WEST | CHASING THE SUN

I decided I would write updates in the car. Unfortunately, the car has no internet. Therefore, this is my life, a week late.

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So we’re on the road. 

Literally. I’m somewhere in the middle of Missouri surrounded by nothing but trees and hills and the occasional billboard advertising anything from caverns to insurance. My family of seven is galavanting off in one of those 12-passenger extended-cab vans that my dad procured two days before we left. Good thing too, or else we would have never fit everything in here. I also managed to claim a bench to myself today. Which is nice, since we probably will drive 11 hours by the time we pull over.

We’re heading out west.

Mom and Dad have been wanting to take a family trip out west for years, and they decided this was the summer to do it, since I’m going to move out next year and they don’t know how my schedule will look after that. 

We’re going to be gone for two and a half weeks. We’ll start in Phoenix, Arizona, to visit some amazing (crazy, fun, loud, pretty much second-family) friends, then bop up to the Grand Canyon for a few days, see Bryce Canyon, camp at Rocky Mountain National Park, visit Arches National Park, and go stargazing on the Great Sand Dunes. I’ve heard the sky is so clear there that the stars come out to dance in the thousands. I’m hoping it looks like Neverland spilled pixie dust and feel so close I could touch it. 

I’m pretty excited. In case you couldn’t tell. 

But you know, the adventure has already started, even though we still have 20+ hours to go. 

We passed St. Louis. It was storming, so we couldn’t sight-see. We’re going to stop back there on the way home (because really, we have to do the arch, and they have an awesome city museum. With slides by the stairs. No joke.) But you know what was really cool? Passing the arch, with the city all lit up like someone broke a glow stick over  black pavement, the clouds boiling black and gray and then there was this flash of lightning right behind the arch like the crack of a period at the end of a sentence. A flash of revelation, white-bright, and then gone. Back to scattered pinholes of light. 

It could have been a poster like the ones they sell in gift shops. I taped it up on the walls of my mind to remember it by. 

About an hour outside of St. Louis we pulled off on the side of the highway because of a hail storm. They were only about the size of the jelly beans my little sister had packed, but they sounded like baseballs. My little sister hid under her blanket, which she kindly shared with me. I feel like I now know what it feels like to hunker down in a bunker, with the dirt explosions flying over you. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but it was really, really loud.

My baby brother (ok, he’s 8. still my baby brother.) asked me, “Is everything gonna be fine?” I laughed and assured him it would. And it was amazing how he laughed then and pressed his nose up against the glass, trying to see the hail against the black asphalt. My little sister started giggling under her blanket and poked her head out, not wanting to miss it either. Amazing, how much faith they had in my words, “We’ll be fine.” I wish I had faith like that. I think Jesus smiled at us.

Little Man is an artist. :)

Some brave little cars sped by us in  the hail and rain. I wondered how they could see, considering how our windshield had looked like a blend of stars flying by in warp speed in Star Trek and the weird way your world bends when you stick your face in a waterfall. (...because...all of us have done that, right?)

To top things off, when we checked out of our hotel this morning, we were told a tornado had touched down just ten miles from us. And I slept that whole time? I mean, ten miles isn’t really that far. I wonder if I would have been that person who was asleep when it picked up their bed. I doubt I’d wake up in Oz. Not everyone’s as lucky as Dorothy. Instead, I had breakfast with my momma and this sweet Mississippi lady who needed a seat. We sat over waffles and biscuits and gravy and talked about school and kids and she told me to stick with what I love and always be friends with Mom. Which I was already planning on, but I liked her for saying it. I love talking to strangers like they’re already friends. Her name was Vahn, and she said she’d keep us in her prayers. 

Also, I drank coffee this morning. Which is really weird for me. 

So that’s what’s happening these days. That, and a lot of funny and quotable conversations with my family, a Meet the Robinsons party on the front two benches of the van, an Arby’s run in which I described a movie characters life and the family guessed who it was, (which is incredibly entertaining in case you were wondering), and jamming out to blaring music until Dad makes us turn it down. Our family always seems to have a trip theme song that gets stuck in your head whether you want it to or not. 

More to come later if internet presents itself, but for now, we’re just chasing the sun.