Erin and I did a lot of traveling over the holidays. From Seattle to Chicago, Down to Kankakee, Home to Detroit, down to an unplanned night in Phoenix, New Years in Los Angeles and then a final flight back to Seattle. Everything went pretty smoothly except for that night in Phoenix and US Airways losing one of Erin’s bags (still unrecovered). But we had a wonderful time with all of our friends and I wanted to say thank you for lending us your couches, futons and guest rooms!
As stated previously, I’m going to be doing my best to stay on top of everything. My goals for this month are to make a mini comic, create some type of promo postcard or mailer, and finish updating the website (I need to add comics and I’m still toying with the idea of re-adding some of my older design work). I’m also going to give myself a “sketchbook assignment” this month which will be to draw places and buildings and work on my sense of drawing spaces and places.
Oh, and here’s something else I did recently: The cover for the annual holiday compilation album over at Adam Riff. I had never heard of the Gaslight Anthem before, but I think this little bit of photoshoppery came out pretty good.
I’m currently in Heraklion on the island of Crete in Greece. The trip is going well and I’ve been seeing a ton and traveling all over. I’m also taking waaaay more photos than I ever expected I would. My Flickr account is going to get inundated when I return to Seattle!
Days five and six were a blur. Erin and I lived on Tony and his roommates’ couch during this time as we tried to secure an apartment. On the seventh day, we moved into a new place, and it was good. We now live only a couple minutes’ walk from Tony in some fancy-schmancy condo complex. I guess everything worked out.
Oh, and I forgot to give the final mileage of the drive. From my door in Royal Oak to Tony’s door in Seattle, we drove a total of 2499.2 miles. Whew, I hope my car is still speaking to me.
Tensions were high as we started off our final day of driving. We all just wanted to be there, and it didn’t help that I had to make a stop to get Erin and my IDs notarized and overnight an apartment application. It also didn’t help that the Rocker Inn didn’t have any free breakfast (oh, how I missed Econo Lodge). Erin drove for a while from Butte and we stopped in Missoula so that I could take care of my business. After talking about having something to eat there, we all got on each others’ cases and decided to just leave. Erin drove through the rest of Montana and into Iowa where we eventually had to gas up.
We decided to go eat at a diner called Sam’s that was right near the gas station. It turned out to be pretty delicious. This put us all in a much better mood, or as Tony commented, “I’m in super good mood now.” I took the wheel and we headed through the rest of Iowa and into our destination state: Washington.
Eastern Washington was weird; It was pretty sparse but there was a lot of traffic. I was also steadily climbing for quite a while. But central Washington was even weirder: More sparse, very dry, all farm land but virtually nothing growing, and to top it all off, tons of dust devils spotted the landscape, threatening to swallow up our car in their wake. It was like being in a video game and having to travel through the treacherous desert area. Luckily there was a nice little place to take a breather and have a good snack: a fruit stand right off the highway. They even made fresh fruit shakes.
We finally made it into western Washington. What an extremely scenic landscape! We traveled through those mountains at sundown, and it was quite a sight. We were also very excited, our spirits way up, knowing that we were getting so close. We were still 60 miles from Seattle but I already felt like we had made it. We pulled off for our last tank-up and Tony also got some beer for our arrival celebration. We drove a bit more and finally made it to our new home. Tony navigated me to his apartment and we were finally there… Whew!
We hung out and drank beer even though we were all exhausted. Tony ordered a pizza and then his roommate Brandon came home. We all hung out for a while and Brandon told tony a very convincing tale about having just come home from doing meth, which we all took to be truth and Tony was freaked the eff out. Good times. We spent the night (the first of at least a few, most likely) at Tony’s place.
WE DID IT. But Erin and I still need to find an apartment…
Before we actually hit the road again, we took a little detour out to Mt Rushmore. The hills were kind of intense, so we had to take it easy on the car+trailer, but we got there okay. We saw those presidents and they were looking pretty majestic. I got a bunch of pictures of them, but will probably delete most of them… Anyway, it was a nice stop and I’m glad we went to see it. After that, we got back to I-90 and continued on our way.
Tony was a tank today, driving over 400 miles. We stopped at one point in Montana to get some Taco Bell and Tony had a volcano taco. He says it was indeed spicy and didn’t need any sauce. Back on the road, we saw some more majestic things, like the tetons and other mountain ranges, nice looking cliffs and sheer rock faces, etc. There were still a lot of stretches of nothing, though. At one point, we stopped at a rest area and played frisbee for a bit. That was real nice.
Eventually I took over the drive and we went into the night. Erin turned out the jams to keep us awake as we went into the mountains. I found that the car was having some trouble getting up some very tough climbs so I took it easy. Then we realized we were going over the continental divide. Well, the car made it just fine! We drove a bit more and made it all the way to Butte, where we’re currently staying at the Rocker Inn. Tomorrow evening we should be in Seattle… Then Erin and I need to find an apartment!
