Completing the Oregon Trail

We did it!

Rachael and I have successfully crossed the country without succumbing to dysentery or losing any wagon wheels while fording a river, and now we are safely nestled in Oregon.  Along the way we saw a bunch of friends and had a lot of small adventures; much of what we experienced we shared with our friends and family via social media.  There were some… awkward moments (although our trip was supposed to end with three nights camping in a couple of state parks, Rachael and I realized we were just too tired to go any longer without the comforts of modern living, so we adjusted our travel plans and spent a couple of restful days at a motel in downtown Eugene), but overall it was a wonderful experience driving across the country.

Part of my blogging about the trip has been an effort to create a little archive of what it was like while we were on the road.  Besides a couple of minor moments of unpleasantness, it really was an incredibly fun thing to do.  When I don’t mention any negative moments in these posts, it’s because they really were that rare and inconsequential to the overall feeling of the road trip.  What’s been easy to forget as we’ve been going along is that our road trip hasn’t just been a vacation; we’re in the middle of moving, and there’s a lot of work to be done once we get settled in Portland.  We still don’t get to move into our apartment until the end of the month, which is a bummer.  Rachael and I both have to do new employee orientation some time before we report to work towards the end of August.  We have to actually get our things out of storage and replace the essential furniture we couldn’t bring with us on the move.  It’s going to be a pretty full last month of summer break.

Still, this has been a truly remarkable experience; I’m happy that for such a major move Rachael and I were able to do it in this fashion.  We have a plan for one last post to help give a little more perspective on the trip as a whole, but that will likely have to wait a few more days.

It’s good to be here, Portland; I hope you’ll be kind to us.

Oregon Trail Days 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16

It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long since my last update, but I suppose things just sort of got away from me.  We’re due to arrive in Portland on July 20, and before that we’ll be doing three nights of camping in a row, so this is likely to be the last major update before Rachael and I are happily ensconced in our new home city.

The last few days in Los Angeles were incredibly good, primarily because we have some really great friends who live in that area who are willing to take us in and let us be part of their lives for however long we’re able to stay in town.  Much of what we did during that part of the trip was just simple day-to-day stuff that anyone living their lives would do, but with house guests tagging along.  Rachael made the entire family shepherd’s pie as a thank you on our last night there, and it was really good; I think she improved on the last time we attempted that dish.

There’s so much promise on this plate, and unfortunately it was a rare case of disappointment.

The same day that we had the shepherd’s pie, we also went out to eat at a local Mexican restaurant that had some delicious creamy mushroom soup and mole fries.  I had a chicharron quesadilla which was a little disappointing (chicharron is pork belly, and I was expecting something crispier than the super fatty filling I got in my quesadilla).

After Los Angeles, we trekked up California’s I-5 towards Half-Moon Bay, a little coast town just south of San Francisco.  We were warned that the five is a really boring drive in comparison to the Pacific Coast Highway, but it’s faster, and since we’d never driven along it before we were actually very intrigued by the variety of farms, orchards, and vineyards that line the roughly two hundred mile stretch that we did.  Subsequent drives along the five are likely not to be as interesting, but it was worth doing once.

We spent that evening trying to navigate San Francisco’s metro system, the BART, in order to go hang out with some writer acquaintances of Rachael’s in the city.  The BART had a pretty steep learning curve, and the workers at the stations were occasionally less than helpful with city newcomers, so that was a point of frustration with the evening.  Besides dealing with transit though, it was a fun excursion with some good Thai food to bookend the commutes in and out of the city; I did learn pretty conclusively that I’m not a fan of driving mountain roads after dark though.

For our two nights in Half-Moon Bay we stayed at a local bed and breakfast that’s run by a local couple who were extremely pleasant if a little hard to disengage from when we needed to retreat to our room or go out about our business.  All things told they were extremely sweet though.

Our full day of rest while in the Bay Area was spent enjoying the local leisure activities of Half-Moon Bay.  Rachael and I got up and took a morning stroll along the coastline while the fog slowly burned off the water, had lunch at a local brewery, were mistaken for guests at a local wedding, took a short drive south along the coast to a small rural town to pick up some artichoke laced bread (it didn’t last past the drive the next day), and finished the day by walking along the beach again to view the sunset and get dinner at a local seafood place.

On the approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. It really was that cool.

