Category Archives: Travel

Yesterday I wrote part 2 of our trip, ending with the Bed and Breakfast in Huntington, West Virginia, on Friday night. We woke up early Saturday morning and left before our hosts even got up. Turns out, 6 AM in West Virginia is darker than 6 AM in Oregon and Colorado. We’d had many early starts, but this was the first time it was truly still night.

But we had a four hour drive ahead of us, and we were anxious to get there while it still felt like morning.

We’d set our Google Maps route to “avoid tolls,” which probably also contributed to our whole journey being extra-long. I’m very much a toll avoider, partly because I don’t like spending money, and partly because I’m just not used to them. Oregon doesn’t have toll roads. Or if it does, they’re not anywhere I’ve driven.

Although to be honest, I5 is getting so overcrowded these days I can kind-of see why toll roads are a thing.

The point is, we drove some random roads through West Virginia.

I never knew much about West Virginia until I lived in Virginia briefly ten or so years ago, and everyone told West Virginia jokes. “Isn’t West Virginia basically like Virginia?” I asked. I’d always thought of them as like, you know, North Dakota and South Dakota. Basically the same place.

“Oh no,” I was informed by the shocked youth group. Apparently there was a whole history here. Different sides of the Civil War and everything.

Based on what they told me and various things I’ve read since, I’ve learned that West Virginia is known as a strange place. But I’ve never really seen that strangeness. I’ve driven through corners of it, but never through the heart of it.

Never, that is, until this trip.

Jenny was driving and I was navigating. We were on US-60, but then had to cross a bridge and get on WV-61. That, I would say, is when the bulk of the weird started.

To begin with, there was that bridge.

As we approached it we saw road construction signs, orange cones, and a “one lane bridge ahead” sign. We turned right onto the bridge, and it was indeed one lane. The other lane was blocked off with orange cones and held random bridge-repairing equipment.

But there was no flagger of any kind.

That was weird, I thought. Did we approach the bridge from a weird angle? Well, surely the flagger at the other end will see us?

And then suddenly there was a line of cars coming right at us.

It was like a bad, bizarre dream.

But what can you do? Jenny just pulled onto the other side of the bridge. The blocked-off side. There was just enough room to slip between the cones, and thankfully there was no equipment right there. The line of cars passed us, and we continued on.

There was no flagger at the other end of the bridge either.

It was so bizarre. I have never ever in my life seen anything like it. Why would you have a one-lane bridge with no flagger?

I mean, with some bridges it wouldn’t be a big deal, because you could look across first and see if anyone was coming. But this bridge was not that way. Both 60 and 61 ran parallel to the river, and there were so many hills and weird corners there was no way to see if anyone was coming before you started across it.

I guess the road construction guys were just like, “oh well, we’ll just leave some space between the cones so that someone can pull over if they need to?”

Maybe that’s how they do it in West Virginia?

After all, once when the road got bad there was a yellow “rough road” sign with a suggested speed of 35 mph. So maybe the type of place that would put up a sign instead of fixing the road would also make a one-lane bridge without a flagger and expect folks to just figure it out?

Anyway. To be honest, WV-61 was probably the weirdest thing we saw on our whole trip. It wound up and down and back and forth through thick forest.

“You know, it’s actually quite pretty here,” I said.

“Yeah, pretty…sketchy,” said Jenny.

There was a double-wide trailer house with several feet of space between the two halves. Random structures made of pallets. Abandoned gas station pavilions, just there, like an umbrella for nothing. Sometimes covered in kudzu. Lots of old RVs. The sketchiest houses I’d ever seen. A sign commemorating someone who’d apparently founded grandparent’s day. I only saw one person–a man who stepped briefly onto his porch when we passed by. So often I didn’t know if the area was abandoned, or if people actually lived in these half-condemned houses.

Also. I didn’t see any Trump signs.

That seemed really weird to me, honestly. Even nine months after the election, Trump signs littered the Midwest as we drove through. But we got to West Virginia, and we didn’t see a single Trump sign in the whole state. Was it a random fluke? Or are West Virginians just not as into Trump as mid-westerners are? No clue.

Eventually we got back on a main highway again, and crossing the state line into Virginia. And then around 10 am we pulled into Blacksburg, and into the parking lot of our new home!

Now I must admit that when I stepped into the apartment I was a bit disappointed. The place, first of all, was dingier than I expected. For some reason I’d thought the floors were real hardwood, but they were the fake kind you get at Home Depot and click together. Everything looked like it had been painted over too many times.

However, the main thing that crushed my soul in those first few moments was the musty, moldy smell.

