Day Seven:

9:40- Kellie starts driving. We leave Vegas. 7-11 breakfast. I remember I had gotten a big drink of some sort and put it down to get a donut and a guy knocked it over and it was a big scene. Haha.



10:45- Lake Mead, NV
10:52- Arizona!





1:03- It’s FUCKING RAINING!! (This was particularly shocking considering we were in the desert.)


Weird rest stop decor. I remember I was on the phone with my mother, looking at this and going, “WTF?”

1:36- Duddy’s shift.
3:27- Grand Canyon!







4:00- McDonald’s for lunch. Now headed for Maggie’s brother’s house.

5:37- Maggie’s shift.

Day Six:
8:00- Kellie starts driving. We’re 3 hours late… Shrubbery. (We started using “shrubbery” as a negative term or exclamation. Sort of like “Shit”.)
11:35- Duddy starts shift.
11:43- Toilet paper all over highway. Car successfully TPed.



2:45- Maggie starts driving. We had gotten lost trying to go to the Sequoias and we also woke up late this morning, so we are ending up very behind today.

For some strange reason, no logs were kept for the rest of this day. Therefore, I’ve pieced together what we did that day from the photos that I took and the few tweets that my phone would finally let me send.

5:26- NEVER coming back to the Mojave Desert. Yuck.





8:39- VEGAS!!



9:05- Free beer for each of us at the buffet in our hotel! We’re in heaven! Yummmmm. Fooooooood.



9:58- We’re in Vegas and instead of getting drunk and gambling, we’re going to see the new Harry Potter flick. …I never claimed to be cool.

Due to being behind schedule, we decided to drive through the night. You might notice that, in the following photos, we are wearing our clothes from the day before and look like hell. We were gross, we were tired, and we were cramped. This day was all about making it to The Nugget in Reno, NV.

Day Four:
2:45- We stopped at a rest stop to sleep in the car for a couple of hours.

A highway in Wyoming.

5:29- Maggie’s shift.



5:38- “Oh, that’s why it smells like Jersey- the damn oil refineries.”- Maggie. It kinda looked like a little slice of Newark surrounded by green. Aww. Home.

Driving away from the sunrise.

5:42- Passed a pretty nice looking golf course. We only saw one hole, but it seemed like a cool place to golf.

I needed to fuel up to remain an enthusiastic navigator for Maggie.

7:20- We realize we might have passed through the Rockies in the pitch black last night. Fuck.
7:40- Oh, wait. Nevermind. There they are.

Snow-capped Rockies in the distance.

8:07- Snow-capped mountains!!
8:41- UTAH! Wyoming can suck it.



9:38- Fed prarie-dog squirrels at a rest stop. Best rest stop ever.

We don’t know what these were exactly.

We like to call them prairie-dog-squirrels. We assumed their diet consists mostly of animal crackers.

The view from the top of a hill at this beautiful rest stop in Utah.

10:14- Kellie starts driving.
11:25- We see the Great Salt Lake and take pictures. (My camera died as we parked. Ballz.)

The Great Salt Lake.

11:39- NEVADA!!
12:18- Now on Pacific Time. Duddy starts her shift.



12:49- WWBD? (What Would Buffalos Do?) Buffalo were a recurring theme throughout the trip. As they should be. They are majestic creatures. We called our trip Buffalo Safari 2009. Laura and I were Team Buffalo. Maggie and Duddy were Team Bison. We flipped the fuck out when we finally saw buffalo. It was a big thing. So I doodled a tattoo design for us. Unfortunately, none of us would ever seriously put that on our bodies. Too bad.



1:00- Plan for arrival at the Nugget: Settle, Swim, Sun, Shower, Supper, Surf (the internet), Socialize (with each other?), Sleep. We cut out the swim and sun thing due to tiredness and grumpiness.
2:24- Duddy gets pulled over 87 in 75. NO TICKET! :D
4:00- Maggie starts her shift.
6:32- Sparks, NV! THE NUGGET!! (We were exhausted from being in the car for about a day and a half. “Nugget” is a word we use often, as in “Oh my nuggets!”. We booked this place before anything else simply because the name includes that word. Keep that in mind as I make funny noises and go a little loopy.)

Day Three:
On this day, we woke up in our cabin and finally got to take in our surroundings. If you remember from the last post, we arrived at the Elk Haven Horse Camp around 2/3am in a storm. It had been so dark we couldn’t see that the view was pretty sweet:


We got dressed and re-packed the car. Duddy and I said hello to our new friend Chester, who was staying right behind our cabin.


Needless to say, waking up to such a large friend peeking in the window was a bit of a shock. We checked out the cute shop by the office, climbed back into Maggie’s car, and made our way backwards to see the things we missed due to our loss of time the previous day…


A tunnel on the way down the mountain. Imagine seeing this for the first time in the darkness of a thunder/lightning storm. Scary stuff.

10:32- On I-90E on our way back to see the Badlands. We got a glimpse of Mt. Rushmore after driving down the mountain that Elk Haven is on. (That glimpse of a mountain between the trees is Mount Rushmore.) Plans to go back to Keystone, SD have been considered. Duddy’s on first shift.




Above: The awesomesweetmagnificent Bandlands.
Below: Wall Drug- a tourist trap that had billboards for a few hundred miles.






1:41- We have done the Badlands and stopped at Wall Drug. Maggie starts her shift.
2:45- Back in Keystone. Back up the mountain.

Duddy was the only one with the guts to wear her costume without the rest of us. We tore the car apart looking for my Roosevelt costume, but couldn’t find it. Somewhere in Custer State Park later in the day, it turned out that it was in the one place we didn’t look- my laptop case.


4:23- Just left Mt. Rushmore. I forgot my costume, so we’ll have to do it next time.
5:10- We might have taken a wrong turn out of Mt. Rushmore. We are now back on track! TO WYOMING!
5:39- Wild donkies! (Also known as burros, but whatever.) Duddy fed them animal crackers.
5:44- Deer & baby. (This was all that was written. I don’t remember what it means.)
5:54- Obtained our license at Custer State Park.
6:28- BUFFALLO!!!! (This was underlined four times. We were really excited about this.)
6:39- Literally less than 5 ft. from buffalos.
7:50- I found my Roosevelt costume in my laptop bag. I am so pissed I forgot I put it there. My driving shift begins.
11:25- I drove about 250-300 miles to the NEAREST fast food place- Burger King. Turns out they aren’t open after 11. And the Arby’s across the street wasn’t open, either. Damnit, Wheatland! After asking a couple girls behind Arby’s where we could get some eats (“Maverik is awesome. They have hot dogs.”), we went off to find Maverik, a gas station shop that turned out to be Wyoming’s answer to Wawa, but better. (They had frozen yogurt machines! :D) Trying to navigate an apparent no-left-turn intersection caused me to turn right on red, which I wasn’t sure was cool in Wyoming, and turn around in the tiny lot of a Century 21 office. A cop promptly pulled up behind us and I said something loud (with the windows open) like “No fucking way” or “You gotta be kidding me”, which, in retrospect, might have been why the cop was smiling (sort of leering) at me when he asked “Are you lost?” We told him that we were going to the Maverik across the street and he went on his way. About 25 seconds later, we were in the Maverik parking lot and I was alternatively hysterically laughing and sobbing. (Photo is me in the parking lot of the Maverik.) My second strange little breakdown in 2 days. just this one was worse. (The first one was while I drove up the mountain the night of Day 2.) I still don’t know what the fuck that was. Duddy took over the driving. As Duddy was backing out of the parking space, she ran over my laptop. We didn’t know at the time how bad this was at the time because the battery was already dead and I couldn’t see anything physically wrong with it. Turns out my screen was fucked, but as long as I didn’t need to see what I was doing, the laptop worked just fine.

Day Two:
7:30- Leave our motel an hour behind schedule.
7:48- Over the Mississippi and into Minnesota! Progress!
8:48- “All the Mexicans here are cows.” - Duddy. We are weirded out and slightly relieved by the lack of ethnicity.
8:56- Wind farms are creepy.
11:32- Kellie starts her first driving shift.
11:49- “We have ice ice baby”, sign at Minnesota gas station we stopped at.
12:08- “ONLY 355 more miles to WALL DRUG”, Minnesota billboard.
12:38- “Your butt was warm last night, it was nice.”- Maggie to Duddy
12:40- South Dakota! Yay!
12;47- “Aw Shucks, just stop at the Corn Palace”- South Dakota billboard.
1:57- “201 miles to WALL DRUG” billboard.
3:54- Done with lunch. Duddy starts her shift. (The photo is where we stopped for lunch on the Missouri River.)
7:50- After doubling back over 3 hours because Laura left her wallet at a gas station, we are on our way west once more. (After Duddy’s 3-hour shift, we stopped for gas. Laura had the group bank card for group purchases such as gas and hotel rooms. She realized her wallet was missing. We tore the car apart looking for it and eventually found the receipt for the last gas station we were at.
The photo is Laura pumping gas. Right after the photo was taken, she got gas on her hands and put her wallet down on the back of the car…and left it there. We found the phone number for that station on our receipt and asked them if they found a red wallet. They had. The only thing we could do at that point was double back three hours and push back our plans to see the Badlands to the next day, even though we would have to pass them to get to our accommodations for the night- the Elk Haven Horse camp. After many frustrated, quiet hours of extra driving, we made it to Keystone, SD and slowly made our way up the mountain to the camp. It was dark, it was raining, there was lots of creepy thunder and lightening, the excessive tight turns, single-lane rock tunnels, and pig-tail bridges were insane, and the drive up was intense, to say the least.



