At any rate, we got up early (sadly couldn't persuade any family to join us for a 7am breakfast before we left - for the best as we were barely awake!) and set off. We first had to stop and get a better strap for one of the cargo carriers as our roadside rope wrapping was a bit subpar. Luckily we found an auto shop across the street from a bakery so that took care of breakfast too. Then we drove into town a little bit to let the dogs blow off some steam at a dog park. They of course thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
We then set off on our 9 hour drive to Kansas City, which was mostly uneventful other than initially underestimating the amount of caffeine Tyler would need - but that was easily resolved with a gas station Mountain Dew stop. Gross. We arrived at Sarah's family's home and the dogs were delighted to find a yard to run around in and the cats set up shop in the furnace room, excited to have more square footage than a bathroom and showed their joy in rounding up a herd of rubber bands for us. Sarah and Jordan graciously had picked up BBQ take out for dinner and we ravenously devoured our food. We had a little bit of time to catch up before we had to crash and hit the hay before our last long drive the next day.
We met Sarah's parents the next morning as we ate cereal before dashing off. Jordan even made an apparently rare early morning appearance to see us off - loading us up with Mountain Dew and pupcakes from a dog bakery for the dogs. The cats did initially try to strike and hide when we tried to load them up, but when it became clear that the alternative was to be abandoned forever they quickly pretended that nothing ever happened.
Our 12 hour drive to West Virginia ended up covering 5 states and we made such good time that task-master Tyler even let us sit in the Subway for lunch instead of eating in the car on the way! The dogs definitely started feeling the increased temperatures and Rue spent a while panting into the cat crate, making sure they stayed hydrated.
We enjoyed seeing the arch in St. Louis and the change in billboards as we crossed state lines. Although to be honest, that long in the car is pretty much torture so we were really excited when we reached our final Motel 6 in Charleston, WV. Luckily this was our last stop, and so even the fact that I had to wake up at 5:30am so we could leave town by 7:30 was not horrible when I could remind myself this was the last leg, and we only had 5 hours to drive. Although when I got up it literally took 15-20 minutes of running the shower until I got hot water, but at least I got hot water eventually! But it was a dicey 15-20 minutes. My hot shower in the morning is very critical to my mental health.
As a side note - the reason it takes us 2 hours to get ready in the morning is that we have to walk the dogs, feed them out of their food balls, clean the litter box and then because the cats always wait to use it until it's cleaned we have to then clean it again to pack up, load the cats and the litter box into their crate and haul them out to the car, pack up all the things we took out of the car because we didn't want to leave them in there overnight (game consoles, computers, important papers, etc), do the regular people things in the morning like showering and dressing, fill up water bottles, load up the dogs, scout for anything left under the beds and then finally lift off! We eventually got it down to a science, but it was still a slow science with lots of trips back and forth to the car and heaving around heavy cat bodies (to be fair, one heavy cat and one skinny one).
Highlights on the drive to Richmond included some entertaining side routes google maps took us on to avoid tolls in West Virginia, realizing that the forests were not on fire - just covered in some mist from all the humidity and the cool morning temperatures, and finding the cheapest gas we have yet - less than $3.50/gallon! We eventually arrived in Richmond at our rental house exactly 10 minutes before our scheduled appointment with our landlord for our walk through and getting keys - how's that for punctual? I will leave you with this awkward and unflattering selfie we took when we arrived, and a photo of the dogs and our luggage in our new living room. And of course Sitka, who was incredibly well adjusted (to our surprise) the entire trip, but when faced with an entire empty room to explore experienced a bit of Stockholm syndrome and didn't want to leave his prior captor.
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