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Day 15 & 16: NOLA

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“The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back” Wendy Wunder So after the cockroach situation I was feeling pretty discouraged, I was honestly ready to just get on the freeway yesterday morning and start driving. I sat in my car for a little while and wrote some postcards and decided that I shouldn't let that bad experience ruin my day. I was excited for New Orleans and I should go check it out no matter how I felt at the moment. I'm really glad I did because it ended up being my favorite city I've been to this whole trip. I started the day out by trying to navigate the tiny streets in the French Quarter, I found 2 hour parking so I decided to just park and walk around a bit. I looked up where to get beignets because I was bound and determined to eat as much New Orleans style food as I could. I found a little shop called cafe beignet, which is not as popular as cafe du monde (another place known for beignets) and got some...
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Day 14: Nope Nope Nope

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“The risk I took was calculated, but man am I bad at math.” I'm sure whoever is reading this is probably sick of reading about my bad days. All I have to say is try this yourself and then talk to me. I am so done. I'm 1 day and 18 hours away from Seattle, which works out to be about 5 days of driving away. But Rachel, this is the experience of a lifetime, just keep going, you'll be fine. While all that may be true, I don't care. I never realized how much I rely on other people and without them, I'm just falling apart. It took about 7.5 hours to drive to New Orleans last night. I booked a room that had good reviews and it was within 10 minutes driving of where I wanted to go. I got here around 11pm and drove down the street to where it was and I'm pretty sure there were 3 or 4 prostitutes on the corner. I pull into the parking lot and I'm saying to myself “give it a chance, it could be fine”. To get in you have to ring a doorbell, the front desk woman let m...
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Day 13: Austin

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"Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny" CS Lewis It's father's day today. If you haven't gathered it by my previous posts, my dad passed away a few years ago from Alzheimer's. I remember going on facebook on mother's day and it being hard to scroll through my feed, seeing everyone happy with their moms. I'd give anything to have my parents back with me, and it's especially hard on holidays like these, where I'm reminded of what I don't have anymore. So after a lot of thinking and toiling over the thought, I've decided to head back early. I mean, I'm in Texas, so it's not like I can just blink my eyes and be back in Seattle, it'll only be about 4 days earlier than what I had planned. I decided to skip Chicago and Yellowstone, but I'm still headed to New Orleans today and from there I'm going to head to Mt. Rushmore and back west. It's going to be a lot of driving in a short period...
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Day 12: Humidity

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“Sleep doesn't help if it's your soul that's tired” I'm not sure who's reading this but something about me you may not know is that I have depression and anxiety. I feel as if the depression has something I may have always struggled with without realizing it, but the anxiety didn't appear until after both of my parents died. The anxiety I suffer from is often situational, it happened a lot in a certain relationship I had, but it also creeps up on me when I'm least expecting it. The reason why I'm sharing this part of me is because I want everyone to know that it's okay to feel this way. You're not alone. Going on this trip has tested me greatly with these things that I suffer with, especially the last few days. I'm not sure why, but suddenly I've felt extremely homesick. I'm halfway through my trip and honestly I just want to turn around and start driving home. I miss the familiar. I miss my cat, I miss my friends, I miss being able...
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Day 10 & 11: 2 for 1

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“The earth has music for those who listen.” Shakespeare Deja vu is a weird concept, I'm skeptical of a lot of things, only recently have I been more open to spiritual type phenomena. Yesterday when I was driving I had a really strong deja vu when I was driving to Carlsbad Caverns. This happens every once in awhile to me, I'll have a dream that I'll remember and then later the same things start happening in real life. So the deja vu I had was about my car, I had a dream that I was trying to name it and decided to name it Carl because I was going somewhere with Carl in the name. Strange thing to have deja vu about, but I did and I have officially named my car Carl because of it! Carlsbad caverns was amazing, it was a bit out of the way of my main path but it was totally worth it. I had to drive through quite a bit of desert to get there. It kind of gave me a flashback of when I rolled my car in eastern Oregon when I was 17, so I was careful to drive very delicately. The roa...
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Day 9: Kindness

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“Kindness is a language that the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” Mark Twain It still astounds me that I'm on this trip. I think back to a year ago and there is no way in hell I would've done anything like this, let alone by myself. It's been a hard year, I've had to learn to be without someone I was with for 9 years and then jump in head first into dating, which hasn't gone well either. I haven't made the best decisions for myself, because I wasn't ready to be with anyone else. I was so caught up with wanting to just be with someone that I didn't ask myself why I wanted to be with them. The answer in both cases weren't good enough reasons to be with them. I started the day at my friends house in Phoenix. She had to go to an interview so I hung out until she got back. It was nice to have a couple of hours to just chill, not have to worry about checking out or leaving right away. We were able to chat for awhile before I was going to meet up wit...
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Day 8: The Grand Canyon

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“The best view comes after the hardest climb” Today was long, but today was great. I left Vegas around 10:30 this morning. It was so nice to have a hotel room all to myself, you have no idea. I didn't have to worry about sharing the bathroom, or wearing flip flops in the shower, or talking to strangers in common areas. Glorious. You never realize how important your own privacy is until you don't have it anymore. I drove down strip before I left. I rolled down the window and took another handful of my mom's ashes and spread them as I was driving. I knew I wanted to spread some in Vegas but I didn't know where specifically and figured I might look suspicious walking around and trying to spread ashes. So I decided to do it while driving, I think my mom would've thought it was funny, I hope. I made a pit stop at the Hoover dam, I had been there before so I just drove over it, didn't bother getting out to look around, plus parking was $10! I wanted to get on the ro...
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