Lately

We went on a celebratory camping trip over the weekend. (More actual information is coming later, the first week here was pretty busy). I give you pictures instead.

Day 4 & 5, late again

Day 4:

We started out great, leaving relatively early in the morning (although La Quinta’s breakfast buffet disappointed me today, and someone complimented them, which worries me, maybe our good La Quinta experiences are deviations from the norm).  It was fun to watch the landscape change from Wyoming to Utah.

As I write this on day 5 I cannot believe I was in Wyoming yesterday and now am just a few miles from the Oregon border.

Shortly after we got on I-84 the moving truck overheated again.  We decided to call about it right after we crossed the Idaho border (around 3 pm).  About 45 minutes later we determine we will stop at a shop along our path.  We stop, for almost 2 hours, determine that they don’t have the needed part, and we continue on towards Boise (canceling the original hotel an hour before Boise, playing phone hunt for a new dog friendly hotel in Boise–thank you AAA person in St Louis).  We drop the truck off around 10 p.m and head towards our hotel.  After getting lost near downtown Boise (population 190,??? in case you were wondering) we find the hotel, with little help from the very friendly front desk person who should NOT be allowed to give directions to their hotel.  Thank goodness dog friendly also had a very comfortable king-size bed.  Day ends: near midnight (truck is fixed, unloading all our stuff not required)

The days highlights: comfy bed, Futurama on cartoon network, eating at a locally owned (if eh) restaurant for dinner.

Day 5:

This should be a short day.  Approximately 6 1/2 hours of drive time.  Despite that we didn’t pull into tonight’s hotel until almost 7 pm.  We started out decently, all had a good night’s sleep, left the hotel just before 9:30.  Then truck stop hell.  We arrived sometime between 9:30 and 10:00 due to craziness at the filling area and then lack of attention in the restaurant we didn’t leave Boise until 11:00 am.  Arg.

There are a lot of hills between Boise and Pendleton.  And it is crazy beautiful in a way that I just did not expect.  But it also meant slow going up and down the curvy interstate through the hills.  We really didn’t stop much but time just dragged and dragged.  Dog seemed quite enamored by the Columbia River.  He looked out the window with what I think was a happy pant for nearly an hour, and he would lay down when the river wasn’t in view.  I think I got a good picture of his face (even though most times he heard the camera he’d change his position and gaze).

Once we arrived in Portland R and I went to go check out our new place (unofficially).  We didn’t get lost finding it (although giving directions will be a chore).  It is very taupe.  But looks quite decent.

Our dinner conversation began with, “No more truck stops” and then “What is chinese food?”.  Oh boy.

Day 2 & 3 (late)

Day 2:
We started the day in KC going up North 29 into the rolling hills of NW Missouri.  The license plate game continued with Kansas (dubbed “the suck”) dominating the at the beginning (go figure we are driving very near, but not in, Kansas for quite some time). We stopped in Omaha to have lunch with Michelle’s aunt and college roommate and continued West on I-80. Nebraska has really nice rest areas along I-80, and pretty sunflower fields.  The day ended in North Platte, Nebraska and Taco Bell — we are both already tired of generic fast food.

We also discovered that sometimes you need wires to access the internet!  Wires that are packed up somewhere in a box in the middle of a 26 foot moving truck.

Day 3:
We left North Platte a little after 9 AM and headed west on I-80.  As the flat plains of Nebraska changed to gentle inclines, the farms started being spaced further apart, and the sky started to dominate the landscape.  Before we crossed into Wyoming, the hills started getting bigger, and I started worrying about the truck making it over the Rockies.

We learned from our map that Wyoming has the smallest population in the US, and it makes for a desolate drive.  The largest city in the fair state is Cheyenne, and it has a population of around 50K.  There are exit ramps from I-80 that have cattle guards and go into peoples driveways.  The moving truck got a little hot so we stopped in a town with a population of 2 and it felt like civilization — I could buy a Pepsi there.  We ended the night in Rock Springs, Wyoming which was nice — I’ll never be as happy to see an Applebee’s as I was last night.

Colorado (dubbed “Subaru”) owned the license plate game today — I stopped counting a couple of times.  There might have been more Colorado plates in Wyoming than Wyoming plates.  The tally sheet was left in the car last night, so we will give updates on our Dork Project, road trip edition later this week.

We forgot to post this yesterday morning before leaving the hotel.  And we are now behind on yesterday’s update.

Trip log Day One

Long.  The day started well, we picked up the truck around 9:30 in the morning and by 12:45 had more than half of it packed.  That is when we discovered that they gave us a 16 foot truck instead of a 22 foot truck.  To top it off, we ended up with a 26 foot truck.  The thing is frakking huge.  We left our house around 4 pm thanks to the hard work of family and friends (but it was closer to 5 pm when we got out of the St. Louis metro due to a early stop.  We made it to the hotel around 10 pm.

While I remembered to take the camera in the car and we set up a Flickr account for pictures; I didn’t remember to pack the USB camera cable with our car luggage.  So no pictures until the end of next week.

Dork Project*, the road trip edition

Our rules:  Count the number of different state license plates that we see on our trip, excluding the state we are currently driving in.

Today’s state count: 22 plus 1 Canadian province.  If you are interested in the count (given in order seen): Illinois 17, Minnesota 1, Iowa 4, Ohio 6, Indiana 2, Tennessee 5, Nebraska 7, Kentucky 2, Alabama 1, Ontario 1, New York 1, Georgia 1, California, 2, Oklahoma 3, Florida 6, Oregon 1, Kansas 20, Arizona 1, Pennsylvania 1, Virginia 1, Colorado 3, New Mexico 1, Idaho 1.
*I don’t know when this was renamed “dork project” but several of my friends have dubbed it such so…

(this whole post is posted a little late due to a hotel internet access code snafu)