The Realization of Moving

It always happens this way. I know we are moving, and I prepare for it well. But every time I move, there is a point where it all hits me. It's not a bad feeling, just a realization that things are about to change even more than they already have. It happened to me Thursday night after the moving company came and loaded all of our stuff on a truck and hauled it away. Sometime around dinner time, when we were sitting on the air mattress in the middle of the floor in the living room eating store bought sushi without plates or utensils. It's a feeling of relief, anxiety, and excitement all at once. All of our stuff is gone and we don't have to worry about it for a while-relief. We are soon to be theoretically homeless and jobless-anxiety. We are about to take an amazing road trip across the country and be reunited with all of our friends and family from back home-excitement! While these feelings can be overwhelming at times, the changes that come with them are always worth it. I like moving and starting fresh. I like experiencing a sort of carefree life for a while where we don't have to worry about jobs, bills, or schedules. I like house hunting(as terrible as it can sometimes be) and that feeling you get when you've found the place you'll be spending the next year or so. I like road trips. I like my life right now. It's not a life fit for everyone, but at the moment, it suits me.

Persie is sure gonna miss her spot on the back of the couch. She guarded it until the movers came.

Julian loved having towers of boxes everywhere.

Iggy in my pine cone wreath. "Please don't pack this, I love it too much. Just put it in my suitcase"

The pups being sad before the movers came.

Iggy loves cardboard.

So full of stuff. We've collected quite a bit in just a year.

Tim having a paper cup of cereal. 

All clear! The animals were having little panic attacks. So confused.
This is how we'll live for a few more days until we take off down the road.

Such a big empty white kitchen. No more of my favorite orange :(

Eating sushi off of a cardboard box. Classy. And it's store bought at that.
The kitties get all shifty-eyed when they smell fishies in the house.

Berry medley off of a cardboard box.

And morning doughnuts from the Safeway up the block. Buying food when you crave it is great.

One Last Week in Oregon

We have just over a week left before we make another cross country road trip. It's hard to say goodbye to all of the great friends we have made and all of the cool places we have grown accustomed to visiting and seeing on a daily basis. I know the pups are going to miss the awesome city parks here and the no leash laws. I'm gonna miss the spectacular views that follow me everywhere as I drive through the city and the countryside. Both Tim and I are gonna miss the abundance of delicious beers and ciders and wines that the Northwest seems to effortlessly produce. I'm gonna miss my art store job a lot. I'm sure Tim is gonna miss the always perfect running weather. Not to say that we aren't really excited to be back at all of our old haunts and to be able to have all of those familiar faces, places, smells, flavors, and feelings again. We definitely needed the break to be able to appreciate it all once more. And now we do. We've changed, but just the right amount to be able to come back and see it all a little differently, in a better light.

This time things are quite different. We will not be selling everything we own. We won't be renting a U-haul either, because we have some amazing friends here that own a moving company(Redefyne Moving). The planets aligned and they secured a move to the East Coast and were able to offer us a great deal. That means that we don't have to rent a U-haul or move any of our stuff ourselves. I've got to say it's the best way to move, to have someone else do it all for you is just tops. So we get to drive in a practically empty car, Spike the Honda Fit. We have bought him all new tires and changed his oil and he is all ready to go. We'll be taking the northern route, passing through North Eastern Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, a tiny bit of Maryland and West Virginia, and finally Virginia. We'll stop to see Mt. Rushmore and a few other landmarks. It will only take three nights and four days this time, as apposed to last time when it took 6 long, long days. All of our drives our relatively short, only about 12 hours a day except for the last leg from Chicago to Richmond. I can see that being a very trying day on the animals and us, clocking in at nearly 14 hours of driving without stops. But then it will all be over, and Julian and Iggy the cats will go to live in the woods for a while with my Mommy. Tim and I and the pups will stay with my sister for a bit until we figure out where and how we want to live. So in that aspect the move is pretty similar to last time when we had no jobs and no prospects. But this time we will have friends and family to help us along, and the advantage of knowing our way around a few of the cities.

This last week we have a few things left to do. Besides finishing packing, we have planned one last trip. We are going to visit Crater Lake and the Umpqua National Forest's hot springs. Then we'll stay the night in Bend, OR and take the next day to explore Bend and the Oregon deserts a bit. For the rest of the week we have planned to just enjoy the city. There will be lots of eating and lounging in the sun. Maybe a little shopping at the Saturday Market and at some vintage stores on Hawthorne. Mostly just relaxing because we know our lives are about to get pretty hectic. Truthfully, that's when we thrive. So now it's ready, set, go time.

Before it all gets packed away, our living room in the Portland house.