Today (I’m sure I’ve skipped over a lot, but what are you going to do?), Rachael and I hit the road towards Fort Bragg, another small coast town farther north.  On our way out of town we drove through San Francisco and over the Golden Gate Bridge (it is a very impressive thing), then we stopped over in Santa Rosa briefly where there was a local farmer’s market happening.  We got some fresh fruit and learned from a lady at the information center that we weren’t far from a winery belonging to Nicolas Cage’s uncle.  We obviously couldn’t let this opportunity pass, so we stopped there on the way and took some pictures of the movie memorabilia on display (alas, there was nothing Cage related; I guess he was really serious about distancing himself from the family name) and moved on.  The rest of the drive was pleasant, but winding.  We took a mountain road through some of the redwood forests that are dispersed throughout northern California, and while it was a very beautiful drive, I definitely felt a little stressed doing the windy switchbacks.

Sea glass glittering in the sunlight.

Once we got to Fort Bragg we decided to take it easy for the afternoon, so we only did a little bit of hiking at the glass beach for which the town is famous.  What’s notable about this beach is the vast amounts of sea glass left over from bottles and other glass containers that were previously tossed into the ocean that washes up on shore, polished into tiny little gemstones.  We didn’t stay too long there, and the rest of today has been a very relaxed one mostly spent lazing about in our hotel room.  Considering that the last stretch of our journey involves a bunch of camping, we figured that we’ve earned a rest day.

Next time I check in will probably be after we’re in Portland; here’s hoping I can gather up enough brain cells to rub together and present some final thoughts on this extended road trip.

Oregon Trail Days 8, 9, and 10

After two days camping at the Grand Canyon, we’re finally back in civilization.  The park was a ton of fun; we spent the two days that we were there hiking all along the trails that line the canyon’s south rim (I think we clocked nearly twenty miles of walking in total).  The weather was generally good, though there were a few scattered rain showers and thunderstorms.  At the visitor’s center for the canyon, the park posted each day’s projected weather forecast with high and low temperatures at different locations and the likelihood of rain.  We learned from some of the park staff that the funny thing about the canyon is that it’s actually very difficult to predict weather patterns in the area.  On the morning of our second day, a ranger came by our campsite to warn us that there were likely to be heavy thunderstorms in the afternoon with hale, so we should get out early for any activities we wanted to do.  There were a few showers that morning, but the afternoon thunderstorm never materialized (this was a major reason we did so much; we started early on our one full day in the park with the expectation that we might only have half a day of good weather, and then when it never turned we just kept going until we were exhausted).

Rachael and me in our dorky camping hats at the Grand Canyon. I’m still not very good at doing selfies, especially when it’s so bright outside.

The camping facilities in the park were extremely nice.  We booked our sites back at the end of May (before we even had jobs lined up and our moving plans were still hazy) because you have to make reservations really far in advance, and even then we ended up with two camp sites for two nights, requiring us to break down our camp and move it after our first night there.  Despite that inconvenience, we really enjoyed the campgrounds; each site had enough space to pitch two or three tents and they were significantly spaced out so you didn’t feel crowded by other campers around you.  The only unpleasant part of the experience was the rocky ground; the park advises campers to bring an air mattress or thick pads to put under sleeping bags because the terrain is so rocky.  Rachael and I brought an air mattress, and while the first night was comfortable, we suspect that in moving our camp we must have put a hole in the mattress somewhere because the second night it lost so much air that when we awoke we were nearly on the ground.

In addition to the good camp sites, the park’s general store was also very impressive; it carried most of the gear that you need to be comfortable when camping (except for tents), and it had a grocery store that was almost as well stocked as a standard supermarket.  Once we learned that we could indeed have campfires (we saw signs all through Arizona on the way to the park warning that fires were restricted because of the danger of wildfire, and so we had planned cold meals for our stay in the park) we were happy to have the high quality store nearby to get more substantial groceries.

