The Journey to Albany

My sister Julia flew down to Austin to make the long drive to Albany with me. After a smashing going away party courtesy of Michelle and Rebecca (who I can't thank enough for putting it all together. I thought the Elizabeth Trivia game was particularly awesome.), we got everything finished up (the packing, the moving, the cleaning, etc.), and we left Austin on Tuesday afternoon.

Because we left so late, we didn't get very far in the first day. We were going to hit Dallas at 5:00, so we created a detour, taking back roads to avoid rush hour. It worked out just fine. And we found this sign, which we thought was funny.

The caption is "Wait....which way is north??"

We spent the night in Texarkana. Originally I wanted to make sure that we were at least out of Texas on the first day. I had to call a couple hotels before finding a vacant non-smoking room in town, and it ended up being on the Texas side of the street. (Literally. The main street in town is the border...one side of the street is Arkansas, the other side is Texas.)

We stayed at a Ramada Inn, and it comes with a funny story. We checked in, and went to our assigned room. We opened the door and found the light on, a bag on the bed, and the bed already turned down. Thankfully there was no one in it, but it appeared that it was definitely occupied. We went back to the front desk to inform the clerk that she'd assigned us a room that was already taken. She assigned us another room. We went there, fortunately this one was empty. Julia suggested we lock the top latch right away, which turned out to be a good idea. After we'd been in there about an hour, we heard someone unlocking the door and attempting to get in. (It was only an attempt because we'd locked the top.) They knocked and said through the door, "Is someone in there?" We said back that the room was occupied (we didn't go to the door, as we were both wearing our pajamas), and that we too had been assigned a room that was already taken, so they should probably go back to the front desk to get another. Ha!

We survived the night and continued on the drive. Because I have a goal to go to every state capital in the country, we made a point to go to those that were on our way (and some that were just a little bit out of our way). First up was Little Rock, Arkansas.

We crossed the Mississippi River and into Tennessee where we stopped for lunch in Memphis.

We later stopped in Nashville at the capitol building.

We made it to just past Knoxville before we stopped for the night.

The next day we made it out of Tennessee and into Virginia.

Virginia is beautiful, even in the middle of the winter.

Going to Richmond was a bit out of our way, but we figured we might as well go.

That night we stayed with my friend Sarah in her apartment just outside D.C. It was great to see her, even if our visit was brief. I wish we could have spent more time there, but we needed to get back on the road. But we drove through so we could at least see some of it.


A bit of rerouting took us to Annapolis and Dover, which must be among the smallest capitol cities in the country. In Annapolis, I wasn't even convinced the map was taking us to the right place. Turns out the biggest domed building in Annapolis in NOT the capitol, but rather a church at the US Naval Academy.

Annapolis. The plaque out front says it is the oldest capitol building in the country that is still in use. (And there's pretty much no where to park.)

We made it to Delaware.

And saw the capitol in Dover.

New Jersey welcomes us in a digital way.

But fortunately, they had a real sign too.

Continuing north we made our way to Trenton. It's kind of ghetto. We didn't want to stay there long. (And it was cold.)

We hit a bit of traffic in northern New Jersey, but avoided I-95 through Newark and New York City, which probably eased the traffic we did have to sit in.

Finally we crossed the border into New York (we tried taking a picture of the sign, but it was too dark at this point), and after a final 3 hours of driving, arrived at my new apartment. (My living situation has since changed, but that's a long story.) I live about 15 minutes north of Albany. I slept the first night on the floor, but was so glad to sleep in. I took Julia to the airport Saturday afternoon. I can't say enough how grateful I am that she was willing to make the long journey with me! Thanks Julia!! Thanks for all your help, support, and the company. (And for bringing Harry Potter on your iPod! :) )

Our trip couldn't have been better. The weather was perfect, the roads were dry, the car had no problems. We drove just over 2000 miles (according to my odometer) and it took us three and a half days. The weather is cold, cold, cold. There is a ton of snow on the ground and snowed an additional 5 or 6 inches this weekend. My car doesn't seem particularly pleased about the cold weather, but it's being a trouper. (Especially since I replaced the battery on Tuesday morning...)

I bought a pair of snow boots Saturday night, so it's official. I'm here to stay the winter.