Now, Jenny barely noticed a smell and it didn’t bother her. So maybe it wasn’t a big deal, but I’ll admit that I’m a bit sensitive about smells. They don’t give me headaches or anything, but I can hardly stand to be in a room with a bad smell. The idea of living in a bad-smelling apartment for a year suddenly seemed overwhelming. And I have a secret fear of living someplace that makes me sick. (I have no evidence that mold makes me sick, just fear, LOL.)

We hauled all our stuff in and made piles in the middle of our respective bedrooms. Then I drove to Walmart for cleaning supplies, and Jenny started sorting through her stuff. The previous tenant had left us an armoire, a dresser, a tall lamp, and a small metal rack, but beyond that the house was unfurnished.

But then, just as we’d started cleaning with our new set of supplies, Aunt Margaret arrived to save the day.

My Aunt Margaret lives several hours south of Blacksburg, and she’d offered to help us move in. She is also, in true Yoder fashion, a Rescuer of Abandoned Things, and she somehow owns extras of just about anything you could ever possibly need. She showed up with a mattress and box spring, bedding, towels, washcloths, rags, kitchenware of all sorts and descriptions, blender, toaster, crock pot, curtains, décor, canned food, frozen food, tubs of butter because butter was on sale, shower curtains, shower mats, etc.

Also, a pot of chili, which was fantastic. We were so hungry. We sat on the floor and ate off an overturned box.

“You know, we’d better get going if we want to hit up some garage sales,” said Aunt Margaret.

So we hauled everything in from her minivan, which was probably at least three times the amount of stuff we’d brought ourselves. (I was especially grateful for the mattress…I could live without lots of things but had no desire to sleep on the hard floor if I could help it.) And then we went garage sailing.

We found a few things we needed, like a coffee maker for Jenny, some baskets, some hangers, a toothbrush holder, and a soap dish. But we were really angling for some furniture. We reasoned that today was our best chance to buy it, because we had a van to haul it in. But all the garage sale furniture had already been snatched up, in seemed.

So we went to Habitat for Humanity, and I have never in my life bought so many things at once. We purchased:

1. A small dining room table
2. Three chairs
3. A microwave
4. A desk for Jenny’s room
5. A bedframe for my bed
6. A twin mattress for Jenny
7. A bedframe for Jenny’s bed
8. An area rug
9. A small couch

It was our lucky day, because everything except the rug was 20% off. All together the whole load cost us less than $400.

Then came the exciting task of getting everything into the minivan. There was a whole crew of employees trying to accomplish this feat.

And in the end they accomplished the deed! Just barely, but it all fit in.

We went back to our new home, and now we had another giant load of stuff to haul upstairs. This was tricky, as the stairs are narrow and cramped. We didn’t think we could possibly fit, say, a full-sized couch up them. But we managed with the smaller furniture we’d chosen.

We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning. First we scrubbed our bedrooms from top to bottom and set up the beds. Then we took a break, heading to Wendy’s for supper, before coming home and scrubbing the bathroom and kitchen.

That was enough for one day. Aunt Margaret rolled out an air mattress she’d brought, and we all went to bed.

The next morning we mostly just went through everything she’d brought, deciding what we needed and what we didn’t need. I cleaned out the hall closet so I could store the extra bedding, toolbox, and ironing board in there. Aunt Margaret also went around putting pretty little homey touches here and there. She bought a quilted tablecloth at a garage sale, and she put it on the table with fresh flowers in a blue canning jar she’d saved from Grandma’s house.

That’s when it started to look like an actual home.

Best of all, the smell was slowly dissipating. Opening the windows, keeping the air flowing, and giving everything a good scrub seemed to have mostly fixed the issue.

Then it was time for Aunt Margaret to go. We thanked her and hugged her and out the door she went, taking her furniture-hauling minivan with her.

And here we were, in our new home.

In the end, we saw 6 dead deer, so Jenny’s guess of 7 was closer than my guess of 3. We also saw 2 dead watermelons and 3 dead raccoons. We found most of the states too–all but six: Hawaii, Vermont, Rhode Island, Delaware, North Dakota, and Massachusetts all eluded us.

Our list of weird things was long, but we still rank the poop-pumping Starbucks in the grocery store where everyone knew each other as the weirdest. Although if the whole state of West Virginia counts as a singular weird thing it was by far the weirdest.

That is the end of our story of moving from Oregon to Virginia. Next week I’ll plan to write a follow-up post, all about settling in to a new place.

Until then, take care!

***

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At the end of Part 1 of our journey for Oregon to Virginia, Jenny and I had just arrived in Canon City, Colorado. I used to live in Canon City, if you can remember back that far. I lived next door to the Knepp family, distant relatives and old family friends, and of course that’s who we originally intended to stay with when we arrived.

