the road less traveled

Justin and I took a little road trip up to Mount Baker today so I could take some photos for a final project in one of my classes.  He asked me before we left: "Do you know where we're going?"  "Sure," I replied, "Super easy.  We'll just jump on I-5 until we see the Mt. Baker Highway exit."

So we jumped on I-5 North.  About the time we hit Blaine (on the border of Canada), I realized we weren't going to see a sign for Mt. Baker Highway.

So we headed back down south until we hit Custer.  We decided that maybe we could find it if we headed over through Lynden. After driving north and south for about twenty minutes near Lynden, we decided to stop and buy a map. Upon buying a map, we realized that the exit for Mt. Baker was far south of us (off of I-5, of course), so we headed toward Sumas, then south toward Deming, where we finally found the infamous Mt. Baker Highway.

View the Map of Our Lovely Route, Which Will Help This Story Make Sense

This brilliant route took us over 2 1/2 hours. One way. We left a little after noon, and hadn't yet reached a view of the mountain when the sun finally set. Not so great for pictures. And, it was getting icy.

We decided to try something new and took the Mt Baker Highway directly back to Bellingham. When the name of the highway changed to a local street, I craned my neck to see a street sign, so I could know which exit we should have taken.

Oddly enough, the name of the road was Sunset Dr.

Alas. 

Congratulations, Universe.  You win.

I told Justin of my observation and we both laughed til we cried.

We live right off Sunset Dr. It's our onramp to the freeway; our exit to get home. We drive this nearly everyday.  I knew there was some reason Mt. Baker highway sounded familiar:



We traveled over 100 miles to get there when the actual route would have taken us about 44. 

It's okay, I thought.  At least I got a couple of good sunset & tree-y type pictures there near the end.

Upon closer observation when I uploaded the few pics I liked onto my computer, I realized that perhaps I had missed something when I first took the picture.  Given the maturity level of my class (and the fact that we've discussed eroticism in literature and art fairly extensively), there is no way I'll be able to use this:



This is horrible. 

In the end, however, a pretty funny story.  Not sure what I'm going to do about my final project, but we'll see.