Homeward Bound

11/24 - 11/27/2024

I didn’t waste a lot of time the morning of November 24, the day I would officially begin driving home. I had nearly 1,500 miles to travel before Thanksgiving and while I wasn’t planning on driving more than 6.5 hours a day, I wasn’t very interested in dilly-dallying up the Midwest.

After showering at Planet Fitness, I hopped in my van, put on Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkel, and started heading North under the New Mexico sun. I had been hooked on the album Parsely, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme back in late September and early October. I had this song in particular on repeat as I traveled through the remote hills of Wheeler County, Oregon looking for the Painted Hills and missing Kilen and the lake. It felt right to listen to it as I gave a tearful good-bye to the mountains.

Mourning the loss of mountains felt funny to me since they had given me so much anxiety at the beginning of my trip in Glacier National Park, in the Cache National Forest in Utah, and many other places throughout my trip. But they really are so beautiful and I watched them intently as I drove, not wanting to miss the moment when they faded away behind me in the way they slowly emerge into view when driving towards them on miles and miles of flat ground. But it was strange; I called Kilen and asked if he wanted to hang out, and that I was on my way over right now. We were laughing and chatting and before I knew it, it’s like mountains were never even on my horizon—they just vanished. When I realized this, I thought to myself that my trip was now officially over.

I drove through the Northwest corner of Texas and stopped at 3 separate places in search of a magnet for my mom, as I always get her one whenever I go to a new state. Every time I stepped out of the car I was overwhelmed by the scent of cow manure. This was the first time in my life I’ve been bothered by this smell, but it was strong—I swear I was practically submerged in it. I debated adding a couple more hundred miles home by swinging through Amarillo solely because I thought it would be fun to drive there while listening to Amarillo by Morning by George Strait. I had done the same thing with Ketchum, Idaho, however, Idaho was a lot more beautiful than this sliver of Texas. Kilen made me a country playlist while I was in Wyoming, and I had been obsessed with that country classic since listening to it for the first time on my way to Cody. I decided that listening to it on repeat while traversing the Wild West and then hearing murmurings of the song live while sitting outside of an outdoor stadium where Strait was playing in Salt Lake City my second night there was better than going out of my way on my homestretch through air that was thick was cow manure.

I stopped for the night in Guymon, a small town just across the border in the Oklahoma panhandle. I made dinner in a park that was surrounded by homes built in the 80s and tall, pretty Oak trees. The park felt like a haven within the wide open plains of Oklahoma. I was beginning to realize that the Midwest is as flat as everyone says it is, and I was once again grateful for having grown up in the part of it that is filled with lakes and forests. Despite having been there only a few hours ago, New Mexico already felt so far away.

The next day I wasted less time in the morning than I did on my first day driving home. After the short trek through the panhandle, I drove all the way through Kansas to be the only car parked overnight in a Cracker Barrel lot. It was a cold night, but not as cold as it had been when I slept outside of the Grand Canyon, and I stayed just as warm. Driving through the plains is its own kind of intense—not as scary as mountains, for sure, but not necessarily easy either. The highways that go on forever are windy due to the openness and the infinite amount of semis driving alongside you, in front of you, behind you, passing you. Oftentimes it’s just hilly enough so that you can’t set your cruise for very long. That night in my travel journal, I wrote, “I miss the ocean. I would hate to live here.”

I was supposed to make it to Faribault on my third day of driving, but after making more stops than usual to rest and the sheer exhaustion of doing nothing but driving for the last couple of days—and also the mental exhaustion of accepting the end of my new lifestyle and going back home—I stopped short in Albert Lea, Minnesota to spend my final night in a Walmart parking lot. I felt my shoulders and neck relax as I drove past the large Minnesota sign with its red calligraphy. Even though I was at the bottom of the state, I was finally home, safe, and in a most familiar place—and nothing drastic had gone wrong before I got there. Not to the point where I was out of solutions, not to the point where my Uncle Aaron would have driven out wherever I was to get me like he promised he would if I needed it, not to the point where people would say—either to my face or behind my back—that I was ill-prepared and naive. I drove 13,500 miles by myself in a minivan, had almost nothing but spaghetti, rice and beans with taco seasoning that tasted like sawdust, and pantry-safe packets of pulled pork, mashed potatoes, and tins of green beans for dinner for 6 months, and confirmed my love for mountains, the ocean, the Pacific Northwest, California, and everywhere else—and I did it all without even getting a flat tire.

I slept in a tiny bit the next day to avoid morning traffic in the Twin Cities. Driving up to the St. Paul skyline was welcoming and I started to feel even more at home. Then began the easiest stretch of highway in the world. I set my cruise for nearly the whole two hours up I-35, watching the landmarks I’ve used since childhood to note how close I was to home race by me. I pulled up my driveway and it almost felt like I never skipped the entirety of summer and fall, my two favorite seasons, especially in this part of the country, but I also felt a bit like an alien-version of myself standing in the snow with my shorts and tan legs.

The next two weeks of being home were as exciting as my first two weeks were on the road. Kilen came over shortly after I arrived home, and it felt like I had only been away from him for a week or so—like we had gone a much shorter time of being away from each other rather than six months. And I say 6 months because the Labor Day Weekend we spent together in Portland feels much more like a dream than it does real life. The next day was Thanksgiving, and I got a nice reunion and catch-up with my uncles as well as an incredible hot meal that I didn’t have to cook on a backpacking stove. That weekend, Kilen and I went to Dovetail to drink my favorite coffee anywhere—although Linnea’s in SLO is a close second—and play a game of Scrabble. I was greeted by surprised smiles and hugs from old co-workers and met a couple of new ones who I looked forward to getting to know eventually. I caught up with Raven, started working again, and got used to visiting Kilen in his new-to-me apartment that he had moved into days before I left last June.

Ending this blog is hard in the way that I feel like my trip is ending all over again. I feel like I’m back on that precipice of something I love ending, and not knowing what to do with myself after it does. It’s also hard in the way that I don’t know what else to say—no conclusion I type feels right. That being said, here is what I wrote verbatim in my travel journal my first night back in a proper bed in a real house:

I don’t know how to write a reflection on what I just experienced. It was everything I wanted it to be. I still can’t believe that I drove myself to the ocean. I said I was going to do something, and then I did it. I’m going to continue to do that for the rest of my life.