After completing the Montana State Fair in mid August where I walked away with 23 ribbons, we packed the car and headed out across the country. Of course I was armed with my camera and my travel bug Walter who has been with me for over 8,000 previous miles. He had a new companion, Jeramey, who began his journeys with us just this year. We stayed in various KOA Kampgrounds, taking advantage of their cabins and great hospitality. We also stayed in some motels, some good and some pretty bad. All in all, we decided that we did better in the KOA Kabins.
While in Illinois I stopped to grab some sand off of the Illinois river. While there, I also came across a photo op which had me snapping photos of a large barge navigating its way along the shallow river. During the process of catching this barge on film, I fell over a large cement block which was embedded along the bank to prevent erosion. Unfortunately for me, I went ass over tea kettle and came down on my hands, knees and on to the camera which proceeded to break. I was literally in tears for two solid days. Yes, I was able to use my husbands camera but I was not familiar as to how it worked and missed hundreds of shots trying to make it do what mine could do effortlessly. I also injured myself to the point that my poor husband got dirty looks from passerby's thinking he had beaten me or something like that. I had head to toe bruises. Two days later while walking from our KOA Kabin to the bathroom, I miss navigated the edge of the road and fell down again, injuring the other parts of my poor body that got missed the first time. I was completely in a state of frustration and disgust at myself. This was a trip that I had waited over 7 years to complete and it looked like it was going to get the best of me. However, things did start to get better.
We made our way to New York to pick up an elusive Geo-coin that we had managed to grab on several other trips. My husband had made arrangements to retrieve this coin from the current handler. We would be taking the coin to some other states that it needed. While there, I set up our route on our car GPS, who is affectionately known as "Doris The Second". "Doris The First" had a mental breakdown several years ago and was presently in lock down at our Montana residence awaiting medical intervention. Like usual, I placed several way points into the GPS to track our route. What we forgot to do however, was to not follow the directions into the cities that I had marked. We ended up deep into Midtown New York on a very dark and late night. It took over an hour of driving in circles and several PTSD panic attacks on my part before I realized that I needed to remove the way point from the GPS so she could lead us out to the interstate. Doris kept running us in circles to the center of Midtown where it's night residents were beginning to suspect that we were "not from around there". After spending 15 minutes parked in the local police stations lot, I reprogrammed sweet Doris and she led us out of one of the most notorious inner cities in the United States.
We finally made it to Delaware on 3 September 2012. We highfived each other while under the watchful eye and occasional snarl of a local watchdog at a nearby home. After we got our photos, we made our way to our first Delaware cache and the "caching in all 50 states" goal was sealed. We had plans to do more caching the next day as well as make our way to Washington DC to add that to our list. We stopped at a local motel and got a room for the night as my husband wanted to watch the completion of a series on television that we had watched the previous evening. Prior to the start of the show, we stopped at a local pizza place and order a pizza to eat while enjoying the show. We ordered our usual pizza, half mushroom and cheese and half hamburger and cheese and made arrangements to have it delivered to our room. We were flabbergasted when the food arrived. We opened the box and found an all cheese pizza and a second container of a cheese burger! My husband promptly returned the food and asked that it be remade. The manager laughed and stated that he had misunderstood us and delivered the second pizza himself in person.
After the show was over, I walked out to the car to retrieve an item that I forgot and to my dismay, Walter and Jeramey were both gone! I rushed into the motel room and asked my husband if he had seen them. He stated that he had not and we proceeded to search the car and motel room inside and out. We did not find them and concluded that the only place that he could have been left was at the geocache site we were at over 4 hours ago. I went strait into panic mode. How could I be so stupid as to leave Walter in some strange place? I imagined rabid dogs pulling his little limbs off and tearing off his sweater. My husband stated immediately, "We gotta go back and get Walter!" and so we did. We programmed the geocache back into Doris and headed out. It was 12:45 pm but we didn't care, we were on a rescue mission. Although it was only 4 miles away from the hotel, it seemed like a lifetime of driving. I prayed so hard that my folded hands hurt. As we drove up to the site, I closed my eyes tightly because I didn't want to see the result of leaving this unique fellow all alone for 4 hours in the dark and rain. There he was! He was sitting in the chair were I left him when I was taking pictures to mark the completion of our goal. I grabbed him, thanking God for keeping him safe. He was fine and none less for wear albeit he had a little rain on his balled head. Walter is a replica of Jeff Dunhams's puppet of the same name. He has been to Alaska, Hawaii and our Southeast trips as well as some smaller ones. He is a very special travel bug and has racked up well over 8,000 miles. He does speak of you push his hand. I told him how sorry I was and asked "will you forgive me for leaving you here? I am so sorry Walter". I pushed his hand and he promptly stated "You're an idiot!" There was no way that I was going to argue with that analysis. Lets just say, he didn't go out of my sight for the rest of the trip.
The next day, we made our way around Delaware grabbing a few caches and made our way to Washington DC. It really wasn't that far away according to the map but we were in for a rude awakening. It seems as though it takes much longer to go short distances back east. We traveled several hours to go less than 100 miles! At one point, there was a massive traffic jam that was caused by travelers coming home from a long weekend away and doing this on several freeways that all came together. It must have taken 3 hours to get through this jam but we made it out in one piece and rolled into Washington DC with a little extra time to spare. We took our photos, repaired the cache we came to find and rolled on out. I told my husband that he'd better not take me by the White House as I was afraid that I would reach through the gates and choke the living be-Jesus out of our useless "Commander and Chief". Needless to say, we gave the White House a wide birth indeed.
With our mission completed, we programmed our route home to Montana. We made sure the coin that we retrieved from New York made it to some of the states it needed and pointed our weary noses toward home. We arrived back on 9 September 2012 at 8:00 pm. I hurried around bringing things into our house as I had to get up for work the next day. Then, as I started to step out of the house to move my car back into it's spot in front, I missed the top step of our porch stairs and proceeded to fall all the way down, bouncing like a rag doll off of the pavement. I laid there in severe pain and slightly dazed. My husband rushed over to see if I was ok which obviously, I was not. I ended up with several bruised ribs and a severely sprained big toe. This was the last straw! How I could travel over 5,000 miles and injure myself three times was beyond me! I hobbled into the house and spent the next few hours under ice.
All in all, the trip was pretty good. Now that we have met this 7 year goal, we can take our time and pick a place to actually set our trailer down in and spend some quality time exploring. The big advantage is that we have the coin and it needs to go to Alaska, Hawaii and New England. Looks like we will have to make a few trips abroad to assist in obtaining the needed miles. We have plans to go back to New England when we can take more time and also go back to Hawaii and possibly Alaska but for now, we sit here with wide grins on our faces, basking in the light of completing our 7 year goal. Interestingly enough, it turns out that we are the first people in Montana to Geocache in all 50 states and that's a pretty fantastic accomplishment in our book!
As ever, Cheers! Freedancer
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