The alarm went off at 8 and we were suppose to meet mom by 9 at her house. She needed to be ready by the time we got there. Ben is a slow starter in the morning so I had to keep bothering him so he would get up, get ready and eat some food so we could go and be there on time. I wasn't sure if dad was going to join us or not. I guess we would find out when we got there. I put all the stuff into the Escape and we headed into Rainier.
When we got to the house mom was bringing her stuff out and dad was running around looking for stuff. I asked mom if he was going to go with us and she said no, he needed to fix grandma's water heater. Wow, that sucks! We got everyone into the Escape and we headed towards Eatonville. I had to stop by Dogwood Park so I could replace the Rainier100 cache that went missing a few weeks ago. I started getting hate emails from people. I'm glad I remembered to bring an extra cache container to replace it with.
When we got to Dogwood Park we were the only ones in the small park. Mom admired the view of Mount Rainier from this spot while Ben and I assembled the cache with its logbook, trinkets, a pathtag and the code word on the lid. Later on I found out the code word was wrong. I have no idea why I wrote it down wrong and I possibly transposed it somehow. I found the place where it needed to be...it's been a while since I've found this cache (it was adopted to me by WatchDogsMike) so I found some rocks to keep it hidden from view. As we were doing this mom was walking around with her phone near the turn around area of the parking lot. When I returned from replacing the cache I looked at my phone because I heard the text message jingle. It was about 10:30 and I get this message from Erika,
"So Travis effing broke up with me out of nowhere. I'm moving back home."
I was stunned and just looked at it. Ben was wondering what was happening. I wasn't sure if I was reading it right or not. I looked at mom who was on her way back to the Escape and I asked her, did you just get a text message from Erika?
She looked at me, also stunned, and said yeah. I then asked, so what do we do? We sat in the Escape for a few minutes trying to get a hold of dad. Collectively, we decided going to Mount St. Helens would have to wait for another day and to head back home to figure out a game plan. It was perfect timing because after Morton we wouldn't have cell phone service until we were done and on our way back from the mountain. If it would have been later we wouldn't have known until we got service at some point during the day. Us stopping at Dogwood changed the course of our day.
We headed home trying to reach dad. We knew he was working on grandma's water heater and his phone was probably in the car. We called grandma's house phone and she said he just left. We were hoping he was at home so we could see what he wanted to do with the situation. When we did finally get home dad was home and he was talking with Erika about what she wanted to do. It sounded like she wanted to leave as soon as possible. She was mad and wanted nothing to do with Travis or Nevada. I totally get that however she needed help and the quickest any of us could get there is later that night via airplane. Dad point blank asked her if she wanted us to come and get her. She said yes.
I thought about this. Mom really can't take the time off because she has patients and her coworkers really don't like her not being at work, dad shouldn't go because of health reasons so that left Ben and I to go see what plane tickets were available last minute for fairly cheap. We went inside and we checked every website possible. We found an Alaskan Airline flight for two people for a little more than $500 with taxes. I bought them but our seats were not going to be near each other which was okay. We found a somewhat cheap last minute flight that left SeaTac around 7, which was in a few hours. Ben and I went home and packed enough stuff for three days, made sure my cat was going to be fed and I called my boss and Connie to let them know I wasn't going to be at work on Monday. I had enough leave so it wasn't going to break me. Ben didn't have anywhere to be so he was going to be our helper.
Mom drove to our house and parked the truck. I was going to drive us to the airport and mom was going to drive the Escape back to my house and head home from there. We left around 4:30 early enough just because you never know what the traffic was going to be like...accidents, lane closures due to construction, fires (it is summer ya know) or any other unexplainable weird freeway stuff.
To my surprise traffic really wasn't that bad and we arrived right around 5:30ish. We pulled up along side the departures area near the Alaskan Airlines signage, grabbed our stuff and thanked mom for driving my Escape back home. I hugged her just in case we died and she said, don't say stuff like that...because we just lost Harvey and we all still weren't over it. Ben and I walked in and looked for our ticket area and found the e-ticket machine and printed out our boarding passes. Since we just had the one bag and my carry on we didn't need to check our luggage. I realized this was my first plane ride with Ben since we've been dating and we are going on almost year number four!
We maneuvered our way towards the security and stood in a relatively short line. It didn't take us long to get through and I forgot to take my computer out of my bag so it was searched further. Ugh! Once I got my stuff back we walked to our gate just to make sure we knew where it was and that it was leaving on time to Reno. I texted Erika that we were at our gate and we had less than an hour until it boarded. She said okay and to text her when we land. She knew roughly when we would be there.
We sat near our gate, Ben played his games on his phone, I Facebooked and called people just to pass the time. When it was our time to finally board, we found a place for our bag and made our way to our seats.
Ben wasn't too far away but a couple rows behind me. I sat next to a guy who was very quiet for the first hour of the flight. He did let me take a picture of Mount Rainier from the plane since he had the window seat. The flight attendants brought us beverages and a cinnamon cookie biscuit thing.
During the second half of the flight he started showing me pictures of his Alaskan trip he was coming back from. Some of them were pretty cool. He then went on to explain why he was there. His work had sent him for about two weeks and he was on his way back to Reno to start a new job come Monday. He asked if this was my first time to Reno and I explained to him why I was going to Nevada. We then morphed into traveling and I told him this September I was going to Ecuador for a dental humanitarian trip. He went on to tell me that he's been there before and told me if I got a chance to try fried guinea pig to do it. I told him that I would keep it in mind. We landed around 9:30 and I told him it was nice chatting with him and safe travels in the future. He told me he also enjoyed chatting and to enjoy Ecuador.
I texted Erika that we landed, met up with Ben as we were leaving the plane and walked through the tunnel into the airport. I kept thinking to myself, I've never been to Reno before and here I am...however I wished the first time was for a different circumstance. Since we didn't need to wait for bags Erika parked her car and walked to the Alaskan Airline arrivals. We saw her walking towards us on the sidewalk with her dog. It was warm and you could tell she was angry and exhausted. She said all she did today was pack her stuff into boxes and tried to go to the movies but couldn't sit there and watch it. I shared our day with her as we got into her car and left the airport. We couldn't find the card ticket to leave the parking area but managed to find it before we needed to pay. I asked her if she had eaten dinner yet and she said she hadn't eaten all day. I asked if there was a nearby In-N-Out since we were in Nevada and I haven't had any for at least 3 years. She said sure and we found the closest one to us. It was about 9:45 so I figured it wouldn't be that busy...I was wrong. Erika and Ben got the double-double animal style and I wanted the normal cheeseburger. Ben had never been here before so we were curious on what he thought of it. He said it was tasty, hit the spot and would most likely come again when we got the chance.
We drove the 20 miles to Carson City to where Erika and Travis lived. I never thought I would actually visit Carson City until Erika moved to Nevada a few years ago. I knew I would eventually save enough money to go down and visit her but again not under these circumstances. The entire time Erika painted a picture for us about her relationship and what had happened during the past few days. When we got to the house I knew Travis wasn't going to be there. Erika gave us a tour of the place and tried to tell us what it looked like before she stuck it all in boxes. I was impressed that she finally moved into a house instead of living in an apartment. It's just too bad all of that didn't matter anymore. She showed us where we would be sleeping and where we could shower and stuff.
While Chopped was on, we each took a turn showering and getting ready for bed. As far as I knew at that point tomorrow was going to be a very long day. The plan was to go get the U-Haul Erika reserved at 9 a.m., pack all the boxes inside, with the kayak and motorcycle and Ben and I were to follow her back up to Washington in her car. Erika slept on the couch and we slept on an air mattress in the guest room. We finally fell asleep around 1ish.
It's funny how a trip to Mount St. Helens quickly turned into a trip to Reno, Nevada in just a few short hours.
Next Adventure: Lake Tahoe, Reno and Pranking our Friends and Family
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