Tales From Our Trip- The Final, Final Chapter

Okay, back to the story. What are we ready for? Day 10?? I think that's right. So here we go.
Day 10: Sunday morning. I woke up feeling much better. We gassed up the van, took it through a car wash to get rid of all the bugs and headed over to Wal-mart to pick up some supplies. Colin wanted to find something to make the weather stripping on our van windshield stop flapping. We had a little section in front of the passengers side that kept coming up and flapping. Very annoying. We also wanted to pick up something for breakfast as all the motel had was make your own waffles and those aren't usually great. So we went in and came out with more than we had planned on. We broke the first rule of shopping: don't go hungry!
So we came out with chips, lunch meat, buns, a hoagie to be shared by everyone (we had done this previously on the trip when we stopped in Evanston, WY. We had been in a grocery store to use the bathroom and grab a snack when we saw the lady in the deli department making a humongous sub sandwich..it had 30 pieces of meat! It was half of a loaf of sour dough french bread. It only cost about $5. It ended up feeding about 5 of us). Colin had located some super glue for the windshield and we found a few other things to buy.
After mending the windshield problem we were on our way! Off to see the Golden Spike.
Well, okay, not the Golden Spike, it's in a museum in California. We went to the site where they drove in the Golden spike to connect the railroads creating the transcontinental railroad. Boy, was this out of the way! It's out in the middle of nowhere. It was really neat, though. We stayed long enough to see them move the trains and we watched a Charlie Brown movie telling us all about the Transcontinental Railroad. We got a couple of neat souvenirs; a train Christmas ornament, a book to read to Ian, and of course, a magnet for our fridge. Our fridge is full of magnets from places we've been, it's a fun reminder of some great memories and experiences.
We had our lunch (a slice of the hoagie sandwich) as we headed out again. We paused long enough to take our picture by the sign for the Golden Spike. Some other people stopped, too, so we took turns taking pictures for each other. Then we left.
Guess what else they do in the middle of nowhere, Utah?? They test rockets! So we were able to stop and look at some that they had on an outside display. Colin really liked that! We just stopped for a minute, though, we were getting behind schedule.
We headed back toward the main highway and drove for quite a while seeing mainly farms and ranches and some beautiful horses. Our next big stop would be in Boise, Idaho, where we would stop for dinner. It was about 7:30 when we got to Boise. We headed to Cracker Barrel for dinner. I had a $25 gift certificate to use there (I'd earned it through My Points). It paid for dinner and the tip. Hooray! Dinner was great. I had their fried chicken and mashed potatoes with gravy. Ian had a kids meal with fried shrimp. Colin had French toast and bacon and an egg, I think. I had a bite of that French toast...yum! Unfortunately, the gift certificate did not pay for our souvenir shopping, which cost almost as much as our meal! We did find a cute gift for Colin's parents to thank them for watching Dilly.
We left Cracker Barrel quite happy. We headed toward an historical landmark that had significance to Colin's family. A marker of a massacre on the Oregon Trail. One of Colin's ancestor's helped rescue one of the survivors and even fought the attacking Indians. Again, we took pictures.
Finally, we were on our way to Ontario, OR to find our motel. We stayed in Ontario on our honeymoon moving trip to Washington. We got there around 9:30, which seems to be our average arrival time. We were so happy when they told us that the pool was open 24 hrs. a day (even though the signs said 11). So we finally got to go swimming!!! Ian and Colin even got up in the morning and went swimming a second time while I slept some more! We had breakfast and went over to Jiffy Lube to get the fluids in the van checked and topped off and then we headed for home.
We stopped for lunch at Taco Time in La Grand and ate the crunchy tacos I had been craving. We also stopped in Yakima at a fruit stand where we bought some cherries and they gave Ian an apple. That boy gets more stuff given to him!
Colin took us over White Pass and we got some pretty cool pictures of Mt. Rainier...I posted one earlier, so I'm sure you've already seen it. It was a very pretty way to go.
We got to Colin's parent's house around 7:30 and I was really hoping to get home before dark. I hadn't planned on Colin's mouth. Boy, was he keyed up. 10 hours of driving and he'd had caffeine. At 8:30, I announced that it was 8:30. It didn't make him budge a bit, he kept talking. I finally had to ask him to come make room for Dilly's crate. He did a little. I think his mom did a lot more. In this process, we discovered why the floor where I was sitting was all wet. Colin hadn't pushed in the drain plug in our cooler, so all the melting ice was leaking into our van. I think it's still drying out. And yes, Colin was still standing around talking. So I took the leash from him and got Dilly and put her in her crate and said we needed to go. By the time we left it was already after 9. I was so tired and ready to be home.
After we arrived home, Colin went to get our house key from our neighbor and talked some more! I believe he talked for about 45 minutes!!! It was long enough for me to walk the dog and pretty much unload the van by myself. I love Colin, but sometimes he can just talk too much! I got very annoyed with him and he apologized and we both realized we were very exhausted from our trip. We had big plans for getting things done the next day, but I think mostly, we slept. Oh, wait, Colin did mow the lawn and do a couple of things. The road trip really hit him hard Wednesday morning when he tried to get up and go to work! He tried at least three times. Once at 5:30, so he could walk to the bus. Once at 6:00 so he could drive to the bus and once at 7:00 so he could drive to work. None of these worked and he finally realized that he was just exhausted and ended up taking a sick day. We slept the majority of Wednesday in our own bed, which is nothing like a hammock! It's good to be home.
So there you go, I finally did it! I got to the end of the story. I think I'll it it the way any proper story ends.
The End