Europhile: C'est ma vie!

And the winner is .... (Day 11 - Final Day)

The last day of a trip is always a strange kind of transition, especially when you're going from one lifestyle to another. Road trips seem to magnify this, because there is no time you're so free as when you are on the road, with no real itinerary, no real responsibilities, and no cell phone signal. Of course, it's not a real freedom. No, the bills await, sometimes impatiently, the family worries, and your friends begin to wonder what happened to you. And all you wanted to see were wild horses.

But on to my subject. The winner .... of the Great State Rating Competition, that is. Having been through - let's count - 13 states, which one tops the list? Quick summary.

Maryland. Lived there 4 years. Got a ticket. Low speed limits. No.

West Virginia. Wild and Wonderful. Big hills. Green. Great songs about it. A contender.

Pennsylvania. (Very funny, No).

Ohio. Well, it did look like Ireland for a while. But only for a while. No.

Michigan. Southern Michigan was pretty boring, although they did have beer cheese, and coastal Michigan was pretty amazing up north. Mackinaw City nice, good local beer and "lakefood". U.P. tres beau. Girls not so pretty. Alas... you were so close.

Wisconsin. Not nearly as pretty as I thought it would be. Now, if I'd stopped at a brewery and cheese shop, you might have fared better. But no.

Minnesota. Good times, but in the city. Too many bugs.

South Dakota. It took me by surprise, the black hills, and Mount Rushmore was beautiful. But I still drove through the most boring and flat landscape in the country for a good 4 hours, and that's a lot to overcome. Sorry.

Nebraska. The company was wonderful. Kimball was not nearly as small as I expected (it even had a stoplight!). The steak was delicious. But the state ... eh .... at least it had high speed limits.

Wyoming. No wild horses. Thanks for playing, please try again next time.

Montana. Hmm.... good beer, good coffee, pretty girls, beautiful scenery, big ole sky, mountains, high speed limits, curvy roads. Sounds promising, very promising. Flathead Lake, for fishing. Picturesque mountain vistas. Great college towns. I'm thinking .... this could be it, folks!

Idaho. Raining in Coeur d'Alene, the only thing worth seeing in Idaho. When your license plate raves about potatoes, you know there isn't much to see. It's almost as bad as advertising your state's web site on your license plate (http://www.state.pa.us/).

Washington. Well, Washington. You faced some pretty high expectations, considering I'd been talking you up to just about everyone in town for the past four years. Or more. And starting out in Eastern Washington (a truly astounding place, astounding that it can be so incredibly boring yet still in Washington State). Well, it was tough. And after Montana, who'd really blame you for losing? I mean, the potato fields, the wheat, the WIND which felt like it was going to tear the driver's side door off the car. And then, all of a sudden, we turned right. (Then we turned left, right, left and then right again). And we were going up alongside the mountains, and things started to get awfully pretty. We managed to pass the slowpokes, and wound around deliciously curvy roads, with the hills rising up so steep beside us that I couldn't see the tops of them out of my window. Ali seemed to like it, and I thought, man, the old girl (that is, WA) is catching up! And then .... THEN, we turned left. You know, into the mountains. The sun was out, the clouds were racing by and we came through the town of Leavenworth - Washington's Bavarian Village. Don't ask me how it got there, but dang if it isn't cute. At least, to drive through. And we left town and wound through some of the best scenery I'd seen in the entire trip - including Glacier Nat'l Park (sorry Montana). We cruised along a river cut into the mountainside, next to steep cliffs and sheer rock faces and the deep green of the trees reflecting in the turquoise of the river, and we felt not a little insignificant. We raced down the mountains, and struggled back up the mountains to Stevens Pass. And then, the most usual thing happened - clouds passed overhead, and it began to rain. Not the hard, lashing rain of a thunderstorm, but the soft, pitter-patter rain of the northwest. I got out of the car, looked at the mountains around me - so steep, so rocky, so ... unpretentious. And I thought, thank God. I'm home.

So, I think it's safe to say that in the final stretches, Washington blew away the competition. Without even trying. And maybe that's what best about Washington. It's genuine. It's authentic. It's real.

Town of the Day: George. George, Washington. I cracked up for about 10 minutes about that. That's really when I knew it was time to get off the road. :)

a la prochaine fois.
~Dan (and Ali)

posted by europhile @ 23:24