Whatsoever is Lovely...

This past week I had the unique privilege of taking a road trip with my daughter back to Fort Collins, Colorado for her junior year of college. Our journey took two days through six states... roughly 19 hours of driving.

As I went to bed the night before our departure, a flurry of things crossed my mind. Would the hotel booking be correct? Would we have any car trouble? Would I be able to drive for that long? I was a bit nervous, but excited as well.

Day 1

Molly showed up at my place at 5am the next morning. We loaded up her car with my meager luggage (I had packed a small backpack with only the bare essentials for two days of travel, and a "carry on" bag for my return flight back to Seattle). I toasted a bagel for her and smeared some cream cheese on it (I had eaten already). With everything placed in Molly's vehicle, we set out... and promptly got off the freeway a mere 10 minutes later to grab a vanilla latte for me and a pomegranate coconut Red Bull (?) for Molly. THEN we put the pedal to the medal and "got the heck out of Dodge".

Molly drove first, and she was laser focused. This became very apparent to me when, at one point, I instructed her to change lanes and she rebuked my suggestion with a "No you're wrong, I'm in the correct lane, Dad." comment. She was indeed correct and I was wrong. Oof... Sorry, Molly. She got us well passed Bellevue and pretty far along I-90 before she was ready to switch drivers. It was my turn now, and I took us over the mountains into what looked to be the entrance to a burning hellscape.

The east side of Washington was on fire as it turned out, and we were venturing through the smokey output of all the fires. The smoke was something we dealt with for a good few hours. The air quality seemed to gradually improve as we approached the Oregon border.

We stopped in Pendelton, OR for lunch. Molly had a hankering for sushi, so we found a restaurant in Pendelton that had sushi: Momiji Sushi & Hibachi, which ended up being pretty good. After lunch, we stopped briefly at Pendelton Woolen Mills to browse a bit and then continued our journey.

Passing through the smoke, we now entered one of the levels of Dante's Inferno... whichever level is the hottest... I guess that level is called "Idaho"? The dashboard temperature read 106° at one point. Stepping out of the car along this part of our journey felt like stepping into an oven. We stopped in Boise. Though the outside was hot, our hotel room was cool and comfortable.

Day 2

Day two started at around 5am with a quick stop at Dutch Bros before leaving Boise. I got coffee. Molly got a Red Bull (Rebel?) concoction. This would be the longer of the two days: an estimated 11 hours. Game on! Let's do this!

I started out driving, and we both were somewhat chatty here in the early morning. I don't quite recall what we talked about, but I remember the conversation being immersive and enjoyable. Whatever the subject matter... it was sufficiently enthralling enough to distract me from the fact that we needed gas. The gas light came on... we had 35 miles of fuel left in the tank before we'd be empty. This notification came at a particularly inopportune moment as we were in between civilizations. Molly sprang to action and saved the day. She found us a country market with a single gas pump in Glenns Ferry, ID. We filled up with 16 miles worth of gas left in the tank. No sweat.

The rest of the day seemed to move along without much fanfare. I believe I might have missed a turn once because I got slightly distracted looking at a raincloud on the horizon, but that blunder was remedied fairly easily. At one point along I-80, in the middle of Wyoming, Apple Maps guided us off the freeway and onto a gravel road. Molly was driving at the time. I turned to her instantly and said, "This doesn't feel right." I plugged our destination into Google Maps on my phone which, sure enough, told us to turn around and get back on I-80. This mishap turned out to be fortuitous in more ways than one, because we discovered that we were a good 50 minutes closer to Fort Collins than we thought we were!

Wyoming seemed to go on and on and on! I think it was about 2pm in the afternoon, or thereabouts when the pains of this road trip began to make their presence known. My rear was weary and my back had begun to ache a bit. I quietly thought to myself, "Ermahgerd! Will this drive ever end?" But it did end. When the GPS told us we were a mere 18 minutes away from Fort Collins, I felt a pang of sadness as I was struck with the realization that our journey was drawing to a close.

We arrived in Fort Collins around 5pm. We dropped off Molly's luggage at her apartment, dropped off my things at my VRBO, and then grabbed some dinner. After dinner we returned to my spot and played some cards for a bit before calling it a night. I drove Molly back to her apartment and then returned to the VRBO. Day 2 had been long, arduous... stressful at moments, but enjoyable.

Day 3

The next day I got up, packed my things, and headed straight for the AlleyCat Cafe. This has become a ritual of sorts for me when visiting Molly at college. It's a hoppin' coffee shop with friendly, welcoming vibes... and they have a toffee cinnamon latte that I indulge in whenever the opportunity arises. Good stuff. I texted Molly to see if she wanted me to bring her anything, but she declined. She was saving room for CAVA: the lunch spot we had agreed upon the day prior.

After the AlleyCat, I went to the gas station to fill up Molly's car. I then picked Molly up and we headed to Curiosities: a novelty shop of sorts in Old Town Fort Collins. We had decided several days prior to our trip that we'd each get a Smiski in Fort Collins. These are small figurines, of which Molly has several. This would be my first, and I bought mine as a sort of talisman to commemorate the adventure that Molly and I had shared.

After our Smiskis excursion and tooling around Old Town for a bit, we headed to CAVA for lunch before making our way to the Denver Airport... I drove. The tears came as I passed under the “Departures” sign. Our grand road trip adventure was at its end, and so was our time together. I was grateful for the tears. I hope to never become so hard that I become unable to cry in response to the tender moments of life.

Molly looked over and saw the tears, which prompted hers. She leaned over and nestled her head on my shoulder. “Ahhh…", she said, "I’ll see you soon. I love you.” I pulled up to the curb, hoped out to gather my things, and began to slowly walk toward the rear of the car. Molly met me at the driver’s side of the rear bumper. We embraced and echoed the sentiment, “I love you.” She continued to the driver’s seat. I continued to the curb. She rolled the passenger side window down. “Have I got everything?", I muttered, "I’ll text you when I get in.” She nodded in the affirmative and probably said a few departing remarks that I cannot rightly recall now. I smiled at her; attempting to express as much love, care and devotion one might be able to communicate with a smile. She responded in kind. I then turned, and slowly walked toward the concourse, dried tears strewn down my cheeks.

⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ~ Philippians 4:8

I left Denver with a full heart. I am a very small, unremarkable, inconsequential human being. I don't know that I'll ever understand why I've been gifted with such a kindhearted, generous, good-natured daughter as the one I left in Colorado. She has grown to become one of my favorite people on earth. I think I'm in agreement with the man in this video when he is asked what his favorite place is:

I don't have a favorite place. I have my favorite people, and whenever I'm with my favorite people, that place becomes my favorite.

Molly and I had traveled nearly 1300 miles together, and for a brief moment, each of those miles became my favorite place.

Molly and I listened to so much music on this trip! At one point she told me, "Ugh, I'm sick of all my music." I turned on some show tunes in response. A mere seconds into "Memory" from Cats and Molly was done. One song that we both liked though was "A Lingering Love" by Fruit Bats. We deemed that song to be our road trip's theme song: