Monday, May 16, 2011

Adventures of the Midwest!

The job search begins! In order to spend the summer with my sister and her beautiful family in Jenks, OK this summer, I have to get a job. The day we got here Jasmine took me around to get applications from many places that I could work. So, I spent the weekend filling them out and had to take them back today. Most of the restaurants wanted applications turned in between 2-4 so I could talk to a manager for a bit. Unfortunately, this was right during Mikayla's nap-time so Jasmine was unavailable to come with me. So I mapquested the route and set off to navigate the supposedly simple streets of Jenks. I got to my first two destinations with only a few minor mishaps and was feeling pretty good about the trip. My last trip was a fairly simple freeway drive from Target to Walmart. At home I have always been discouraged from driving on the freeway so I don't really know much about them (like last week when Lauren and I went to Spanish Fork and got off an exit early because we didn't even realize we were in the exit lane...) So go to Oklahoma and throw the toll roads in there and it just makes things an even bigger mess.
So I'm driving along and I see a sign saying something about a toll road. Well I knew that there wasn't a toll between me and my destination so I figured the next exit was the one for me (the vague mapquest directions didn't help much either). So I, with my lack of freeway knowledge, took the next exit assuming that it would lead me to some neighborhood streets. I never knew about freeway exits that lead to another freeway!!! Turns out, the toll road sign wan't for further down the road, it was for the exit to Oklahoma City. So now I'm going down this road in the absolute wrong direction, digging through my change to make sure that I had enough. I exited at the first possible place and paid the 35 cents to get off. Then I whipped right around and paid another 35 cents to go back the other way. Once I got back to freeway I had previously been traveling on, I turned to rejoin the Jenks traffic. Police cars always scare me so of course I am right next to one when it comes time to merge and I am not able to merge in time. I find myself on a loopy ramp that leads... can you guess? back to the toll road! So once again I'm driving down this road, praying I have enough change in the car to pay the toll AGAIN.
I managed to scrounge up the 70 cents needed and headed back to the first freeway, this time ready for the merge! So I made my way to the next exit and eventually found my way back to Jasime's house! In tears of course. And that is the story of my first Oklahoma adventure. Ya. I can tell this is gonna be a breeze.