And away we go...

Details

Published Date

In case anyone has stumbled upon this by mistake let me explain that my name is Erika and I'm Katie's younger sister.  I accompanied her for most of the work she was doing for the project on the Gulf Coast.  I'm now driving back to Alaska, making many stops along the way.  I'm not very good with the whole blog writing thing, but I'm going to give it a shot.  The main purpose of this is so that some of the classes Katie and I worked with on the Gulf Coast have a way to follow my journey.  I promised them that I would try to limit the pictures of birds and lizards, we'll see how long that lasts.  Well, here goes nothing...

Quick background of the journey thus far.  Katie and I purchased Monkey Motion (our '94 maroon Honda Accord) in Pennsylvania right after New Years.  It has since been used to visit Washington, DC, New York City (parked outside of the city), Cincinnati, Nashville, Nelsonville (Ohio), Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

Day one of solo driving technically started when I dropped Katie off at the airport in New Orleans a little before 5 Sunday morning.  I returned to the hotel to get a few more hours of sleep before beginning the push to Central Texas.  Main thing that sticks out about this leg was that it was hot, something like 86.  But I survived. Also, Texas was much greener than I had ever imagined, which sounds ridiculous.  My mind had created a mental map in which Louisiana was completely green swamp land and Texas all brown desert.  No surprise, that is not the case.  

I find driving through most cities overwhelming, and Dallas proved no different.  Though I had two navigational errors while maneuvering through, one took me to the post office and the other to the grocery store, both stops I needed to make.  If I had found the library it would have been the trifecta of my favorite places.

By about 9 pm I finally made it to my campsite at Lake Arrowhead State Park outside of Wichita Falls.  I set up my tent via head lamp, crawled in, opened every vent I could find, and promptly fell asleep. Day one done!