Untitled road trip notes

I keep trying to give these a title and nothing sticks, so they're staying untitled. These are copied out of a spiral notebook that spent five days on the dashboard of Jules's Corolla, so some of it's in her handwriting and some of it is coffee.

Context, quickly: Jules's cousin was getting married in Salt Lake. We could've flown. We could've taken I-80 like normal people. Instead Jules read somewhere that a stretch of Route 50 across Nevada got called the Loneliest Road in America by Life magazine back in 1986, and she said, "We have to," with a look on her face that meant the decision had already been made.

Day 1. Leaving Sacramento. Odometer 112,408.

Left at 6:10 a.m. Planned to leave at 5. Jules couldn't find her sunglasses. They were on her head.

Snacks: two bags of pretzels, a jar of peanut butter, no spoon. We'll figure it out.

Jules's rule: whoever is driving picks the music. Whoever is not driving is not allowed to sigh about it.

I sighed about it within 20 minutes.

Day 1, later. Carson City.

Picked up the survival guide at a visitor center. It has a passport in it and you get it stamped in towns along the way. If you collect enough stamps and mail it in, the state sends you a certificate saying you survived the road. Signed by the governor. Jules said she's framing it. She said this before we'd driven one mile of the actual road.

Woman at the desk: "You girls have enough gas?" Me: "Yes." Her: "Get more."

We got more.

Day 1, evening. Somewhere past Fallon.

Okay. I get it now.

Nothing out here. Not "not much." Nothing. Hills the color of a paper bag, a road like someone drew it with a ruler, and the sky taking up way more room than a sky should. We went 40 minutes without seeing another car and then a pickup came the other way and the driver lifted two fingers off the wheel, like a wave but lazy. Jules waved back with her whole arm. He did not look impressed.

Dinner was peanut butter scooped with pretzels. It works, honestly.

Day 2. Austin. Odometer 112,697.

Slept in a motel where the TV got one channel and it was all weather. Jules watched it for an hour. "Just to see," she said. It was sunny. It was going to stay sunny.

Austin is on a hill and it looks like everyone who lives there is just about to leave or just got back. Got our stamp. The guy who stamped it asked where we were headed and when we said Salt Lake he said, "Long way to go for a wedding," and Jules said, "It's not about the wedding," and he nodded like that was the most normal answer in the world.

Things overheard in a diner in Austin: - "He's not lost, he's just not where he said he'd be." - "That's a good dog. Dumb, but good." - "I don't trust a man who orders his eggs poached."

Day 2, afternoon. Between Austin and Eureka.

Jules is asleep. I'm driving and I'm going to try to describe the quiet, because I know I'll forget it.

It's not silent. There's the engine and the tires and a ticking somewhere in the dashboard that we've decided to ignore. But under that there's this big flat nothing, like the whole state is holding still. I turned the music off to hear it better. Kept it off for about an hour. Didn't think about my job once, which hasn't happened since roughly March.

Saw a hawk sitting on a fence post. Just sitting there. It watched me the entire time I drove past it, turning its head, like it was doing a headcount.

Day 3. Eureka.

Stamp. Coffee. More gas, because of the woman in Carson City, whose voice now lives in my head.

Jules bought a postcard and wrote it to herself. I asked what she wrote. She said, "None of your business," and then, five minutes later, unprompted, "I just told myself I'm doing fine." Then she turned the music up very loud so we didn't have to talk about it.

We didn't talk about it. That felt right.

Day 3, night. Ely.

Biggest town in a while. There was traffic, if you can call three cars traffic. It felt like the city after everything else.

Jules called her mom from the motel parking lot. I sat on the hood of the car with a gas station hot dog and looked up, and I'm not exaggerating, I have never seen that many stars in my life. Not even close. It looked like somebody had spilled sugar on a black table. I tried to take a picture. It came out completely black. Some things you just have to look at.

Day 4. Baker. Last stamp in Nevada. Odometer 113,186.

We have all our stamps. Jules was weirdly emotional about this. She held the passport up like a trophy and made me take her picture next to the Corolla, which has a new rattle we've decided to also ignore.

Mailbox is right there. She mailed it. The certificate is going to take weeks. She doesn't care. "It's about knowing it's coming," she said.

Crossed into Utah around noon. Sign. Different color road. That was it. The loneliest part was over and I was a little sad about it, which I did not expect.

Day 5. Salt Lake City.

Wedding was nice. Bride cried, groom cried more, there was a chocolate fountain and a kid who fell asleep under a table and nobody moved him.

At the reception somebody asked how the drive was and Jules said, "Lonely," and smiled, and the person looked confused and said, "Oh, I'm sorry," and Jules said, "No, it was great," and walked off to get cake.

Notes to self, written on the back page

Next time bring a spoon.

Next time leave at 5 for real.

Next time there will be a next time.

I'm posting these mostly because Jules dared me to, and partly because I've been reading other people's trip notes in the Wander section and they made me want to go somewhere. If you've ever written down a trip in a notebook like this, put it up on Vocal Media. I'll read it.