However, the Knepps then had to deal with an unexpected life complication, so I told them I’d find other lodging. I then reached out to my friend Sherri, who I’d met in Alaska exactly two years ago and who is also from Canon City. “Can we stay with you?” Only, she wasn’t going to be in town that night, but she said we could stay with her parents. I barely knew Sherri’s parents, but Jenny and I went to bed so early and got up so early there was no time to socialize anyway.

Thursday morning, our first stop was the mechanic shop. Dallas Knepp had agreed to screw the muffler back on for us, so I guess we did see one familiar face before we left. Then we pulled out of town around 6:30 AM, determined that today we were going to make good time.

With no more mountains to cross, we did make slightly better time. Mileage wise it was our longest day yet, but we managed to do it in thirteen hours. That was an hour longer than the Google maps estimate, but hey, previously we’d been adding two hours every day. So it felt like improvement.

This time, Jenny planned out exactly which gas stations we’d stop at. When we started getting hungry, She noticed a Subway next to the gas station she’d added to our route, and we ordered ahead so we could just pick it up.

Now, I should mention that my car does have a small oil leak, so we’d periodically check the oil and make sure it was doing okay. This time when we checked, it was much lower than we expected it to be. We had to run inside and buy more oil, and after that I was super paranoid about the oil, checking it almost every time we stopped. So that did add some time. But it never really became an issue. I think it just used more oil going through the Colorado mountain passes?

Anyway.

We continued to add to our list of weird things. At one rest area, all the trash cans had legs, making them look rather like R2D2. We saw a house that looked like it belonged in a Candy Land game, painted like neapolitan ice cream, with gables and fancy candy-like trim.

We were well into Kansas by now. “You know what I didn’t anticipate about Kansas?” Jenny asked.

“What?” I said.

“I didn’t realize there was so much, ‘woohoo, Jesus!!! No abortions!!'”

Indeed, there were a great deal of pro-Jesus and anti-abortion signs and billboards. There was a popular “Jesus I trust in you!” poster we saw over and over bopped in various fields. The weirdest of all was this bizarre painting of a very white Jesus standing with some wheat. Later I googled it and found out it’s the most famous billboard in Kansas.

Our second gas stop of the day was in town, which is not my favorite. Google maps does great on Interstates and highways, but in town it always seems a bit behind, and I often get turned around and mixed up. You know. Too many times when you can accidentally turn right instead of veering right.

Jenny was driving and I was navigating, although the Voice of Google Maps was also talking to us through the speakers. He re-routed us around the block after we turned right instead of veering right.

“By the way, I farted, sorry,” said Jenny.

“Oh, I can smell it,” I said, hastily rolling down the window.

“AT THE NEXT STOP LIGHT, TURN LEFT ONTO 6TH AVENUE,” yelled Google.

“I’m going to close the window cause I don’t want everyone to know that we don’t know where we’re going…very loudly,” said Jenny.

Thankfully the gas station was just around the corner. I started filling the tank while Jenny went in to use the bathroom, and then she checked the oil. We finished up about the same time, and as she came back around the car, suddenly her face went white with horror. “Emily!” she said, “you just put diesel in the car!”

“What?” I said.

“The green one is diesel!” Jenny said.

I looked at the buttons in front of me, trying to see which one was green. “I’m pretty sure I pushed the correct button,” I said.

“No, the handle,” said Jenny. “You used the green handle! The green handle is always diesel!”

Now I need to point out that being from Oregon, where it is illegal to pump your own gas, I always have some sort of weird issue at the gas pumps in other states. I know pumping gas is not difficult, but it’s like the Oregon curse or something. But putting diesel in my car instead of gas…that was a whole ‘nother level. I mean. What the bunnyslipper.

Because while it looked like I’d pushed the correct button, I had most definitely used the green handle.

“What do I do?” I moaned.

“I guess we’ll have to go ask the people inside,” Jenny said.

Jenny maintains that she meant, “let’s ask them which handle pumps gas and which handle pumps diesel.” But I took it to mean, “let’s admit to them that I just ruined my car like an idiot and ask them to call a tow truck.” This was not a very pleasing prospect, and I ran my eyes over the gas pump once again, trying to make sense of it. I had pushed the right button. I was sure of it. It was lit up with a price, while the other buttons showed only dashes.

“Wait, Jenny…” I said. Because just then I noticed that the green handle had “10% ethanol” written above it. They don’t put ethanol in diesel, right? Then I peered closer at the black handle. “It says diesel!” I said. “See? The black handle says diesel. So the green handle was correct!”

Befuddled, Jenny googled it. Apparently at BP gas stations they switch things up, putting a green-handled pump on the regular gasoline and a black-handled pump on the diesel.

I had not put any diesel in my car after all!

