Road Trip Day 4

Day 4: California or bust!

Our final day on the road was the shortest of our 3 long days, barely.  It was also the prettiest - least cluttered with billboards and much more visually interesting than much of the rest of our drive.  Unfortunately, the phone-camera-from-a-moving-car shot requires a good imagination.  We'll definitely be back to this neck of the woods for more sustained appreciation.

Somewhere in Arizona

Highlights of this final leg include:

• Colorful mesas rising out of the desert
• Checking off 2 states (NM, AZ) and reaching our destination state (CA). If you're counting, that's 12 states from NY to CA.
• Spotting the following license plates: Nevada, Idaho, North Dakota... bringing our grand total to 47 states + DC and 2 provinces!
• Holding out hope for an Alaska or Hawaii spotting, and grumbling about how not one of the 833,000 residents of South Dakota happened to be driving on our route for 4 days.

• Being appropriately welcomed to LA by standstill traffic on the 605 as we were just miles from our final destination.
• The relief that came knowing that we AND our wine collection arrived without incident in Long Beach, about 6:15pm on Tuesday!

That's all folks!

Road Trip Day 3

On Monday, we woke up at the Best Western Plus North Little Rock feeling both amazingly well rested (the Best Western Plus North Little Rock has the best beds ever!) and smug for having decided to tack those extra 2 hours onto our Sunday travels. To be honest, we're STILL talking about how smart that was. Easily the best idea we had on the trip.

While this was easily the most visually boring day of the trip, we did still have some highlights: 

• Enduring a couple hours of morning drive country music radio to start the day as we drove through the most inclement weather of the trip (a pain-in-the-butt "wintery mix" that had sent several cars into ditches but thankfully not our trusty VW)
• Listening to 45-second traffic reports, warning drivers about icy bridges and overpasses, realizing that these brief reports are probably 3x longer than a typical report
• Briefly considering moving to the Little Rock area, citing extraordinarily short traffic reports
• Flirting with the idea of having Cracker Barrel for lunch, but ending up with a superior plan of dining at Van's Pig Stand in Shawnee, Oklahoma

How could this NOT be a good idea?!

Proof!

• Passing through Checotah, Oklahoma "Hometown of Carrie Underwood, American Idol Winner 2005"
• Absolutely nothing else in Oklahoma, much of which caused Jason to remark, "Yep, we're in Amerrr-ica."
• A freakish icy blast in northern Texas that turned the view from this:

   to this, in about 5 minutes:

• Marveling at the blanket of stars when the sky finally cleared in New Mexico
• Spotting 4 more state license plates (new total: 44 + DC)
• Checking off 3 more states (AR, OK, TX)
• Going to sleep knowing we only have 1 more day on the road!

Road Trip Day 2

Day 2: Up and out of Virginia at 6:30AM to tackle our first long day. 

We started Sunday with the goal of getting to Memphis, where we could enjoy some barbecue and walk on Beale street.  But as we faced the prospect of a 15-hour day on Monday, combined with the reports of the stormy winter weather coming from the Southwest and heading for our route, we called an audible and made our destination Little Rock, 2 hours past Memphis. 

Highlights of this stretch included: 

• Bacon-egg-and-cheese (salt pepper no ketchup)
• Spotting 12 more states license plates (running total: 40 + DC)
• Learning all about Tennessee's vices via the following billboards:
• The State's Largest Gun Shop!  THIS EXIT!
• NEXT EXIT: The South's Largest Adult Superstore!
• Tennessee's Biggest Moonshine Selection - DON'T MISS IT!
• Deducing that people actually purchase moonshine - and evidently in large quantity
• Checking off two states (VA, TN)
• Crossing the Mississippi - even if it was dark, it was still clearly large and impressive
• Finding a very dive-y pizza place with great beer and pretty darn good middle America pizza in Little Rock

Crossing the Mississippi!

Road Trip Day 1

Our road trip west is a little unconventional in that it both does not have classic road trip qualities (we will sadly not be stopping off to visit oddities like the world's biggest ball of twine, for example); and contradictorily we are also not taking the most direct route to our ultimate destination. But, since our interim destination is Long Beach (it's "on the way" to Portland), we are taking the southern route which allowed for our path to go through Virginia.

Highlights of this leg of the journey were:

• getting through 3 states (NJ, DE, MD)
• checking 28 states + DC off our license plate game list, plus 2 bonus points for Canadian provinces! (Most important spottings: Montana and Rhode Island)
• Jason's quotable moment: "This would be the heart of Jersey, if Jersey had a heart."
• learning what a Proving Ground is
• leaving the NJ Turnpike behind, reminiscing on the many hours we have spent on that godforsaken road.

Our stopover in Virginia brought us to the home of our friends Nicole and Ben, who graciously gave us their guest room for the night. Fortuitously, their gym was offering "parents night out" babysitting services, so we were able to go out to dinner and catch up while little Augie was looked after. It wasn't enough time for catching up after nearly a year and a half, but I was glad to have a few hours all the same. After a little too much wine and a short night sleep, we were up and at em again for Day 2!

Moving Out Day

Greetings from somewhere near Dixie Caverns, Virginia.  I'm going to attempt some road blogging via the Blogger app... please excuse any formatting challenges [edit: finally on a laptop!].

So Friday was Moving Out Day. Not fully Moving Day as we are doing this in phases, but this was definitively Phase 1. The movers showed up around 8am, took their sweet time, and left around 1pm with almost all of our stuff, most of which we had already packed up. What remained looked like this:

And after we packed it into our little VW Golf it looked like this:

We have packed in 550 lbs of wine and 400+ lbs of human and miscellaneous cargo, bumping up against the max payload and putting complete faith in quality German engineering over the next few days and 3000+ miles.

Our first stop on Friday after departing New York was a trip to northern New Jersey (slightly wrong direction!) where we enjoyed the excellent company, cooking, and hospitality of old friends Brian and Jamie Weinstein, along with a bonus visit with Larry and Shelly and lots of tickles from the Weinstein's kids. It all culminated in a fittingly warm and happy sendoff on our journey West.

(Thanks guys!)