In approximately 24 hours, my plane will have just touched down in Little Rock. (Yeah, I know, but it was cheaper than flying to Memphis. I’m renting a car to drive the hour & a half difference, and it’s still cheaper than a direct flight.) By this time on Friday, I’ll be in a car with my best friend and her dog as we start our fun-filled, 2,400-mile, cross-country journey.

Impressive, huh? Nebraska looks pretty daunting to me, like it just goes on forever. The last time I drove cross-country, Montana was the state where I started to get really cranky because it felt like we would never reach the opposite state line. On this trip, I’m predicting that I’ll feel the same way about Nebraska.

Back when I moved here in 2001, my mom and I drove through Wyoming, and I really dug it because we got to see Devil’s Tower, the mountain from “Close Encounters.” That was pretty darn cool. Apparently the Native Americans think that it has some kind of mystical, supernatural powers, and it might’ve just been a coincidence, but that was the only time in the entire 3,000-mile trip that Teenie went from quietly sleeping in the backseat to wigging the hell out. She was running all over the car, meowing her little head off, and trying to paw her way through the rolled-up car windows. It was quite bizarre. We tried to pretend that it was nothing supernatural or eerie, and probably just had to do with the fact that there were a lot of prairie dog fields around there, and she could probably smell them. That’s what I’d prefer to think, anyway. (Oh, and as soon as we left? She got in her little spot in the backseat and went back to sleep, just like she had done for the previous three days. Even my mom got kind of creeped out by her behavior.)

On this trip, we’re going to be on the wrong side of the state for Devil’s Tower, and I don’t think we’re going to be doing any several hundred mile detours just to see it. In fact, I’m dreading Wyoming because we’re going to have to drive through Laramie, and I’m pretty sure Kris’s car still has a PFLAG bumper sticker on it. I think we’ll just drive like hell through that general vicinity.

I won’t have Internet access while I’m on the road, since I’m trying to travel light and I don’t want to be schlepping (sp?) my laptop all across the United States. Plus, we’re going to be staying in pretty cheap motels, and most of them don’t have high-speed access. As much as I love this blog, I don’t see myself trying to post an entry over a dial-up connection. (I shudder to even imagine how slow that would be.) However, I bought a journal – the real kind, like with paper and everything – and some fancy colored pens, and I intend to keep a travel diary of sorts, so hopefully I can transcribe most of it when I get back, and who knows, some of it might even be interesting. I’m also bringing my camera, so if nothing else, there will be lots of pictures.