Praise Jesus!

All was well!

We laughed about that one for a while.

In Missouri, we stopped for the night at the home of Darlene Miller. We were friends with Darlene’s sons when they did VS work in Oregon, and then Mom became friends with Darlene, and then I stayed at Darlene’s house when her son Travis got married, so it seemed a logical place to stop. Despite our better-than-usual time, we were still dealing with a time change, so it was 8:30 PM when we arrived. Still, she had an amazing home-cooked meal waiting for us.

Oh and she had not one, but two guest rooms. I love Jenny dearly but I’m also deeply introverted and that room-to-myself was everything.

Thus ended the third day of our trip. Originally we’d planned to go straight to Blacksburg from Darlene’s house, but the idea of arriving late at night to an empty apartment with no beds was daunting. So I got an Airbnb in Huntington West Virginia, where we’d spend Friday night before getting to Blacksburg on Saturday.

This meant that Friday morning, we actually had some time to relax before starting off on the day’s drive. I made myself a mug of Earl Grey tea and sat on the porch with Darlene’s curious pets and my own thoughts.

So Friday was the last full day of driving. It was our shortest day so far, and it felt even shorter because the states started flying by. Driving east feels like playing that little dinosaur game that pops up whenever a website isn’t loading. It starts off so slow…for the first 8 hours of our journey to Virginia we were still in Oregon. Then it gets faster and faster and faster, until at the end you’re flying through five states in one day.

“We could hit six states if we take a tiny detour,” I said. “Ohio is just across the river from Huntington.”

But in the end we didn’t bother. Five states in one day was enough for us.

We continued to collect state license plate sightings, and by “we” I mean mostly Jenny.

“Mayor,” said Jenny, reading a vanity license plate out loud. “I wonder if that guy is the mayor. Wait. He’s passing me on the right. Did I just get passed on the right by the mayor?!?”

We put that on our list of weird things.

Also on the list: a small forest where someone had nailed a “Trump” poster on about every third tree.

And, later, a sign that said “Flea Amish Markets.” Which seemed to us to be the wrong adjective order. And of course I imagined someone wildly running away from an Amish market.

Our Airbnb wasn’t like most Airbnb’s…it was an actual factual bed and breakfast. A fancy house with fancy floral wallpaper. And breakfast in the morning. Well, breakfast bars and coffee, if that counts.

Our hosts were very sweet. “Are you doing anything this evening?” they asked.

“We’ll probably go get something to eat,” we said.

“Oh, well we could give you some recommendations!” They said. “Here, we have some information on the sideboard about good restaurants in the area.”

Later, while we were on our way to Taco Bell, I turned to Jenny and said, “what will we say if they ask us where we went to eat? Are we gonna admit that we just went to Taco Bell?”

“I don’t know,” Jenny said.

“We could say we got tacos,” I said, “but then maybe they’d want to know where we got tacos.”

We came up with a whole plan for what we were going to say if they asked us where we went to eat, but they never asked, so we never had to use it.

We went back to the fancy house, climbed into the fancy bed, and went to sleep. One more night and four more hours of driving, and we’d arrive at our new home. But for that story, you’ll have to come back tomorrow for Part 3.

I heard a rumor that one of the Kuhns babies looked at his mother, wide-eyed, and whispered, “are there dragons in Alaska?”

That may be the best description of how Alaska made me feel. Like there could be dragons here.

After Elaine’s wedding, I was so tired that I sat in the red chair and didn’t move. For three days I’d focused on wedding, wedding, wedding (you can read about that in Part 1 and Part 2). But now the wedding was over. 

I ought to just go home and sleep. Should I just go home and sleep?

It was bedtime, after all. But the sun was still up, in that curious Alaska way. And I felt like maybe there was yet another adventure awaiting, once I got my second wind.

“Let’s go to the river, or something,” said Karli.

So we drove down to the river, a strange, gray, churning thing full of glacial silt. We wandered over the bridge and along the riverbank.

The endless twilight. Everything seemed moody, and weighty, and powerful. The world was a vast expanse of wonders.

I wanted to capture the way Sherri smiled as she squished her feet in the clay.

Karli, Sherri and I made Wesley take a picture of us.

Later we got a proper selfie with all four of us.

Karli ate the moon.

We got back into the car, and then we took some wrong turns. Was it nearing midnight? Time seemed irrelevant. We hopped out and wandered around. Aimless. Drunk on the enchantment of tonight.

…

The next day we went to Hatcher pass. Everyone came: The Stoltzfus clan, the Kuhns clan, the randos…even Elaine and Brandon. Yes, the newlyweds themselves decided to show up.

“Our honeymoon doesn’t really start until tomorrow,” said Elaine.

