Well, I made it! We left Saturday morning (my brother in law and I) and arrived early early Tuesday morning. It was a long, long drive, but it was also really exciting and fun. After living in the Middle East for four months, it was a wonderful experience to return to this beautiful country and see it up close by driving almost all the way across it.
I love roadtrips. I think that’s something that makes me really American. Out here in the USA, we’re always on the move. We have friends and family from all over the country, and many of us move from one state to another several times in our lives. Roads, highways, and travel are a part of our national mythology, from the pioneer trails to route 66. I’m no exception to any of this–I totally love it. Whenever I get the urge to just hop in a car and go somewhere, I feel in some small way like it’s my American heritage calling to me.
We started Saturday by loading up Danny’s truck, hooking up the Uhaul trailer, loading it up with all the furniture, luggage, boxes, and miscellaneous junk that we were taking out to Utah, and headed out!
My father was REALLY generous. A lot more than he needed to be. He paid for the trailer, gave us nearly $500 for gas, and bought enough food to nearly last us the entire way. That was pretty awesome.
That first day, we drove through Western Massachusetts, New York, the tip of Pennsylvania up near lake Eerie, and halfway through Ohio. It was a BEAUTIFUL drive. Holy cow, I didn’t realize that American farms could be so beautiful. There were so many in New York and Pennsylvania, big red barns and gray metal silos next to huge fields of corn, with green rolling hills and forests in the background. It was really pretty.
Cincinnati was really confusing, but fortunately Danny had a GPS device (a Magellen–we called her “maggie”) that helped us navigate through the spaghetti bowl of highways out there. In fact, Maggie was really useful the whole trip–she led us to campsites and gas stations, and at the very end led us through Heber and Provo Canyon and helped us shave off quite a bit of time.
We camped out at a random campground out in Ohio, then went to church at the local ward there. It was really interesting to go to church in an actual chapel with pews. The ceiling was so high, and the room was so big! Definitely not what I’m used to, after four months of the Amman branch and three years of student wards.
The dynamic in the church was really interesting, too. It felt more rural–the people were a lot different than the people in the Amman branch, where nearly all the Americans are world travelers and government workers. Still, it was the same church, the same gospel, the same organization and everything else. It really opened my eyes to the fact that even in different, far away places, among people that I hardly know, it’s still the same church. Kind of interesting.
We drove through Toledo, Indiana, passed just south of Chicago, and made it midway through Iowa before the end of the night. Flat country, LOTS of farms. It was still really green, but there weren’t as many forests. Mostly just farms. Indiana was kind of more of the same, but it got really flat in Illinois and we started seeing cornfields that stretched all the way to the horizon. Crazy.
Let me just say something here about tolls. They suck. When we passed from New York to Pennsylvania, we had to pay a hefty $35. $35!!! It would have been a lot cheaper, but we were pulling a trailer. Things didn’t get much better until Illinois. $2 in Pennsylvania, about $10 in Ohio, and $16 in Indiana. By that time, we asked the lady at the toll booth in Indiana if things were much worse in Illinois, and she said “oh yeah, Illinois tolls are REALLY high.” We passed the border dreading what we would find, but after paying $1.70 to get on the road, we were able to pass through the state without paying anything else. And after we crossed the Mississippi into the Western US, there were no more tolls at all. There also weren’t any giant, luxurious rest stops with massive convenience stores, arcades, and fast food restaurants, but I was ok with that.
After crossing the Mississippi–the quintessential north-south line that cuts America in half, culturally and historically as well as geographically–we passed through Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming, three states that I’ve never really seen. They were strikingly different from the other states we passed through in the East. Trees gave way to plains, cornfields gave way to cattle, cities and towns gave way to open stretches of highway populated only with farmers and truckers, and accents became thicker and much more rural. It was really interesting. America is such a fascinating place.
We camped in Iowa at a campground on the side of the highway (literally), then took off early in the morning. By this time, we were both really excited just to get to our final destination, so we decided that if we weren’t too tired by the end of the day, we’d just push on for Utah without stopping until we got there. I was ok with that. Most of the sites I wanted to see were pretty far off of the highway (Nauvoo, for example is several hours south of I-80–it would have taken a whole day just to go there), and I really did want to get to Utah at this point. And really, I found the drive itself interesting enough that I didn’t really feel compelled to stop at the major historical sites. They would be cool to visit, but maybe some other time. After all, whenever you go to a really cool place, it’s always a good idea to leave at least a couple of things undone so you have an excuse to come back. 
