originally, i'd thought i'd document the trip as i went.....i figured, hey, i'll bring my ibook and my digital camera, and sort of do a running thing throughout the trip.....

well, once i'd gotten on the bus, i sort of changed my mind....looking around, i thought it might not be in my best interests for some of the people around to know i had a $1800 computer in my bag. :/ anyways, this is more or less what i did....

wednesday august 15th

this was the day i left....i went out and did some stuff with my mom, then went home, got all my stuff together. i brought cards, a bunch of stuff i'd picked up for ech, some stuff to do on the bus....eeep...no room for clothes and stuff!! i thinned out the clothing items i was bringing and managed to get it all crammed into 2 bags, which is what they said i could carry on. i had to transfer buses three times, so i didn't really want to check things. then i took a shower, so i'd be as clean as possible on the trip...all 24 and a half hours of it....

my mom drove me to the bus depot. yikes.....it's not really in the best part of salt lake city. i got a place in the line for the bus and looked around at my fellow travelers. there are a lot of different types of people who ride the bus...there were student looking people, people who looked like they live on the bus, families with children, single parents with children....i wondered how the little kids would hold up on a long bus ride.

i didn't really have any food apart from a can of slim fast (i always take that with me when i'm traveling) and a couple of snickers bars, and some pocky and stuff i was bringing for ech. my mom was concerned i'd starve to death, so i had her hold my place in line and i ran and got some food from the snack bar--an indifferent looking ham and cheese sandwich, a danish, a blueberry muffin and a beef stick. what can i say, the selection wasn't all that broad. i got a couple of cans of coke out of the vending machine, and waited for the bus to load.

i was really feeling nervous....i've never gone on a long bus trip before and i didn't know what to expect. some of the people waiting to get on the bus looked sort of scary. and don't go criticizing me for looking at people and thinking they looked scary...i felt the drawbacks of being five foot one, female and solitary very keenly. but--i was going to go and take my trip. it was soon time to board, so i said goodbye to my mom and dragged my bags (pokemon cards, books, and a laptop weigh a LOT!) and managed to get a seat by the window. i sat down...man....those seats were SMALL! i mean, even for me, and i don't really take up all that much space. i don't know how persons of normal size manage, and if you happen to be larger than average i think you would not be happy. this was a rimrock trailways bus, by the way, and not greyhound.

i didn't have my seat alone for long, a guy of about 16 with a skateboard came and sat next to me. he seemed very nice so that was all right. as we pulled out of the depot i was going through an interesting set of mixed emotions.....the trip was sort of intimdating me, but it was also kind of adventurous, and i was looking forward to seeing ech again. i opened up a can of coke, and tried to eat my sandwich. ugh!! i took one bite and decided not to eat it. so i had the beef stick and looked out the window. it was past six now, lots of traffic.....i sort of let my hearing wander around the seats surrounding me, finding out about the people in my area. there were a couple of girls from california i think, and a boy from tennessee.....a lot of the people around seemed to travel on the bus a lot. looking out the window wasn't entertaining me, so i got out a book. i wavered between the eddings' new novel (a present from kajio) or the second harry potter book. i decided that as it was getting later, i'd read the harry potter book and save the longer novel for the next day. the chamber of secrets kept me entertained for a couple of hours, then i decided to work on the dratini egg i was hatching for mystery thing, to trade for the female charizard he bred for me.

few things are less fun that riding your gameboy bike up and down waiting for a pokemon egg to hatch.....dratini eggs take a really long time.

we'd crossed over into idaho at this point, and the bus driver had put in another movie--field of dreams. i sort of watched that, rode the bike, and looked out the window all at the same time. we went thru some small towns, stopped to get more people, then finally pulled over at a travel plaza for a meal stop. the flying j convienience store had a lot better selection than the salt lake bus depot, let me tell you....i got a liter of coke, a krab salad, some milk, some cinnamon bears, some sugar wafers and a rice krispy treat. wow! and it was all like only five or six bucks. unbelievable! i sat outside and ate most of my salad, then wandered back to the bus. i guess we were about five hours into the trip at this point, and i was really getting tired. i hadn't been getting much sleep.

we got back on, and made our way through idaho. it was really dark by now and i couldnt see much of anything, the damn egg wouldn't hatch, so i decided to go to sleep for a bit.

well, it was hard to sleep....after field of dreams, despite the fact that it was now midnight, the driver put in yet ANOTHER movie...on golden pond. hello 80's!!! the volume was so loud, it was really hard to sleep.....anyways, i drifted in and out til about a quarter to three. that's when we arrived at butte, montana, site of the first transfer. i was sort of out of it at this point....i was happy to hear that the bus was continuing north, and i wouldnt have to transfer. the guy sitting next to me got off, so i had the whole seat to myself which was great. i got off the bus, stretched my legs a bit, then got back on and tried to go back to sleep. i guess i did, cause next thing i knew it was five thirty and we were getting close to the site of the next transfer, great falls, montana.