Elaine and Brandon

Daisy and her baby beside a mountain stream.

Oh yes. I should tell this story. Remember that cute to-go mug I got at the coffee shop on Friday? Well, it was so adorable that I didn’t throw it away. I continued to brew tea in it throughout the weekend.

On Sunday, when I went to brew myself some tea, I noticed that someone had attempted to wash it. And it was a paper cup. But it still looked usable, so I poured boiling water into it, clicked the lid on, and carried it across the room.

The weakened paper walls of the cup began to collapse. Boiling water spilled out onto my arm. I dropped it in pain, and ran to the sink to run my arm under cold water. Even so, I had a pretty bad first-degree burn, and a mess to clean up.

I found a bag of frozen peas in the freezer, and I wrapped it in a towel and held it on my arm. That helped with the pain. But by the time I got to Hatcher Pass, the peas were melting. Besides, I didn’t want to hike around holding a bag of peas onto my arm. So if my arm started to hurt pretty badly, I’d just dip it into this cold mountain stream, and feel blessed relief.

We ate a picnic on the mountain. Without plates. No one remembered to bring plates.

On Instagram, Karli wrote, “Words can’t quite express the way Alaska made me feel. Mixed emotions. Happiness, longing, joy, peace, turmoil…I wanted to sit on the top of a mountain and dream for days.”

And I don’t think I could say it any better than that.

…

Later that Sunday afternoon, Karli and Sherri took me to the airport in Elaine’s car. I waved goodbye to this majestic place that now held a snippet of my heart.

I’ll be back, Alaska.

I promise.

Elaine and Brandon’s wedding was to take place in a pavilion on top of a hill. But the reception was to be held in the somewhat-boring-looking church sanctuary, so we made it beautiful using all things twinkly (candles, string lights, twinkle lights, etc).

Most of the transforming was done on Thursday (you can read about that in part 1 of my Alaska adventure). But in order for the sanctuary to be properly twinkly we had to solve the problem of sunlight streaming in the large front doors.

Friday morning, Mimi, Elaine’s mom, attempted to solve the problem. “I went to Fred Meyer, but I couldn’t find black paper anywhere!” she said. “So I bought black bed sheets.”

Karli and I looked at them dubiously. But what do you know, folded in half they were the exact width of the door, and long enough to loop over the top. We secured them with bright blue painter’s tape, rolling pieces and tucking them under to hide the bright-blueness as much as possible.

The double layer was rather opaque. No more Halloween cobwebs. Karli and I gave each other a high-five.

Someone told me that Elaine wanted to talk to me about desserts, so I went over to where she was sitting. “Oh hey Emily,” she said. “So when you and Eileen are serving the desserts tomorrow…”

“Wait,” I said. “I’m serving desserts?”

“Oh, yeah, didn’t I ask you to?”

I laughed. “No, you didn’t. But of course I’m happy to help.”

Friday was a lot more relaxed in general, since we’d gotten most of the work done on Thursday. Now that Kim was here with her rental car, we took full advantage of the freedom and went out to get coffee at the cute coffee stand where Elaine works when she’s not, you know, prepping for her wedding.

Only of course I got hot tea, and it came in the most adorable to-go cup I’ve ever seen.

After that we had just a bit of time before the rehearsal dinner, so Kim and I went over to the apartment where Elaine and Brandon would live after they married. Kim had the address, but when we went inside we just saw office space, not apartments.

“I think the apartments are on the second floor,” said Kim.

“Where’s the staircase?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

We peeked around corners. No staircases were to be found. “Let’s just open some of these doors,” I said. Kim looked a bit dubious, but what do you know, the first door I tried had a staircase behind it.

We went up the stairs. “Which apartment is hers?” I asked.

“I don’t know…all she gave me was the address.”

Kim tried calling Elaine, but Elaine didn’t answer. So we walked along the hall, and I carefully listened at each door. Then, oh! That was definitely Elaine’s laugh.

I knocked. She opened.

It was a small studio apartment. Nothing fancy, and a bit old-fashioned, but quite charming. Virginia, one of the Kuhns siblings, and Daisy, who was married to a Kuhns sibling, were relaxing on the floor because there were no couches or chairs yet. Kim and I sat down too.

“This is so great!” said Elaine. “Finally, a chance to just chill with my friends for a bit!”

The “chilling” didn’t last long, however, because soon it was time for the rehearsal dinner.

The rehearsal dinner was held at Brandon’s parent’s house. The kitchen was brimming with food, so many dishes I knew I wouldn’t have a chance to even try them all. Victoria, Brandon’s mother, told me what each of them were. There was lots of salmon of course, as well as seal soup, whale meat (both cooked and uncooked), and herring eggs, which were on some sort of seaweed…kelp maybe? And something called “Eskimo ice cream,” which was sort-of like a fruit salad.

