Our trip to Texas

Recently, we took a short trip to Texas for my moms wedding. Our friend Justin graciously offered to fly us there and back using his buddy passes and it would cost us nothing. Awesome, right? So we packed our things, called a cab and we were at the airport by 4:30 Thursday morning to catch the 6am flight to Dallas.

Except the flight was booked and we were flying stand by. Not just stand by, but the lowest tier because we weren’t employees, relatives or paying customers. So we waited. Three flights, seven hours and being told our best chance was to come back tomorrow had us feeling defeated. Our plan to get in at four, and have dinner with both sides of our families turned into spending another night in Portland. To say I was sad was an understatement but we tried to be hopeful about the next day.
Friday morning, 4:30am, back at the airport and shocker… The flights are all booked. After talking with the gate agent we decided it would be best to fly to Chicago and try to catch a flight to Houston or worst case scenario, a flight from Chicago to Arkansas and Arkansas to Houston.

So at 6:50 we board a flight to Chicago hopeful for better luck flying out of a bigger airport. We even got to see Frozen on the plane and I thought it was pretty cute. Once we land, we checked a flight to Houston and of course it’s all booked. The Arkansas one looked pretty open so we decide its our best bet and at 1:30 we were on our way.
When we landed there were two Houston flights and they were both pretty full with a lot of stand bys. We ended up in a pretty small airport so those two were really our only options. When the first one boarded there was around 20 stand bys which didn’t get on and got rolled over to the second flight. That put us as 22 and 23 on the list.

So after a day of failures and a day of flying to nowhere we needed to be, we were defeated. Seriously. I never felt so low. it was my moms wedding and I had no idea how I was going to get there.
After going through our list of options we went with the only thing that would definitely get us to Texas that night- renting a car and driving six hours to our destination.

Yep, after two failed flights and being stuck in Arkansas we rented a car and started driving. Thankfully I have a husband who, after a monster, is totally cool with driving. And six hours later, a little past midnight we were pulling up at our hotel for the night.
My mom, Sara and her boyfriend miles were staying with us as well. Being able to hug them the second I got out of the car made the whole trip worth it. Plus I was so damn ready for that day to be over with.
Our hotel was… Interesting. I’ll spare you the disgusting details and mention that the bed was a lot more comfortable then I thought. The next day was crazy busy trying to get everything ready for the wedding.

Other than a ton of rain, the wedding was really really beautiful. I was so glad we were able to make it in time!

That night we headed to Alex’s parents to spend the night with them. It was so awesome to be able to pull off seeing both sets of families in the three days we were there.

Going back to Texas for the first time since we moved was so surreal. We drove by our old apartment, our old jobs, the old stores we would shop at. It felt so weird that everything was exactly where we left it and the only thing that changed was us. It even felt like I could walk into our old apartment and everything would be there, exactly as we left it.

Walking into Alex’s parents and my moms house felt really good though. It was so.. familiar. Definitely one of my favorite feelings. I knew walking through Alex’s parents door they would be there, sitting on their gold chairs(that sounds so fancy, doesn’t it?) exactly where they were when we left and exactly where I knew I would find them.

Getting back to Portland was a lot easier than getting out and we were so thankful for that. We got home, went to Lucky Lab, picked up Oscar and then slept for about 16 hours.  Living the life, I tell ya.

I never know how to end these things, so here’s a picture of our beer from that afternoon. The end!

That time we drove 2200 miles across the country.

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!