Nebraska is HUGE. It took FOREVER to get through that state! But Wyoming was really beautiful, especially in the light of the setting sun. We passed just south of an enormous thunderstorm, and that was incredibly beautiful. I love storms, especially the huge ones that tower over the plains with their black, moody, ominous clouds that are so brilliantly white at their peaks. The flat plains and endless cornfields gradually gave way to rolling cattle lands, and I started to feel like we had truly entered an empty place. The cloudless blue skies gave way to marvelous and beautiful skyscapes, as wonderful as any of the scenery that we had passed through earlier. As we crossed into Wyoming, we started to see mountains on the horizon, and hills right in front of us, and I started to feel like we’d truly passed into the West.
Highway exits and gas stations started to become scarce. We gassed up at this old station deep in Wyoming that looked like it had been built in 40s and hadn’t been renovated since. It was right next to some amazingly beautiful mountains overlooking the endless emptiness of the rolling cattle lands out there. Awesome.
We passed through the rest of Wyoming in the night–lots of confusing and unnerving road construction, with twists and turns as we made our way through the few mountains that lie on I-80 between Wyoming and Utah. For the most part, I-80 is flat, even out into the rockies, which is one of the reasons why we chose it. Fewer treacherous mountain cliffs and passes, but more truckers. You trade the one for the other, but it was better for us since we had a trailer ourselves, and didn’t want to climb (or descend) any steep slopes. When you’re going down a hill, hit 75 mph, and the trailer on your back starts to wobble, it can be kind of scary. Braking only makes the wobbling worse, so all you can really do is downshift or ride the hill out. Despite the difficulties, we pressed on.
By the time we got to Utah, I was a zombie. I drove until I was too exhausted to be able to drive safely, and Danny stayed awake by singing along to Les Miserables and listening to the second half of Harry Potter 5 on CD. Neither one of these were conducive to sleeping, so instead I zombified. When we pulled into Provo and drove down University Avenue towards Springville (where we spent the night at Danny’s grandparents’ house), I was happy to finally be in Provo but so tired that the news had little effect. We pulled up to the McQueens’ beautiful house, I grabbed my clothes, took a room in the basement, and passed out.
So that was our roadtrip. These last couple of days, I’ve mostly been figuring things out–housing, classes, car, clothes, stuff in storage, etc. My mother and sisters are all out here, and it’s been really cool to see them! I gave them all the gifts that I brought for them from the Middle East, and they really enjoyed them. That was really great.
I love America. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the best country in the world, and I really truly believe that. It’s my country. I love learning about its history, its culture, and after spending the last four months abroad, I’m more enthusiastic than ever to be back and see it again. There is such a HUGE difference between East and West, between New England and the Midwest, and the Midwest and the Rockies. I could just feel it in a hundred different subtle ways as we passed through. Iowa and Nebraska aren’t just nowhere states–they have their own distinct feel to them, things that set them apart from the other places. The people, too, are so different.
Seeing all these differences in America made me wonder if Jordan is much the same way. To my eyes, as a foreigner, most of the places seemed very similar. Amman was definitely its own place, and the landscape in Irbid was a lot different from the landscape in Kerak and Mafraq, but other than the city-village-Bedouin divisions that were fairly obvious, I didn’t really pick up on many other differences in the people. A corner store in Amman is prettymuch the same as a corner store anywhere else in the country, and the houses and villages everywhere look prettymuch the same. At least, to my eyes they did. I’m sure there are differences, but they were so subtle, and my eyes and ears were so untrained, that I didn’t pick up on them. Yet, in my own country, I can pick up on all the subtle differences between regions. What if I knew Jordan well enough that I could do the same there? I have to come back someday.
As far as culture shock goes, it was more exhilarating than exhausting or unnerving. The only two things that I still find truly shocking are the taboos against disposing of toilet paper in waste baskets and how incredibly TINY American coinage is. When I got back to BYU, though, I did get another shock that was kind of funny. At the University of Jordan, there are a lot of beautiful girls, but they almost all wear the hijab. At BYU, there are even more beautiful girls–really, some of the most amazingly drop dead gorgeous girls you will ever see in your life–and NONE of them wear the hijab. All that beauty, totally uncovered…it was something of a shock to me. For the first five minutes at least. And then I started to get used to it (and realized that I still don’t like typical Utah hairstyles–in fact I like them less now).