“I also made chicken for the English people,” said Victoria. I thought it was so funny that she used the word “English” to refer to non-Native people, because it’s the same word Amish people use to refer to non-Anabaptist people.

Elaine’s dad prayed in English, and Brandon’s grandpa prayed in Yupik, and then we got to eat. It was an amazing meal. I didn’t get to try nearly everything, but I ate all the most interesting-looking foods. Especially the seal and whale was a real treat, because in Alaska it’s illegal to hunt whale and seal unless you’re an Alaskan Native. It’s also illegal for an “English” person to buy whale and seal from an Alaskan Native, so our only hope of eating it is to have a Native friend.

However, if I’m gonna be honest, I couldn’t figure out how to eat the raw whale. I just couldn’t chew it. “You have to bite off the white part, and leave the gray part,” said Kim. But I could not for the life of me bite off the white part. Finally I realized that Kim had gotten cooked whale, which was much easier to chew. I’m still not sure how one eats the raw whale. Just stick it in your mouth and chew it like a piece of gum? Does it eventually break down?

The herring eggs on seaweed tasted exactly how the Newport Bayfront smells. I don’t know how else to describe it.

Relaxing in the back yard, eating delicious food.

Elaine and Brandon at the rehearsal dinner. Poor Elaine was exhausted!

…

Almost everyone was either in the bridal party or married to someone in the bridal party. Karli, seeing Elaine’s stress, appointed herself wedding coordinator. So from the end of the rehearsal dinner until the end of the reception the next day, Virginia, Wesley, Eileen, and I were the randos who had no specific job and so did all sorts of sporadic tasks.

That evening it was mostly running errands. The next morning we didn’t do much, because everyone else was in and out of wedding photos, but then we went to the church early and did all the bippy things that still needed to be done.

Eileen and I, of course, were doing desserts. There were cheesecake cupcakes that needed to be served on these artsy birch slabs. But then, we heard that the guy in charge of the meal was short-handed. So, maybe we’d have time to help him with food if we got all the cheesecakes onto their slabs early.

This was like, forty-five before the ceremony was to begin. We started clearing off surfaces in a back classroom, and filling them with frozen cheesecake cupcakes atop birch slabs. And then…

“Um, Eileen?” I said. “This birch slab has bugs on it.”

“What?” she looked closely. “Oh…yeah…it does…”

Another chance to be innovative. Thankfully there were many more birch slabs than we needed. Eileen began checking and sorting them, while I double-checked the good ones to make sure they were decidedly bug-free, and continued arranging the mini cheesecakes.

“I’m sure this is enough,” I said finally. “We don’t want to arrive at the same time as the bridal party and have to try to dodge out of pictures.”

Of course in the end I did a couple more random tasks, and what do you know. I ended up arriving at the pavilion at the same time as the bridal party, and had to try to dodge out of pictures. Haha.

It was an absolutely beautiful ceremony, though. There was hardly a dry eye in the place as they read their hand-written wedding vows to each other. Next thing you know, everyone was laughing when they tried to do a unity ceremony with salt, and the salt stuck to its container and wouldn’t pour out.

Laughter and tears. The perfect wedding.

(I didn’t take photos during the ceremony, but I stole this one from Karli.)

…

Eileen and I skipped the receiving line because there were things to get done. Wesley and Karli had skipped ahead to light the candles and switch on the twinkle lights. “Hey Emily,” Elaine said as we zipped past the receiving line, “can you get drinks out?”

“Sure thing!”

That’s how Eileen and I found ourselves in the kitchen, mixing up batches and batches of lemonade, and handing them over to whatever strong-looking person happened to be in the kitchen right then. “Can you put this on the drink table? Thanks!”

Okay, lemonade levels were stable. What about water levels? What about coffee levels?

Oh! No one put creamer on the coffee table.

Oh! What are we supposed to put the creamer in? Surely we have something nicer than just the jug it came in? A chance to be innovative! Soon we were washing up some sugar dispensers we found in a cupboard in the church kitchen, and labeling them using scraps of paper, scotch tape, and a green marker. “It’ll look fine. It’s pretty dark out there,” said Eileen.

Then we set up the dessert table (using only bug-free birch slabs, of course), and then Virginia was like, “you do realize there’s another grocery bag full of lemonade concentrate, don’t you?” We hadn’t realized, but now we did, so we mixed up even more lemonade. And then finally, we had a chance to take a breather.

Oof!

Karli came by. “You can sit at that table up there, with the assorted bridesmaids and Wesley.”

…

We kept the dessert table filled. We ate our food. We admired the couple.

