Wedding Break!

Wednesday was our first long drive with over 12 hours of driving to get us from Spokane to Casper, WY. The first part of the drive was fairly uneventful, other than some rain off and on. Nostalgically waved at Butte as we drove through, although couldn't think of anything we could actually want to stop at on the way through! Our Lady of the Rockies didn't disappoint and creepily overlooked our passage through the town. 

We stopped in Bozeman for a classy lunch at Costco and refueling. The rain from this point never really let up and we had an impressive thunderstorm escort us through the rest of Montana and into Wyoming. Luckily Tyler kept us on the road despite some impressive downpours trying to make our heavily ladened vehicle hydroplane and we enjoyed a spectacular light show over the hills. 

Our dinner plans were thwarted when the first gas station and food sign ended up at a tiny stop where the Subway had closed 10 minutes prior (at 7pm!) and it was another hour until we reached another exit with services. Apparently these rural cattle farmers don't depend on fast food for sustenance. Finally we landed at our Motel 6 in Casper and were the last to check in for the night at almost 11pm. We were pleasantly surprised though with the revamped rooms and settled in for the night before heading out for Colorado in the morning. 

Thursday we finished up with Wyoming, finally seeing it in the daylight without the covering of rain clouds and lightening. Only one little blip when we had to pull over to wrap our new cargo carrier in some rope as I noticed it intermittently gaping open while we drove. Luckily no major harm occurred other than popping the carrier revealed a disturbingly robust bug graveyard inside. 

Colorado brought with it a lot of construction and city traffic and the time we had budgeted for taking the dogs to the park was quickly gone. But we made it to our next Motel 6 and settled the animals and attempted to spruce ourselves up before heading out to Aaron & Jordan's wedding. 

It was a beautiful wedding, with a brief ceremony and delicious food and well organized entertainment. Not to mention the gorgeous bride and groom! I'll have to gather some photos from family who were better coordinated than myself! We had a lot of fun catching up with people and I met a few new family members, and then we said some of our final goodbyes to our Washington family and hurried out for our geriatric bedtime to get ready for the next day. 

Day of Rest

Luckily our trip included a day of relaxing in Spokane before our first long drive. The morning was spent sleeping in and then eating a delicious breakfast. Next I spent a good amount of time lounging in the yard with the dogs and figuring out how to make the blog. And a little bit of housekeeping with getting our electrical account in Richmond set up. Tyler spent a good amount of time polishing up our new cargo carrier and repacking the car with his dad. 

We ended up with a bigger nook in the back for the dogs, better packed cargo carriers, and the biggest win was the ability to move our seats back more for some much needed leg room! Overall it was a great improvement. 

The cats have been surprisingly well adapting to their new nomadic life, enjoying their bathroom palace. The first order of business was to roll in the bathtub and then cover every surface in kitty litter which they accomplished quite successfully. 

The dogs of course greatly enjoyed romping and fetching in the backyard all day. The evening was spent with a lovely dinner gathering with lots of tasty food and joined by one of Tyler's aunts. We received a whole bundle of adorable baby girl clothes and some hand knit booties which we can't wait to see in use. Luckily some of the clothes came with directions for Tyler so he won't get too confused. 

We then collapsed in another heap to prep for our upcoming 12 hours on the road to Wyoming!

Launched!

This blog will hopefully serve to update friends/family about our adventures getting to and being in Virginia for the next year! And also hopefully I will write more than 3 posts before giving up. So this will be an experiment - bear with me.

The road trip entries will probably come in clumps, as I think our wifi access at our glamourous Motel 6s may be a bit suspect. So today is the story of how we packed all our belongings into a 6x7x8 foot container and our car, loaded up our 4 animals, and set off from Seattle! As pictures speak a thousand words I will let them do the talking...

 

Not pictured: 

- the 4 months we spent sorting, purging and storing in preparation

- the $1300 we saved by fitting everything into one shipping container 

- Tyler's delight at completing his PhD in packing with his dissertation of giant, heavy 3D Tetris completed

- my mom tirelessly scrubbing our house while I was mostly collapsed in a heap

- my attempts at fitting our full sized fitted sheet onto our borrowed queen inflatable bed

- the look of horror on my face when I saw how overflowing the car was to fit everything we had left

- our landlord doing our walk through inspection before we had everything out or cleaned on time 

- the sheer luck of finding an extra used cargo carrier on Craigslist on our way out for a great price and the generosity of those people for lending us their step ladder and cul de sac while we re-packed for an hour

- our contentment after eating a home cooked meal in Spokane and collapsing into a real bed

Stay tuned for the next part of our adventure!