The One With The Wrong Turn

Way back in April, my fabulous pal Beth and I took a little road trip to Missoula to attend a conference. Conveniently, Missoula is also our hometown. The trip out to the homeland was great - we had a really good time talking up a storm and doing novel things like pumping our own gas.

The conference went well, and we even snuck in a few visits with family and old friends. Just about the time we hit the road for our return trip, a late-April snowstorm rolled in and caused a little apprehension. It's a whole other post for a whole other time, but "late-April snowstorms" is on the list of reasons why I don't live in Montana anymore. Thankfully, both of us have made the Missoula-Willamette Valley trek more times than we can count and felt confident enough to set off into the storm. Being the brave and courageous soul that I am, I drove the first leg.

Oh, fine. I lost at rock-paper-scissors and drove the first leg. By the time we got to Spokane the storm had cleared up and we switched places. We discussed that goofy turn just outside Spokane that is always hard to find, I made some bold statement about how we "couldn't possibly miss it," and promptly fell asleep. Some navigator.

Waking up after a nice snooze, I admired the ho-hum eastern Washington countryside and asked Beth where we were. "Well," she replied, "I'm still watching for that stupid turn." Strange...I was sure I'd slept for quite awhile, but our turn was less than 30 minutes outside Spokane. How could we still be looking for it? Luckily, a sign loomed on the horizon. "This must be it!" I declared. As we drew closer to the sign my jaw hit the dashboard. Moses Lake, Next Exit.

For those of you unfamiliar with Washington geography, Moses Lake is in the middle of the state. As in WAY the heck past the turn we needed just outside Spokane. As in approximately the middle of nowhere. Swell. We are now most of the way to Seattle but nowhere near home, and we both have to be at work first thing tomorrow morning. Just swell.

"No problem," Declares the undaunted navigator, "let's get off at Moses Lake. We'll look at the map and figure out what to do." An excellent plan if I do say so myself (and I did). I have a variety of maps shoved in my passenger seat pocket just for times like these.

See? Look at all those maps! I've got Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Eugene, Portland, Powell's Bookstore, Salem, Corvallis, OSU's Parking Lots...you name it! Wanna guess what map I don't have? The one blessed part of the Pacific Northwest that is NOT cartographically documented in my car? Washington. Ugh.

So we do the next logical thing - we call someone who will be sitting at a computer and can google-map a way out of this for us. Cap'n Handsome to the rescue! (Speaking of posts for another time, the story behind Beth's husband's nickname should go on that list). Alas, the Cap'n was off actually doing his job and couldn't be reached. Our next call, to SoundGuy, was answered. Hooray! Surely we are saved! SoundGuy laughsgood-naturedly at our predicament, googles it up, and starts rattling off instructions for navigating the series of backroads which will get us back in the right direction. What a lifesaver!

It's at exactly this moment that Beth and I, listening intently to SoundGuy's instructions on speakerphone and furiously scribbling notes on the back of my conference namebadge, realize that neither of us can make heads or tails of it. We are disoriented. We have lost our bearings. We are NOT aural learners. And now the hilarity of our predicament is setting in, and we're smothering giggles and wiping tears from our eyes. As we border on hysterics, SoundGuy recognizes that the cause is lost, wishes us well, and hangs up the phone.

With the phone-a-friend lifeline expended, we chuckle and guffaw our way off the freeway to a local gas station. Maybe THE gas station in Moses Lake. Here good sense prevails and we buy a map.
Why it took two perfectly sensible women with four college degrees among them this long to do the logical thing is beyond me. And the clerk at THE gas station in Moses Lake is probably wondering what's so funny about a rack of maps...

What we lack in aural learning, we certainly make up for in visual acuity so the map did the trick.
We were able to identify and eensy-weensy little farm road (I believe Beth referred to it as a "goat-path" more than once) which would get us to the Tri-Cities and back on track. But it would add four hours to our trip.

The best thing about being with Beth is that we have the same warped sense of humor. We can get each other going and work ourselves into a lather, nothing flat. If she lived closer, I'd have abs of steel. Back in our college-roommate days, we laughed ourselves silly on a line from Aladin: "One too many hits with the snake." I can't even begin to explain it, but I hope you'll know what I mean. It prompted me to make a sock-puppet snake for Beth. We call it The Snock (Ya know, like snake/sock). We still pass it back and forth and get it out any time we're feeling punchy. Naturally, when packing for our professional conference, I threw in The Snock.
(Yes, there is a bell tied around his neck).
This is how we entertained ourselves on the goat-path. Beth drove and drove, and The Snock and I played a rousing game of Highway Bingo (see it there on the dashboard?). We played the license plate game, and kept ourselves laughing till we cried.

And finally we made it to the Tri-Cities. HALF-way home. It was quickly becoming the longest day ever and we were beat. So, we did the only sensible thing:

We put The Snock in charge. I bet this is how Columbus did it too.