now, this transfer was at a combination bus depot/airport. so, they had large clean bathrooms which was nice. i went and washed up as best i could, combed my hair again, and all that in an attempt to not look like i'd slept on a bus. i was only moderately successful, but one does what one can. i called my parents, vash, and ech, to let them know i was still alive and in good condition, then sat down to wait for the next bus. those of us traveling to canada had to fill out some forms. we waited....and waited.....eight am came, the time we were supposed to leave, and no bus! i was sort of worried, cause i still had to make another transfer.

finally at about eight thirty the bus came. apparently the driver had gone to fill it up at the gas station, and got sprayed with gas, or diesel, or whatever they run on, so he had to go home and shower. well, he got there, we got on, and set off....over an hour late -_-. i'd started to get pretty tired again by this point. i ate some of the muffin and stared out the window. montana has some very pretty scenery but the bus wasn't going past any of it....we wound our way through a lot of small towns, until we reached shelby , montana at about 11:00 where the driver more or less kicked us all off, said he had to go to a different town, and to wait there cause he'd be back for us in an hour. the only available place to wait was the train station......so, that's where we went. i decided to change my clothes, so i did that, and i put my contacts in, called everyone again and sat and worried that i was going to miss my connection.....which according to the schedule i'd printed out, would be leaving from coutts, alberta in just under a half hour. since i was currently about an hour and a half away from coutts, i was getting sort of nervous. what if i had to sit by the side of the road until tomorrow? well, nothing to be done about it but wait for the bus. i got a bottle of water out of the vending machine, and looked through some tourist guides to montana and alberta. they had maps in them so i could sort of look at where i was going, which was nice.

finally the bus came back. we got back on, and there were very few passengers so again i had a seat to myself. i got my gold game out again and rode aroound trying to hatch that damn egg as we worked our way over to the canadian border.

finally, we reached sweetgrass, montana, and crossed over the border into canada. time for customs! we all dug out our tickets and id and whatnot and waited for our turn to get grilled. the first guy off the bus did fine, the second one got into an altercation with the border guard because he thought the questions being asked of him were personal and none of the border guard's business. for someone who'd been talking about his extensive travels, he didn't seem to handle the border crossing very well. then it was my turn. off i got with my bags and my passport and learners permit. wow, they do interrogate you, let me tell you. he wanted to know where i was going, for how long, and why. upon hearing that i was going to visit a friend, i was asked how i met this friend. i said we met online, but that he'd been to visit me several times. after providing the guard with ech's name and address, i was handed the slip of paper the guard had been writing this down on and sent to the immigration office.

i dragged all my things up the stairs, and sat down to wait. i looked at the slip. the word 'INTERNET" sort of leaped out at me. hmmm.....that darn internet.......someone came back to the window and beckoned me over, so i trotted on over with my slip of paper and my id and all and handed them over. he took them, vanished back into the office, and i sat down to wait again. only a few people off the bus came up, (including the man who'd been refusing to answer questions) and i pondered why i'd been selected. do i have dangerous hair? finally, i got called back up to the window. i got asked another round of questions and came to the conclusion that i got pulled in for questioning cause i said the "i" word. i guess the internet has a bad rap. :/ anyways, i was able to convince the immigrations guy that i was not being decoyed across the border by an online predator, and i got cleared to enter the country. which was good, since i have no idea how i would have gotten back to my parents'.

we switched from rimrock to greyhound. much nicer! the seats were bigger and there were very few people on the bus, so we all had plenty of room. the driver stopped at a little convienence store and i got a roast beef sandwich, some cheetos, some juice and some milk and then back on the bus. i was now about six hours from the end of the trip.....i tried hatching the egg, looked out the window, and then decided to reread my harry potter book. finally, we got to calgary! i was looking out the window, trying to see the things ech's told me about. we went thru the downtown calgary stop....the next stop was mine....there was only 20 minutes left on the trip. finally the driver announced the stop, and we pulled in to a large bus depot. it was by far the biggest and nicest one we'd been to.....i was worried. what if ech wasn't there? i'd called from shelby and said i didn't know if i was going to make it or not but i had no way to call him from coutts cause my phone card only works in the states......we were pulling into the depot. the bus parked, the trip was over, we all got off. i wrestled my bags off the bus and went into the depot. i'd been on the road for 26 hours at this point, and i was really tired and very happy to be off.....i looked around and saw ech, and then i could finally relax.

he was nice enough to get a taxi, so i didnt have to take the bus back to his place. he doesn't live very far from the depot, and i was really happy to get there. he had aim on, so i got on and told mystery thing and the chatroom that i'd made it there safely. then i went and had a shower, which i really, really, wanted, and by the time i got out i felt almost human again. ech made me a chicken pita sandwich, and it was a really great end to the bus trip.

well, you'll have to check in another time to find out what i did during my four days in calgary. i have a couple pictures but nothing much. i'll try and get more up later on. hope my trip story wasn't too boring!