We signed at the romantic-ness of their first dance.

And then we looked around and realized that people were leaving, and the whole thing was almost over. We took out our tiny bubble wands and blew a cloud of bubbles over Elaine and Brandon as they dashed away, into their new married life.

…

From Friday morning until Saturday evening, I was so focused on the wedding that I didn’t have much time to stop and appreciate Alaska. But then, once we’d gotten Elaine and Brandon married, restored the twinkly reception hall back into a run-of-the-mill church sanctuary, and eaten a supper of wedding-food leftovers, things changed.

We had time for the wilderness.

However, I’ll talk about all that in my next post, which will be the final post in my Alaska series.

My first introduction to Alaska came 45 minutes before my flight was supposed to land, when I finished my movie and lifted the window shade. As I peeked out upon the Alaskan landscape, still brightly lit at 9 pm, my jaw hit the floor.

Look. I thought Oregon had “real” mountains, and I’d snicker at what passed as a “mountain” on the east coast. But let me tell you. Oregon mountains are nothing, NOTHING compared to Alaska mountains.

A quick Google search would have told me this. The top 10 highest mountains in the USA are all in Alaska, while Mt. Hood doesn’t even make the top 200. And while I knew Alaska mountains are taller than Oregon mountains, I had NO IDEA the disparity would be this drastic.

Here’s where I ought to post a photo. And let me tell you, that was my first reaction when I saw the splendor of peaks and glaciers spread out before me. But the blurry through-the-window phone photo was completely inadequate to represent that sort of glory, and I quickly scrapped that idea and just stared.

Transfixed.

So mesmerized that I thought crashing into one wouldn’t be such a bad way to die, as modes of death go.

…

I was in Alaska because my friend Elaine was getting married. I’ve known Elaine since 2016, when she first messaged me on Facebook and we got into a long conversation about living in vans and then we decided to go camping together in the Redwoods.

For Elaine, the adventure never stops. She ended up moving to Alaska, where she met a swell guy named Brandon, and then the two of them decided to tie the knot and invite all their friends to come watch.

Thanks, Elaine and Brandon!

…

I was picked up at the airport by Elaine’s parents, as well as what I call “The Kuhns Clan…” three Kuhns siblings, one spouse, and three of their children. Also Wesley, who wasn’t related to but often hung out with the Kuhns siblings. They were all friends of Elaine, and they’d arrived an hour before me. We all were in a large white van. Elaine told me that I didn’t need to worry about renting a car. Apparently rentals are really expensive in Alaska.

I snapped this blurry photo out the car window, trying to capture the looming mountains as well as the endless twilight. It was too far south, and too late in the year, to see the midnight sun. But the golden hour stretched on and on, and when the sun finally set at 10 pm, the twilight seemed never-ending.

Pete, Elaine’s dad, had the sharpest eye for wild animals. “Moose!” He’d call out, and sure enough, there was a moose. “Fox!” He called. And there it was, bushy tail and everything.

After an hour of driving we reached Palmer, Alaska, and Pete dropped me off at Bob and Dianne’s house. Bob and Dianne were friends of Elaine who had some extra room. Several other people were planning to room there over the wedding, but since I’d come early, for now it was just me. Everyone else in the van was staying at this place called InterAct Ministries, which had a large guest house.

You’d think it would give me FOMO, but the introvert and needs-her-sleep in me was rather delighted.

…

The next morning I was picked up in a stretch Hummer limo.

I opened the door to this thing and it was a PARTY CAR. Mirrors, neon lights, lava lamps, clear-plastic cup holders, glass bottles for booze. Only of course there was no booze.

There were, however, lots of car seats.

(Sorry for the terrible photo. My phone camera is iffy at the best of times, and downright terrible in low light. Also sometimes I just push the button and then forget to look at the picture and make sure it’s not blurry, LOL)

For some reason Elaine’s brother, who also lives in Alaska, has a friend who owns a stretch Hummer. “Oh, that can haul a lot of people,” Elaine’s brother thought. So he borrowed it for the wedding.

The Hummer was filled with Elaine’s parents, siblings, siblings-in-law, nieces, and nephews. Also her cousin Rose and her cousin Eileen. And Sherri, her friend/bridesmaid. We all went to the church where Elaine was going to get married, and we weeded, spread pea gravel, strung up lights, set tables, etc. The Kuhns clan arrived and also helped out. I’m not sure how they got there, because I overheard someone saying that the van we’d taken from the airport had broken down, and I never saw it again for the rest of the weekend.

Trying to figure out table placement.

Elaine wanted the reception to be lit only by candles and string lights, so Karli and I took on the task of covering all the windows.

