My Cross Country Trip

This August I moved from near Washington, DC to Seattle, driving my 1993 Honda Accord cross country with no A/C and windows open. Most of the drive was on I-90. I unknowingly chose the week of the Sturgis, South Dakota motorcycle rally, so I heard a constant stream of very loud Harley-Davidsons all day, almost every day. Above is a picture taken near Rapid City, South Dakota that shows how many bikers were actually on the road. It seemed like 80% of vehicles I saw were motorcycles.




Here is a car fire I saw outside Butte, Montana. Most of the trip was uneventful, though. When I went through Wisconsin, Minnesota, and part of South Dakota I drove hundreds of miles and saw nothing but corn fields. It amazed me to think of the enormous amount of food produced on those farms, and how it feeds the U.S. and there is still so much excess that gets exported all over the world. God has been very good to us and we often just take it for granted, but I have to thank God for such abundance.


I noticed that though much of the upper midwest everyone talked with an accent that reminded me of Coach Z from HomeStarRunner.com . As I went to the west side of South Dakota the scenery changed. Now there were WHEAT fields as far as the eye could see. Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho were mountainous with some cattle ranches but few farms. I think there must be more cows than people in some of those places. The people were much more connected to the land and aware of their dependence on rain for survival. It was very different from the city or suburbs where I have lived most of my life.

Eastern Washington was basically a desert with huge rivers running through it. Vast irrigation systems have been set up to use river water to turn desert into farm land. It was amazing to me. As I approached Seattle I crossed the immense cascade mountains through the Snoqualmie Pass. The climate in these mountains and west of them was much wetter and evergreen trees were everywhere.