Forks in Our Road: Oregon Trail: Moving Day

Friday, September 15, 2017

Oregon Trail: Moving Day

And so after years of planning and talking about it, Friday September 15, 2017, our long awaited moving day, dawned for us at 6:30am. The night before, we went to a late movie at Alamo for dinner and beers as there was absolutely nothing for us at the house, no food, no TV, and no place comfortable to hang out other than the bed.

We both showered, packed our very last minute belongings, and were ready for the moving truck which was supposed to be at the house at 7:30. Compounding our sense of ill ease, of being stuck in a place that we could no longer call home and that was no longer a comfortable space, the truck did not arrive until 9:15am, there being some kind of problem with the inbound semi. A smaller local truck showed up rather than the long-distance truck we had been expecting.

After showers, I started putting the final things in the Jeep, the bulk of it having been loaded the evening before. While I was loading the Jeep, Grace got in and would not leave. She was so afraid of being left behind. She's known something has been up for weeks, with everything we owned getting sold or going into boxes, and us acting in ways that we don't normally.

We needed to pick up some food for the road, get some coffee, get gas, get some ice, so rather than go stir crazy waiting for the truck, Ann took the Jeep out on all those errands.

Once she was back with coffee, I had already showed the crew everything that needed to be moved and they were doing their thing, very quickly, because we had spent months getting everything ready to load onto the truck. When Ann got back, we did a bit of paperwork with the moving company and then by 10am, we were ready to leave.

And yet we really couldn't. Our first stop was to be in Morgantown WV to see Carter, and because he didn't get out of class until 3:10, it made no sense to leave before noon for the three-hour drive to see him. We and the movers both left at 12:15. And still we got to Carter's dorm a couple minutes before he did.

Traveling with the dogs is always interesting and setting out on an 11-day journey with them was a bit unsettling. Grace loves to ride in the car, and like many car-loving hounds, she goes insane to hang her head out the window and smell everything that is to be smelled. Charlie, on the other hand, starts shaking uncontrollably at the mere thought of getting in the car and will ultimately vomit all over the car within minutes of getting rolling.

We gave Charlie a half of a tranquilizer to stone him out and help him get through the anxiety of the trip. Fortunately over the course of about four days, he came to find his nest in the Jeep as his safe place and while he was never happy about traveling, he at least tolerated it and we took him off the tranquilizer. It would often be the case that he wouldn't get out of the Jeep for pee breaks, but at least, we had no vomiting on the entire trip!

To give Charlie a break, we set out on main, less curvy roads. So rather than head west on US 50 from Winchester, we took US 522 through Berkeley Springs up to I-68 in Hancock MD and thence to Morgantown WV.

Color was the word of day. South of Berkeley Springs, the roadsides were covered in vast stands of golden orange-yellow Tickseed Sunflowers. North of Berkeley Springs, Tall Boneset lined the roads. My favorite roadside tableau was one in western Maryland comprising tall lavender asters, white boneset, burgundy staghorn sumac, and yellow goldenrod. I was surprised on September 15th to see fall color from Polish Mountain in Maryland and points west at over 2000 feet. The color that stood out for me aside from the roadside flowers was the burgundy Virginia creeper on trees and sugar maples flaming orange red.

Our stay with Carter in Morgantown was necessarily short, our needing to get on towards Akron for the night and his needing to get to what college kids do on a Friday night. We left Morgantown with the notion that we'd stay off the interstates but after making 30 miles an hour on US 250 in West Virginia and Pennsylvania, the incessant curves tormenting Charlie and even making Ann a bit queasy, we opted for faster roads. When we started, we had no idea how big this country is and that backroads, while a wonderful idea, would not get us to Oregon on our 11-day schedule.

One sight that we will probably always remember was somewhere on winding country US 250, a dark grey creature skittered across the road in front of us, a vole or a mole. It looked like a miniature hovercraft going across the asphalt, so swiftly skittering that we couldn't see its legs at all, scurrying like a drop of water dancing across a screaming hot pan.

From Morgantown we headed to Macedonia OH, between Akron and Cleveland because it is about five minutes from Cuyahoga Falls National Park that we wanted to see Saturday morning. We got in late, after dark, walked the dogs, grabbed a quick dinner from our cooler, and hit the sack in preparation for an early Saturday morning.

Friday was our first day on the road and first night in a hotel with the dogs. It was strange at first but after a couple of days, we and the dogs both got into a rhythm.