My daughter, who lived in Houston, found a new job in
Seattle. To bridge the 2,500 miles between the cities, we made a road
trip. Just Maggie, her dog, Alfred,
her two cats, two suitcases, kitchen supplies, an air mattress and me. Google
Maps™
and AAA agreed on the routing, mostly on Interstates-- Amarillo, Denver, Boise
and Seattle, a three-day trip.
Day 1. We got away from Houston at 8:30AM, driving IH45
north toward Dallas. It’s amazing
how well a freeway works when you go against the rush hour flow. But it wasn’t
long before strange things started happening with our car. Slowly, but surely, it dropped speed
until some sixty miles out of Houston full throttle yielded only 45 miles per hour. By this time an ominous warning icon, a
red exclamation point framed in a redder triangle, had appeared on the console.
We limped into a garage cum tire store in Huntsville, home of the Texas Prison
Museum. But upon learning that our
car was a hybrid, the mechanic refused even to open the hood. It was time to throw in the towel and
call AAA’s tow service to the nearest Toyota dealership, thirty miles away.
Sitting with a dog at your feet is a great conversation
starter. One woman, recently
arrived in Huntsville, recommended a local veterinarian (more on this later);
another asked if Alfred’s Thunder Shirt™ calmed him. In the course of our exchange I shared our far-away
destination and how the trip was beginning inauspiciously. About this time our tow arrived. Maggie and I climbed into the cab with
the driver, and just as we were pulling away from the garage, I heard a tapping
on the window. It was the Thunder
Shirt lady, pressing money into my hand; “I know it isn’t much,” she said. I must have looked like Tom Joad,
fleeing the dust bowl.
We spent the night at a La Quinta, which maintains the most permissive
pet policy among the regular motel chains. But Alfred nearly spoiled our best-laid plans. Seems that he barks at strange sounds,
so often that other guests complained to the management. Fearing our eviction, Maggie slept on
the floor with the dog and stifled his barks; I slept with the cats, very
restful.
Day 2 began with some good news from the Toyota dealership. Our car trouble resulted from the
installation of tires of two different sizes on the front and back wheels which
confused the computer that manages the hybrid transmission. We got back on the
road with four new tires but not before making a trip to the recommended vet
for a dog sedative. Driving
through Fort Worth on US Highway 287, we came to a vestigial segment of US
64. That road goes through my
hometown in Arkansas and appears sporadically from North Carolina to Arizona. We reached Amarillo and, aided by the
sedative, spent a quiet night at La Quinta.
Day 3. The grain and cattle country west of Amarillo is beautiful. At one point Maggie observed that “you
could make a western movie out here.” We crossed the New Mexico state line and
into Mountain time a little before noon, and then disaster struck.
I was driving on a deserted stretch of four-lane highway; suddenly
Maggie pointed ahead and said, “Dad, there’s an animal in the road,” and,
indeed there was, a prong horned antelope. I braked hard; the animal looked up, saw danger approaching,
ran toward safety and then back into our path. Colliding with our front bumper, the poor antelope flew into
the ditch. The only wild animal we
saw on the whole trip, and I had to run into it. Although the bumper and hood
were crumpled into the shape of a cleft palate, the car was driveable and not leaking fluids. So we drove into Colorado and stopped
at the Toyota dealership in Trinidad.
Examining the car hoisted on a rack, a Toyota mechanic assured us that
the car’s internal organs were all intact and that it should get us to Seattle.
He was right with a qualification; the air conditioner expired soon after we
left Trinidad. We reached
Castle Rock, CO, and pulled into the La Quinta (of course), hot and wind blown
from the afternoon drive.
In the middle of Night 3, after one of Alfred’s barking fits, I
decided that we could go no further as we were. The next morning Maggie and I explored how to fly her and
the animals from Denver to Seattle.
It turns out that Alaska Airlines has a pet policy almost as liberal as
La Quinta. But we would need to
get a doggie-sized crate and certificates of good health for all three
animals. Day 4 included a trip to
Walmart for the crate and to a Pet Smart—who knew that they had a vet in their
building? -- for the health certificates.
We repacked the car, and everything fit, including a little space I was
reserving for the next mishap, unnecessary as it turned out.
Day 5. Delivering Maggie
and the animals to Denver International Airport was a piece of cake,
considering that we drove there on a Sunday morning and quickly located a
skycap for the luggage and pets. A
considerably lighter Prius rolled out of DIA at 11AM and into Rock Springs, WY,
that evening. I no longer had to
worry about pet policies to find a place to sleep.
Day 6 began with a long climb to the Continental Divide in Utah and a
descent into Idaho. East of Boise
three road signs warned of “Deer Migration Route,” “Extreme Fire Risk,” and
“Dust Storm Area.” I was headed toward the valley of the shadow of death. As it turned out the tires and the
antelope exhausted my quota of misadventures for the trip, but while neither
deer nor dust crossed the road, forest fires in Idaho, Oregon and Washington State,
hazed the atmosphere all the way to the Cascades.
On Day 7 Maggie and I were reunited near the SeaTac airport. The three-day drive had taken a
week. By the time I reached
Seattle, Maggie had boarded her pets, made contact with the King County Library
administration and signed a one-year lease on an apartment. No longer needed, I returned to Texas on
a four-hour flight.