As most already know (but some don't, so now you do) Tim and I have decided that the time is right to move back to Virginia. While we love the Northwest and are so happy and grateful that we were able to experience living in a new place, we know that we would be pretty sad if we missed anything significant in our friends and families lives. We feel that although we have only been gone a year, we already have missed out on some good times. We've done a whole bunch while we've been out here. We've made a bunch of cool new friends who will be greatly missed. We've traveled quite a bit and experienced a whole new way of living. We've built our lives back up from just a car full of objects and no jobs or prospects. We've found out a lot about ourselves(super cliché) and have grown as a couple too. I wish we were staying long enough to have more visitors come out so we could show 'em around. But alas, the time is nigh. We will be back to visit, to see more. We don't know if we will settle down for good back in Virginia. But for now, it is the right and logical thing to do. So, can't wait to see everyone in the flesh very soon, like July 1st kind of soon.

And since we have worked so hard(it's a labor of love for both of us really) at setting up a new house, we'd like to at least share it with you all through photos before it all gets packed up and U-hauled across the country. Boxes are lurking behind every one of these photos, and we don't know exactly when we'll be able to see our stuff all set up again in a proper house(it will probably be a few months until we get a place of our own again). We do love this tiny 450ft² apartment, but I think we are ready for a space upgrade next time. It is a good way to control how much stuff you collect. Tim and I definitely used to be mild hoarders. We've learned how to keep a place cozy but not cramped. The key is to have properly scaled furniture. None of that bulky stuff is allowed in our house anymore. I'll be honest, I pushed a lot of mess into the bedroom to take these photos, but it was mostly moving related clutter, boxes and things. We will be renting the smallest U-haul truck and only taking back what we can fit inside, but really I don't think we will have a problem at all this time around. This time, though, I like my furniture too much to sell it all. Portland has the best furniture, antique, and thrift stores ever. Just one of the many things I'll miss...

Newton sat in his favorite spot the whole time I took pictures.
Next to the furry pillow.

Even on an overcast day this apartment is so bright and cheery.

Iggy likes to sit on the record player and watch the outside world.

I have the prettiest striped boy kitty ever.

Three newly added hanging plants.

I plucked a small piece of this from my neighbors yard
and it has grown quite nicely in it's glass house.

A squirrelly spider plant that we have named Spidey.

An African succulent that blooms these little puff balls sits in front of the wedding picture corner.

This poor guy came from the plant store with spider mites and by the time we
 realized, he had lost nearly all of his leaves. After an organic treatment of
various oils mixed together, he is on the road to recovery with new little leaf
sprouts emerging from his stalk. He is a Croton plant that we named Petey.

The Expedit from Ikea holds all of our records perfectly. Most of our books
still remain in Virgina, so hopefully, when we move back they will all fit.
I lined the insides of the shelves with orange paper to brighten it up a bit.

My homemade cork board and coat rack and front door catchall. I painted the coat rack to match all of the other
accents in the room. I stained the floating shelf my favorite stain, a dark walnut. The cork board is a layer of mat
board topped with three thin layers of cork. The cork was then painted the same rusty orange as everything else.
The face is a decorative paper made of tree bark. It's all held up with gold brads and features lovely wooden pushpins. 

Some of my little buddies that I collected from our road trip out here live in a
 pretty wooden vase. And a sweet little orange owl cross stitch
I picked up at the thrift store sits with them.

Tim's first anniversary present was a pair of maps. They were odd sizes so instead
of regular frames, I attached them to the wall and nailed up some molding from the
 hardware store. Of course I stained this myself and cut it all down to size with
 my circular saw. It's not perfect, but not a lot in our house is.

I framed some of my favorite pictures of the animal babies and hung them on a
part of the wall that was just big enough for some 3"x5" frames. The stool is one
of a pair that I bought used, sanded and stained. I reupholstered the
cushion in an old but very pretty bed sheet.

A couple of my own prints hang beside an Ikea mirror that I sanded and stained to a more suitable
color than it's original faux whitewashed wood.

I love hardwood floors so much.

Mid century round coffee table picked up off Craigslist for $35.

The two green armless chairs I bought off of Craigslist. I bet you could guess that
I stained their original cherry wood bottoms to their current dark walnut.

I love my yard sale finds:
A floral rocker and lampshade that aren't exactly the same but match so perfectly found at two different yard sales.

The best couch around for about $500, the Kivik from Ikea in a discontinued rust orange. It took some luck to
find the last cover they had in stock. One of my favorite full priced purchases.

Newton says, "Alright, enough pictures. I'm outta here."

Cross Country Day 6: The redwoods, Bigfoot, and the finale

The final day of our voyage had arrived. We loaded the car up for the last time, a lot less cat food and litter than when we started, nearly 3,500 miles more on the odometer. The last day would be a short and relaxing drive mostly on a highway that we had driven before when we visited Oregon. We would get to Portland well before dark, and we had allotted enough time for a few stops along the way. First we would visit the Redwoods on the northern Californian coast. Then we would take the I5 to Eugene to visit Hayward field at the University of Oregon where some big running thing was going on. Then it would just be a short few more hours before we would reach our final hotel.

