On December 1st, we woke up before the sun on a pallet on our living room floor. Everything was already packed away downstairs in our trailer ready to go. We got dressed, brought down a few more things and went back upstairs to say goodbye. Our first apartment. We got engaged, got married, adopted Oscar and truly grew as a couple in this place. It was our home. We shared some of our best memories here. The too small kitchen, our fireplace, the gigantic closet space. I was sad to see it go, but I knew we were headed for bigger, better things. So I took one last look around, touched the walls for the last time, and locked the door. I’m definitely not going to pretend this was easy, as excited as I was, I was terrified. It was something completely new to both of us, and I knew it would take a lot of adjusting.
But, we started the car and headed to our first destination, Durango Colorado.
^^cotton fields in west Texas.
Honestly, the first day of the trip went awesome. We drove, taking turns, for about sixteen hours and got to our hotel at around 10 P.M. that night. We hit no bad weather whatsoever and the whole drive, except for the very end driving down a mountain went extremely well. We stayed at a beautiful hotel with a balcony overlooking a river and a mountain and had a great breakfast the next morning.
We decided to sleep until around eight or so that morning since day one of the trip went so well and we thought we would just drive straight to Portland that day instead of stopping in Boise, Idaho, which was our original plan. From Boise it was only six hours, so eh, why not?
^^Utah was so beautiful!
The second leg of the trip was a completely different story than the first. Colorado and Utah weren’t that bad, just long. Once we hit Oregon, way up in the mountains we hit a massive snow storm and ended up driving 20 MPH for two hours just trying to get through it, while pulling a trailer. It was a completely surreal experience. We couldn’t even see three inches in front of us and there were all these stops on the side of the road for applying chains to the tires. We even started a convoy with these other trucks to help each other through it, that part was actually nice. But then, we finally made it past the mountains and the storm broke, thankfully. Worst is over, right?
At this point its like three A.M. and we were two hours from Portland. Extremely exhausted we pushed on. We had about half a tank of gas maybe 120 miles outside of Portland, and as our delirium was taking over, we thought we for sure would see another one before we got there.
100 miles later, and the gas light now looming, we kind of started freaking out. But we see a sign! Gas station! That way! So there we are, 5 am driving up the side of a mountain looking for said gas station which of course, was closed. So, now were sitting there, so much lower than defeated, and waiting for a man whose number I found online to come bring us gas. I can’t even convey the amount of terror, exhaustion, defeat, etc we felt sitting there that morning. We were 20 miles from Portland! We had made it so far and here we sat, so so close but so far away.
But, an hour later, an extremely nice man who I pulled out of sleep was there with the gas. So much relief, so ready to be there. So now its 7 a.m. the sun is up and we had been driving since 9 a.m. the day before. Of course we got a little lost on the way in and OF COURSE once we got to the hotel, which was located downtown they let us know there was nowhere for us to park with the trailer in the hotel parking garage so we had to find street parking.
We were so done but we had to keep pushing. And pushing, and pushing.
But finally we were in the hotel room and Alex was sleeping, I on the other hand was not so lucky. My body gave up on this trip long before I was ready for it to. I was having severe anxiety problems(which I’ve never had a problem with before.) and I just couldn’t calm down. I let Alex sleep a couple more hours before pulling him out of bed proclaiming that I needed to stop being pulled in a million different directions and I just wanted to be moved into our new home. So by noon, we drove the mile or so to our new place and by three we were sitting on the living room floor, having our first meal together.
And, now, a month later I am finally feeling settled. I know where the grocery stores are, Oscar and I can go for long walks without fear of getting lost and all of our boxes are unpacked.
Thank freakin’ goodness.
Oh, and I made tons of videos along the way, I’m planning on complying them soon!
ohmandajean 