“I feel like at home we’d just run to Walmart and get what we needed,” said Karli, looking at the collection of tape, scissors, and Fred Meyer paper grocery bags she’d collected from the church kitchen. “But that’s not Elaine’s way.”

“Oh well, it’s a chance to be innovative,” I said.

The sanctuary, where we set up the tables, was surrounded by classroom doors that had little rectangular windows. We taped brown paper bags over them, from the inside of the classrooms, so that from the main room it looked rather nice. We were stumped by the big nursery window for a while, but I found a huge roll of paper in a back storage room of the church. I had to lie on my stomach atop some broken-down chairs to retrieve it, but we managed.

The big glass doors leading into the sanctuary were the last hurdle. The white paper had worked on the nursery window, because it was tinted so you couldn’t tell that the paper was white. But for the big main doors, we wanted black.

Garbage bags? No, too tacky. Table cloths? The only ones available were spandex. We stretched them over the doors. Hey, that kinda works!

But when we shut the doors, and the sun shone through, they looked strange and creepy. “Do they look like eyes, to you?” I asked. Because something about their placement rounded the edges of the doors, and the two posters already taped to the doors looked like pupils of two giant eyes.

“Yes!” Karli agreed.

Rose chimed in to say that to her, the stretched-out spandex with the sun shining through looked like black Halloween cobwebs.

She was right. It did.

Giant eyes? Halloween cobwebs? The spandex tablecloths had to go.

Karli and I made up our minds to just drive to Fred Meyer and buy black poster board. But what were we supposed to drive? The Hummer? In the end, we didn’t go after all, due to vehicle shortage. “I guess we’ll just get it tomorrow,” we decided.

After all, it was only Thursday. The wedding wasn’t until Saturday.

We all went over to the InterAct guesthouse for supper. Elaine and her immediate family, their spouses and children, her two cousins, and Sherri were all in the vast upstairs space. The Kuhns clan and Wesley were downstairs, in a smaller apartment. It began to feel like everyone was part of a clan, either the Stoltzfus Clan or the smaller Kuhns Clan. Sherri, Wesley, and I were the random wild cards who weren’t related to anybody.

…

The cool thing about Alaska is that you can just go on a hike after supper without having to worry that it will get dark.

The dirt was soft, like powdered sugar, and many of us went barefoot.

Elaine pointing.

Rose, Elaine, Elaine’s niece, and Karli

Elaine and I. And Elaine’s brother Mel’s thumb.

Kim, my roommate from Kansas, called me while I was on the trail. She was the wedding photographer, and she was going to stay at Bob and Dianne’s with me. “I’m coming in about 3 am,” she said.

“Okay, do you have an address for your GPS?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when you go in the driveway there will be a log cabin on your left, and then a new house on your right. I’m in the new house. You can go around back to the basement door. I’m the only one in the basement. Just open doors and poke your head in until you find our room. If you have any trouble, call me.”

“Okay.”

…

We all piled back in the Hummer, and they dropped me off on their way back. Hard to believe it was nighttime already, with the sky in its endless twilight, but it was. I went to bed.

BRRRIIIIIINGGGGGGGG

I woke up. Groggy. Picked up my phone. It was Kim. “Hello?”

“Hi, I don’t know what to do. All the doors of the house are locked.”

“Okay, I’ll let you in.” I stumbled out of bed and opened the basement door. No one was out there. “Are you sure you’re at the right house?”

“It’s a blue house, right?”

“Um…no…it’s a yellow house.”

“What? But I went in the driveway, and there was a log cabin, and a newer house…a blue house…”

“Oh yeah, sorry. You have to keep going down the driveway a bit. Sorry I forgot to tell you about the blue house.”

Soon I heard a soft rumble, and Kim’s car came purring up. She’d opted for a rental, despite the expense. She was mortified. “I can’t believe I went to the wrong house!”

“I can’t believe I wasn’t clearer in my instructions! And I told you to peek into all the rooms! What if you’d actually gotten inside and went peeking into stranger’s rooms!”

We heard footsteps on the stairs. Bob came down, in his bathrobe. “Is everything all right?”

“I accidentally went to the blue house instead of this house!” said Kim.

Bob laughed. “Heh heh heh. Yeah, that’s my uncle’s place.”

He trotted back upstairs, and we all went to bed.

…

This has been part 1 of my Alaska adventure. Part 2 is coming…soon. In the next day or two hopefully. I have many projects to work on this week, including a play that I need to have done for VBS next week, so we’ll see.

I hatched a wild plan to drive to Oregon with my brother Ben, hide in the cupboard while my family was at church, and surprise them all. Would I succeed? Watch to find out!

So yes, this means that just like that, my year of travel is over! Hopefully in the next few blog posts I’ll process how the trip as a whole went for me and meant to me.