TRAVEL LOG:
OUR MOVE TO VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON

Oct. 31-Nov. 1
2009

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Some might wonder:

"Why move to Washington??"

Well, to start, here's a few hundred reasons:

Beautiful, yes?

Yep, there are other reasons too - like So Cal being way too overcrowded.

And far, far too expensive for housing.

Quality of life factor in So Cal... far too low.

If you know us, and if you're reading this likely you DO know us, then you know most of the rest of the "why move?" part.

Now on to the Travel Log!

We didn't take any pictures of our packing.

We were too busy packing.

So much to do, so little time...

Our travel log picks up on October 31, 2009.

Yep, Halloween! Trick or treat!

Ah yes, the road again.

Who knows what adventures await... frankly, hopefully none.

We're looking forward to an uneventful trip as in no flat tires, no weird driving conditions, no gravel popping up off the highway...

With at least 16 driving-hours and 2 days ahead, we hit the road well-fed and "properly caffeinated".

Here's a stupid little note:

I'd had this fantasy, I know this is stupid, for at least the last 10 years to physically spit upon the San Fernando Valley while leaving Los Angeles forever someday.

Told you it was stupid.

Ya see, I hate the heat.

Can't stand it.

And I, Mr.-Heat-Hater, lived in the SFV for a number of years.

Hated it!

And I'll spare you the other details of how and why the Valley represents some of the worst of LA - as I see it.

So, guess what?

Dreams really do come true, but not always exactly the way you might think.

You see, spitting out of a car window while flying down the freeway at 65 miles per hour means...

You guessed it!

More gets INSIDE the car than out.

But you know what?-it's like they say... it's the gesture that counts, right? ;-)

It's easy to forget that Southern California is a desert.

I said to Tracy - "take a snapshot of this scenery in your mind because we'll compare to when we get to Oregon and Washington".

She did better than that and took a picture.

Look at those hills, it's all desert scrub.

Onward...

THE FINALITY OF IT ALL STARTS TO "HIT HOME"...

As we headed up the hills of LA, we each took turns saying good-bye - out loud - to lots of places we'd been, places we'd eaten or lived, and people we'd known.

Driving through West LA it was memory packed for both of us...

But as we headed up those hills, one last time and saying good-bye, we both felt the emotional impact of the finality of this HUGE, "ginormous" step we were taking.

We had no home behind us to return to.

Our home in front of us was not yet ours.

We were homeless, the road was our home.

But it's not that that mostly stirred our hearts and souls.

It was the absolute finality of leaving behind the people and the place we'd called home for many, many years.

It's hard to put words to the many mixed emotions we both felt at that time.

For both of us, memories of the past came flooding in mixed partly with the excitement of our new home and new future together.

Like MJ said - "This is IT".

This is really IT.

This.
Really.
Is.
IT.

You're in for a long, long drive along farmland.

A relatively boring drive, it's flat and there's not much to see.

Having made it over The Pass, it seemed our emotions settled down and we felt more "on our way" than "leaving things behind".

Ah yes - the California aqueduct.

Remember the part about So Cal being a desert?

....hour after hour... the road goes on....

Oh: we did stop at an In-&-Out Burger for lunch! Yay!

Finally, we approach the end of the road for Day #1:

Sacramento, California.

In retrospect, I probably should have picked Redding CA as our halfway point in terms of hours-driven-per-day, but Sacramento was *about* halfway to Vancouver, WA - and we knew that Halloween night is a big night for people renting hotels...

...we were right - when we booked our Hotel in Sacramento before departing, there were only 2 rooms left.

Here we are in South Sacramento after about 7 hours of drive-time:

The sign says:
"Welcome to Sacramento - City of Trees".

We checked in at our hotel and had Kampai (cheers) pool-side under the stars when we realized that there we were, at the end of our Epic Journey Day #1, in the Heart of the Capitol of the State of California... the State we were leaving as our home.

We thought about crashing the Governor's mansion, but ordered Thai food instead.

It was quite delicious, I might add!

NOTES:

Odd how many things were converging at the same time, within a 2 day period:

1. Halloween
2. New month, November
3. Daylight Saving Time ended, Standard Time Started
4. The full moon was about to hit on Monday, Nov. 2
5. Something else I think I'm forgetting. Oh, I remembered, but it's personal.

Because of the time change, getting up at 7:30 meant we were now actually getting up at 6:30 so we got a nice early start.

The Sacramento Hotel was filled with Germans on a tour bus most of whom we'd run into pool-side the night before.

Now they packed the continental breakfast room, so we wished them a fun trip to San Francisco, and we headed for the nearest Starbucks, and hit the road again:

Day 2 began with eager spirits.