Day 3’s log will have photos from the mountain during the day, which is actually very pretty and not creepy at all. And you can see Mount Rushmore in the distance on some of the turns!

I started this on my laptop in the car pretty much as soon as we left my apartment on Day One. I would open it up and type up the little things that were fun and exciting. This was partially for a cool blog entry, partially because I didn’t want to Twitter everything (which would have been impossible a lot of the time considering cell phone reception was hard to come by), and partially because I wanted a step-by-step log to remind myself of the fun little things that happened when I look back on the trip in the years to come. Once my laptop became sickly and the screen bled to death (we ran over it with the car), I kept a written log just like this one in a notebook and on my phone. I’ve typed it up and added in my tweets and here it is.



I’ll be posting one day at a time. I had it all together, but it turned out to be much longer than I anticipated.

I didn’t take any pictures on day one for some reason, so the one I have here is stolen from Maggie’s facebook.

Day One:
3:25- Laura and I just packed the car. We had a skunk friend gallavanting around the parking lot while we did it. :O
4:23- Everybody fell asleep. So now it’s just me sitting here bored and waiting to wake them up. I just painted my nails. :D
5:15- We leave my apartment. Maggie loses the hot-potato game and drives first.
5:30- After grabbing Dunkin Donuts from some SUPER Indian drive-thru people which we barely understood, we actually get on the road.
6:15- I shove as many cheeseballs as possible into my mouth. Laura wins the bet with 14.
6:23- “Now I can’t think of one good reason to go to Wisconsin.” “How about it takes you to South Dakota?” “…YES.” Currently: still in PA.
7:12- I am the first to realize a bathroom break is pending.
7:35- I couldn’t hold it anymore. Thank you, Blue Mountain Service Plaza.
7:55- I showed Laura how to pump gas. She is the trip bitch ‘cause she still can’t drive.
8:11- We are definitely in mountain country. We have gone through three tunnels in the last 15 minutes.
8:12- “Look at that one! It’s really pointy!” - Laura
8:18- Duddy’s pink crayon has broken. “I will prevail. The crayon will not best me.”
8:23- I have to poop again.
8:40- Kellie starts to drive; Laura takes over scribe duties.
8:48- Saw a dead deer in the back of a truck.
9:08- We passed our first cop speeding and didn’t get pulled over. Hooray!
9:11- Laura eats her first cheese stick, one of many. It’s kickass.
9:33- We saw a town. Civilization!
10:59- “Pittsburgh can suck it!” - Kellie flips the bird.
11:00- Ohio Line 12 miles.
11:09- OHIO!!! We made it!
11:47- Lunch time!
12:30- Back on the road. Duddy’s turn driving. I promptly fall asleep.
3:10- Woke up just in time to witness the car passing into Indiana!
4:05- Maggie’s second shift begins.
4:38- Laura admits to pooping in a public bathroom for the first time.
4:48- Illinois! So far we’ve seen about 30 billboards for Krazy Kaplan’s Fireworks and a bunch for strip clubs and porn websites.
4:51- Maggie: “Who are these people?!” Kellie: “Chicago drivers.” Maggie: “Filth. Absolute filth.”
5:33- Kellie starts her second driving shift.
6:00- Passed the Jonas Brothers at the Allstate Arena in Chicago. Kellie had a tween moment.
7:28- WISCONSIN!!!!!
7:35- Made a slight mistake getting off the highway randomly to switch drivers. From now on we stop at rest stops, but it was fun doing 1/2 of a Chinese fire drill. Duddy starts her second shift.
10:53- We are strewn about our motel room watching Sex and the City at the Best Nights Inn in Sparta, WI and scarfing down Pizza Hut. Good night.

My last post was a while ago, huh? Well, that album is indeed amazing and I’ve been listening to it pretty much daily. So, yeah. Full circle.

I’ll post my road trip blog eventually. I just never feel like sitting and typing it up. I hardly pick up my laptop when I’m home anymore. Even as I type this entry I’m simply bored at work. Tuesday mornings aren’t really that busy, as I’m sure you can imagine.

But, AH! I’ve forgotten. I never even blogged about this job before! So let’s just sum this bitch up and move on:

1. After we returned from the road trip, I packed up and moved back to Jersey.
2. During/after all that, I was interviewing and crap to be Duddy’s co at the Journeys Kidz store in the Woodbridge mall (my current blogging location).
3. Got the job, started in late August. But, alas, I will not be staying here. I’m simply in training to get my own store. The Kidz store in Monmouth.
4. This promotion might be happening at the end of this week. That’s scary/exciting.

Now I have to put this on pause. The AT&T guy is here to fix the store’s DSL.

I don’t have any more time to do this today. …That’s a lie. I do. I just don’t feel like getting into anything right now.

Tah for now.