears National Historic Trail, and for kids, this beautiful book by Cherokee author Traci Sorell: We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga.
Image: The Truck, the car, the sky, the clouds, somewhere off I-40 on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.