Jason and I didn’t waste any time leaving Washington to begin our move down to Florida and the boat! Our last day of work was the 27th, my birthday party (and packing!) was the 28th, and we left before lunchtime on the 29th! I’m still not entirely convinced that I actually quit my job… it just feels like I’m playing hooky or on vacation.
We’ve been selling things and taking loads to Goodwill for months, hell maybe years now! Moving from a 2200 sqft house to a friend’s basement was a pretty harsh forced re-evaluation of how much shit we’ve accumulated over the years. I continued paring it down until it came time to actually move and seal up boxes. All of our worldly possessions fit in a 5’x8′ enclosed trailer. We don’t have a single piece of furniture.. no bicycles… etc. That trailer is jammed full though. We didn’t need tie down straps, just quickly shut the door and lock it!
I was actually a little sad to be leaving Washington. We’ve lived here for 10 years, made some amazing friends, seen some amazing things, bought our first house, etc. While I’m sitting there in the passenger seat being all whiny it starts pissing rain. You know what? Good riddance! I hate rain and I hate cold. It’s definitely time to move because I get angry every time it rains (which is literally months at a time!).
We drove through rain until we hit eastern Oregon (probably my favorite place in the world!).
Our original plan, since we got a later start than usual, was to stop in Burns, Oregon. However when we arrived, the only hotel that allowed cats was suuuuper shady with reviews online indicating that it was a disgusting, bedbug infested shithole. So we drove another 4 hours to Winnemucca, NV. Way longer of a drive than we had planned on doing on our first day for sure!
The cats weren’t very excited about the road trip. They tend to panic for like a half hour and then sit down somewhere elevated and give me the stinkeye from afar.
I think the car ride just makes my black cat sleepy and/or carsick so he stayed in the back pretty much the whole time. The gray cat eventually decided my lap was the place to be, so I got a small furry space heater to play with for a few hours.
Sarah gave me a dog life jacket she had leftover that I could use for the cats on the boat. They HATED it.
We slept awesome in Winnemucca since we arrived at around 11 at night. We were driving through snow for a few hours before we made it to the hotel and this morning woke up to even more snow and ice! It was slow careful going for a while, mostly because we have the heavy trailer. Beautiful mountains in northern Nevada!
The last few half of our drive today was spent on some of the loneliest highways I’ve ever been on. The mountains in the distance alternating between golden sunlight and falling snow. It was a beautiful drive. Too bad I was too lazy to dig out my actual camera equipment to document it properly!
We rolled in to Mesquite, Nevada where my parents live at just about dinner time. Dad warmed up some leftover chili for us and we finally got to relax and stretch our legs a bit!
We’re going to spend a few days here exploring some of the cool stuff that’s off road out here and generally relax a bit before the next leg of our journey!