We had a long drive ahead, a good 9-10 hours estimated, and still a lot of California to go before we hit the Oregon border.

If you look closely at the above picture, you can see Mt. Shasta looming up on the horizon.

We began to get more excited at the prospect of finally seeing some real trees and mountains...

Now we were just speechless, and random oohs and aahs were emitted involuntarily...

We felt our souls were healing by the trees and hills filled with life...

By this time, we were really itchy to see ourselves out of California.

We joked that California could kiss our butts.

We were a bit more graphic than that, it's kind of an inside joke, but we were really ready to finally leave CA for good.

The stretch between Sacramento and the Oregon border is a long bit of road, and we knew we'd have to drive just about the same distance through Oregon.

Our new home, Vancouver WA, is just on the other side of the Columbia River at the north end of Portland, so getting out of CA meant not only "kiss our butts, California", but also "hello to our new neighbor, Oregon!"

It was only about midday, and we still had a long, long way to go.

Finally, we made it out of California!

Yahoo!

The green sign in the middle of the picture says "Welcome To Oregon"

We celebrated with hoots and hollers.

By now we'd been on the road quite some time, about 6 hours or so, but we still had a long way to go.

At this point, all of our thoughts were focused on "going home"...

We were really feeling good, talking about our future, and enjoying the scenery.

As we were driving through these mountains, in many parts we were surrounded by trees, as you can see.

We were listening to the radio and an old song by Grand Funk Railroad came on.

It's called "I'm Your Captain" and if you've heard this song, the theme is about wanting to get back home.

It's a 10 minute song, and the last about 5 minutes is a repeated refrain:

"I'm getting closer to my home..."
"I'm getting closer to my home..."
"I'm getting closer to my home..."

Goes on and on.

Tracy and I were singing this over and over along with the radio, it was as if the Radio Gods had sent us the perfect song as this was exactly how we felt:

Getting closer to our home.

The beautiful Oregon scenery continued:

The moon rising higher meant the dark of night would soon be upon us.

But we had the light of the nearly full moon to help light our way, and give us strength - which I definitely needed since I was driving a long time now with still another good 2 hours to go.

I fought off road hypnosis and focused on getting home safely.

Yep, the moon would be full tomorrow according to tracytaguchi.com/moon...

And tomorrow we'd pick up the keys to our new home after spending one more night in a hotel, this time in Vancouver!

As we got closer to Portland going through several of the major cities along the way, I was really getting weary and looking forward to getting to Vancouver.

Finally, we came upon the southern Portland area.

It was dark, so we couldn't get any good pictures, but Portland is absolutely beautiful as it sits on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers.

I had to really focus to navigate the road due to driving for so long - not a "falling asleep" kind of focus, just a very, very long day... we had to manage more than several little ins and outs getting through Portland...

And then - Yahoo! we crossed the bridge into Washington!

Tracy had been poised with camera, despite the darkness, to take a picture of the "Welcome to Washington" sign - you can't make it out, but that's what it says.

Having been here twice now, I navigated a couple of now-well-known roads and into Vancouver, and we checked into our hotel and had a well-deserved Kampai and terrific turkey dinner.

EPIC JOURNEY, PART 3:
HOME AT LAST!

We had a good night's sleep then went over to pick up the keys to our new home the next day, Monday November 1st - on a full moon.

This is the view about 2 minutes walk from our new home.

The apartment complex is those buildings on the right.

In the distance, in the middle of the picture, is Mt. St. Helens.

Here's the same view, a little closer up and how it looked to our eyes:

By the way, it's pure coincidence that you see blue skies in every photo, including our home.

If you're getting ideas that it's like this all the time, forget about it.

It cold, gray and rainy as hell here, so forget about any fantasy you have about relocating here, okay?

Remember: this part of the U.S has the highest suicide rate due to the gloomy climate... keep that in mind.

But don't worry about us - we love that kind of climate.

Just wanted to file that disclaimer...

Here's some pics of Tracy and me right before we picked up our keys to our new home, complete with views of Mt. Fuji - er, St. Helens - in the background:

We're not as happy as we look (eyes rolling...) hahaha!

Well, after a full day of checking out our new home and checking it over carefully, we still had things to do.

And at the end of the day, we needed to make a Trader Joe's run, and in the parking lot, we caught the sunset and moon rise.

Luckily, Tracy had her camera in tow:

So now we come to the end of our little Travel Log.

Thanks for coming along!-wish you had helped with the driving!

Today marks our one-week anniversary here.

Yes, it's been cold as hell, raining, and depressing gray skies here all day.

You'd hate it, unless you like freezing your a** off.

And being drenched in the rain.

And seeing dark, gloomy, gray skies all day long.

We love it!