Home Is Where The Heart Is

It's official.

I'm back in Flagstaff, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Kendall and I caravaned home yesterday for the fourteen hour (exactly) drive, complete with walkie-talkies so we could converse in the car on the way. We left at 6am and stopped shortly in Lyons to get gas, coffee, and gas-station-breakfast. Past Boulder we got a little turned around and had a two mile detour, but made it to I25, followed by I70 to head towards Grand Junction: our next gas stop.

We stopped briefly at the No Name Rest Stop, my favorite rest stop I've ever been to. When I was pulling onto the exit ramp, I noticed a car with lights on the roof behind me. I radioed to 829 (we used our birthdays as our numbers, so I was 710) to ask if it was a cop or not. 829 told me the vehicle was a Wildlife Conservation car, but that it had swerved across a few lanes when we pulled off to get behind us. When I stopped and got out of the car, it was a man in a uniform with a cop badge. He told me that we couldn't be racing through the valley (we were going around 70 in a 50) and needed to slow down. That was a good scare for us and although we didn't get a ticket, we were much more careful after that because we figured he had ran our plates and called ahead for other cops to look out for us.

We managed to make it to Grand Junction before Obama and crew showed up, but both Roxanne and Lola's (Kendall's car) gas lights came on so we were relieved when we finally found a gas station. We tanked up and headed towards Moab, UT for lunch at Eddie McStiff's. At lunch, I was able to load a book on CD onto my Ipod for the last half of the drive. We stopped at a micro-brewery so I could pick up some Scorpion Tail Ale for Dad, got gas, and then hit the road towards Arizona.

With another stop in Kayenta for gas, we finally got within the last hour of Flagstaff. At this point, we were both getting antsy. After Moab, our walkies were running out of battery power so we decided to turn them on only on the hour and half hour. For that last hour, we resorted back to talking the whole time. It was weird still being in desert and seeing the mountains up ahead of us. I wanted to know where the trees were and was starting to almost have a serious panic attack because I needed to be out of the desert. Kendall joked and said that it looked like Paul Bunyon had dropped some of the Rockies on his way to lay them down. It's true though--I used to think my mountains were so magnificent and don't get me wrong, they still are, it's just strange being able to see where they start and stop on each side after the views from this summer.

I honked the horn when I finally got home and Scotty and Bekha came out to give me hugs and greet me. We brought everything from my car inside and it looked like an explosion had hit the living room. After getting a few pizzas, we headed to Ryan Carle's so I could surprise a bunch of people over there for a party who thought I wasn't getting home until tonight.

This morning, my fears were confirmed: I woke up and it all felt like a dream. I looked around my room and started to wonder if I had actually been in Colorado or not. I'm sure I was because of my pictures and I talked with Kristin and Scott earlier, but I'm just worried that everything will fade in my memory. I think that means I need to get started on my scrapbook so I can have it done before school starts!

In my exit interview at work, Barry asked me what I had learned this summer. I am going to need to think about that a little more and then will be getting close to not writing in this thing anymore. That will be just one more confirmation that the best summer of my life is coming to an end.