When Samson and I left the Motel 6 in Gillette, WY, we were both spent. Because of the nervous nature of Samson, I wasn't allowed much sleep. Samson had been travelling even farther than me, as he had been transported all the way from his former home in New Jersey. But he quickly got into the back seat and drifted off to sleep as I continued the trek towards his adopted family.
About an hour after I left the motel, as I was going up a long climb, I heard a rumble, then another, and then my exhaust gave up the ghost. At that point my car sounded like a Harley with straight pipes, and there was nothing I could do about it. I grimaced every time I had to accelerate and said a silent prayer of thanks whenever I could coast down a hill. As the night gave way to day, I still couldn't stop to get it fixed, since I had to get Samson to Bremerton.
We drove through the rest of Wyoming, and then through Montana, which is not a small place. I had to stop for gas twice, each time hoping that a local wouldn't ticket me for an illegal exhaust. We breezed through Idaho, and then entered eastern Washington.
Until I drove this same route with my wife a few years prior, I had never been to any part of Washington. I had assumed that the whole state was one giant forest, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The eastern part, once you passed Spokane, was a flat prairie void of anything other than grass and an occasional home. No livestock, no trees, just grass as far as the eye could see. The first time I drove through it, it seemed to take forever. This time I knew what to expect, so I wasn't bothered by the dreary terrain.
Before long, Samson and I were crossing the Columbia River, which meant we were entering the Cascade Mountain range. There the terrain began to resemble much of which the past twenty-four hours had provided, as the mountains and tress came back. But it also meant that I would soon be coming to the dreaded Snoqualmie Pass. This is the pass that is often shut down due to snow, and tire chains are required by state law when the pass has received enough snow. Luckily for me, the pass was clear, so my all-season tires were sufficient.
As we began to enter the pass, I turned my radio on for the first time to a local station for the pass report. It turned out that the next day, the state would be conducting a controlled avalanche, and that the pass would be shut down for three hours. I had missed that mess by a day, but it also meant that the pass would still have potential avalanche issues. I've never been in an avalanche, but I had seen enough disaster movies to know I didn't want to be caught up in one.
I am a wordsmith, but I'm not sure I can give the scenery its full due. The pass itself is a series of curves and climbs, and the cliffs were a few feet to my right. The snow was still everywhere on the hills, and an almost supernatural mist/fog curled over the tops of the trees and land, like the fingers of Nordic Frost Giants clumsily trying to grab a car or two. It was breathtaking and fearsome all at the same time.
It is in moments like that we humans find our proper prospective as to our place on this earth. We are at the top of the food chain, we have split the atom and have mapped the human genome, but we are nothing but specks in those mountains. They were here long before I was born, and they will be here long after I turn to dust. Their power, their mighty splendor, needs no words, for their strength is obvious to all who see it as they drive along that pass.
We came down the other side, I made the mistake of thinking I was almost to Bremerton. In my brain, the Seattle area is a hop, skip, and a jump from the pass, but in reality it was not. My phone informed me that I still had about another 60 miles to go, and I groaned. It was dark now, and all I wanted to do was get Samson to his home. I was tired and I needed a break.
Finally I came to the house of his adopters, and I parked my car. Now this is the part of the story I will just highlight: the couple, the fit, all of it, was a disaster. A team of skilled writers couldn't have crafted a worse-case scenario than the one I entered. After a brief encounter with the husband and a dog that absolutely refused to go with the man, I knew that this would not work out.
I made a quick call, told the man I was leaving with the dog, and drove off. He was not pleased to say the least, but I had zero concerns about his feelings. Honestly, I would have left Samson tied to a pole and drove away before I would have left him with that family.
Okay. Enough about that.
Since I knew as much about Bremerton as I did the back streets of Marrakesh, I just drove until I found a place to park, which turned out to be a 7-Eleven. It also turned out to be the local druggie hang-out, so I then drove until I found a grocery store. It was there that Liz told me to find a place for the night, so I located the nearest Motel 6 and got a room for us.
I am no one's hero. I have flaws, and some of them run deep. But Samson had grown to trust me, and I was going to see this through. I am retired and this was going to be a vacation for me anyway, but I am so very grateful that I had driven all the way from Ohio. If the transports had been a series of exchanges, the last transporter would have been stuck between a rock and a hard place. But I had no time frame, no deadlines to meet, so I could take the time to make this right.
The story will continue...