We left Eureka as fast as we could that morning. The cat carriers still had a smell to them, so we bought some Febreeze. It helped a little. The quicker we could forget about that town the better. After about 45 minutes of driving north, we entered Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. While we had seen a few redwoods in the mountains while driving the night before, we still had not seen them up close. Before we could stop at a trail head, we saw a sign warning us of elk crossing the road. Oh how wonderful it would be to see elk. Well, of course the signs don't lie in California, and as we rounded a bend, in a field to our left, we saw a herd of elk just lounging in the morning sun. We got out to get a better look, but heeded a sign warning us not to approach on foot. We continued on to a trail we picked based on it's name. BIG TREE. Hmm... they probably could have come up with a better name. We left the cats in the car with the windows down and took a short 20 minute hike through the enchanted forest. It was so lush, so quiet, so massive, and so unreal. We played on fallen trees, hugged quite a few ginormous trunks, but mostly quietly walked through the forest, taking it all in one breath at a time. It looked like the dinosaurs lived there. All of the ferns that filled the ground were huge. It was a short adventure, but we will be going back in April.

The morning was going so well, with me crossing "hug a sequoia" off of my bucket list. The sun was shining and we were just about to cross into Oregon, our destination state. The road was following a river through the mountains. And then again, just like with every other state border, the scenery rolled up and before us we saw wide open land, dotted with lumpy hills, and snow covered mountains in the distance. Although we had probably unknowingly been driving by a lot of it in the mountains the night before, we started to take note of a lot of Bigfoot stuff in southern Oregon. Lot's of Bigfoot gas stations and signs and restaurants. This was before me and Tim had started getting into all of the Sasquatch stuff, so we just found it amusing.

After a few hours we came upon Eugene. I was far too exhausted to pretend to be enthused by this track event, so Tim went in alone while I stayed with the animals in the car. I watched from the street as Tim found the unguarded entrance and sneaked in, happily for free. I took a nap, a lovely sunny nap in the car.

Once back on the road, the time flew by as we drove through the Willamette Valley, passing vineyards and things we had seen before. And then all of a sudden, we saw it in the distance. Whitey. Mt. Hood. He was tiny and probably hundreds of miles away. But we knew that meant we were getting very close to Portland. As the snow topped mountain grew bigger and bigger, we felt more and more like we would actually make it, like the car wasn't going to break down, and no one was going to die. The sun was starting to set and the sky was turning pretty colors. We exited the highway and there we were. We had made it. We passed downtown and saw the Made In Oregon sign. We crossed the Morrison Bridge. It hadn't set in yet, but we had actually drove across the entire country, taking the long way, down through Texas and up the Western Coast. Passing through eight states, driving about 4,000 miles in six days, with three pets, one car completely full of our only possessions, and just a bit of courage. Just enough of it to up and leave everything and everyone we had known, for a change of scenery. No other plans beyond just making it there. No house to go to, no jobs to make money with, and no one but ourselves to rely on. Maybe it wasn't courage, maybe it was insanity. Either way, we did it.

It was exhilarating and exhausting to think about. The culmination of over a years planning and strategizing. It felt good to have accomplished something that not everyone gets a chance to do. We gave ourselves a fresh start, a jump start. A clean slate and all of those other cliche things people say. We'd succeeded.

Elk Crossing

Woodcarving

A little camp park across the lake.

Elk Herd!

You can just make out their racks above the grass.

Beautiful ferns.

Big Tree!

Yikes! 

Using my scarf as a pupoose to carry Persie.

This guy was "Big Tree." He's a modest 1500 years old.

I guess he is pretty big.

Climbing things.

Persie tags along when I climb things.

Hello tree friend. I love you.

This mammoth guy fell on these other guys.

Hiding in the tree centers.

Giant clovers!

If I was a squatch, that's where I'd stay.

Not even close, Tim.

Strolling among the giants.

Not the fattest, but the tallest redwoods.

Spiral bark.

Almost Tim, almost.

I want to run and leap through this forest.

Big 'ol root bunch.

Tim in the root ball.

So tall you can't even "picture" them.

Leaving the redwoods and the ocean behind.

Following the river.

Avoiding falling rocks.

Hello, Oregon. You need a bigger and less graffitied sign.

I didn't know Bigfoot could use a credit card.

Every gas station was called Bigfoot.

Oregon's mountains have snow in July.

Pretty tree tops.

Hello, U of O.

Tim has found his point of entry.

Made it inside, like a ninja.

I'll live on that hill.

Yep, mine.

A tired cat. Poor Iggy and Julian.

Whitey makes his first appearance!

Vineyards

Too bad we couldn't go there.

Only like a half hour from Portland and Persie just had to go.

She likes to go on low lying bushes and tall grasses.

Cows hanging out with the irrigation system.

Hi buddy.

HolyCowCountry.com

Sunset

Mt. Hood and Mt. Scott to the right.

Whitey and the Ross Island Bridge

Mt. St. Helens in the distance in Washington.

Downtown

The convention center

The Steel Bridge