The trails along the rim were very pleasantly designed.  Because the park gets so much traffic every year, it has a shuttle bus system in place to help visitors get around to different areas instead of clogging up the roads with their cars.  One extra advantage of the shuttle system is that it has stops all along the canyon where people can see the scenic overlooks and take pictures.  Since the rim trails follow this same pathway, anyone hiking along the rim is never more than a kilometer away from a bus stop where they can catch a ride if they’re tired or out of supplies (it’s really important to carry water and salty snacks when hiking around the park because it’s very easy to become dehydrated).  Rachael and I had a lot of fun hiking along the “Trail of Time” where markers are laid out to give you a sense of the time scale on which the canyon formed (it’s probably a four kilometer trail from end to end).  We also got to see the seabed fossils that are located on the canyon’s highest layer, and we learned a little about the geology of the region.

After we finished our time at the Grand Canyon, Rachael and I drove on to Los Angeles where we’re still visiting some very good friends of ours.  The drive across the Mojave desert was probably the most uncomfortable weather we’ve seen since leaving the South.  It’s extremely dry out there, but the heat is unrelenting; we thought we could have a brief picnic at a rest stop on the drive, but the first one we came to didn’t have fully shaded tables, so we decided to move on.  The second rest stop we found did have full shade, but it was still so hot out that we only spent about fifteen minutes eating a small lunch before we got back on the road.  After about a hundred miles in the desert we finally saw a sign for a California welcome center, and Rachael joked that they wait until you’ve crossed the desert to decide they actually want you here.

The time here in Los Angeles has been incredibly pleasant and laid back.  We’ve taken time to do our laundry (all restocked and ready for the second half of our road trip!) and visited with friends.  Last night we hung out at a coffee shop that advertizes itself as a spot specifically for writers to write, got tacos at a place in Anaheim that were remarkably good, and then went to a local brewery that’s superhero themed (I didn’t know that was the place’s motif until we got there, and I was so happy about the decor).  The plan for today is to do some swimming, restock a few groceries, and generally enjoy the company of our friends some more before we have to get back on the road tomorrow.

In reflecting on our trip so far, Rachael and I have both been struck by the relentlessly good time we’ve had even after a solid week of travel.  We’re total homebodies under normal circumstances, and we were both a little anxious about this extended leap between our old home and our new one.  I think part of what’s made the trip so good though (besides the fact that we always enjoy one another’s company) is all the time we’ve been able to spend with friends along the way.  We seen both old friends from our college days and more recent friends whom we got to meet in person for the first time, and they all continue to be incredibly neat and warm people who have welcomed us while we’re traveling.  It’s the hospitality of people that has allowed us to take this leisurely pace and see so much cool stuff along the way.  It means a lot to both of us to have such good friends; this would be a very different road trip without them taking us in along the way.

Oregon Trail Day 7

We spent Saturday driving across New Mexico and Arizona to get to Williams, a little town about an hour south of the Grand Canyon National Park.  It was a long day of driving (about as long as the previous day when we drove across most of Texas), but it was generally pleasant because the weather wasn’t terrible and the landscape changed drastically every few hours.

Desert hills in New Mexico.

Our major stop of the day was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where we visited an old friend from college and spent some time walking around the Albuquerque BioPark.  We got to see a portion of a documentary about a photographer who has spent the last decade taking pictures of endangered animals to be logged into an archive he calls the PhotoArk.  His hope is to use his photography to help communicate the amount of biodiversity that’s being lost because of careless human interactions with the environment and try to get people to act in ways that are more friendly to the life with whom we share the planet.  We also saw exhibits at the zoo like a bug house where a colony of leaf cutter ants traveled across the atrium on an open air overhead vine between their colony and their food source and Rachael was extremely excited by a container of old tarantula carapaces labeled “Education Molts.”  After the zoo, we tried some New Mexican food and received an education on the importance of poblano chiles to the local cuisine and how one’s opinion on green versus red chile salsa is a vital matter.

The rocks on the sides of the hills all through this leg of the drive were humongous.

The afternoon drive saw us attempt to detour to the Petroglyph National Park, but we decided to skip it after we learned it would take at least an hour to hike the shortest trails, and we needed to make sure we didn’t arrive in Williams too late to check in (arriving in a town late with no place to sleep would have been pretty bad).  Because of that we skipped a couple other attractions that might have been fun to see, like the Meteor Crater in the Arizona desert.  A lot of this paranoia had to do with time zone weirdness, as our GPS predicted we’d arrive at one time, but it didn’t line up with the projected travel time.  We didn’t solve this particular mystery until this morning when I looked up a time zone map and discovered that most of Arizona does not participate in Daylight Savings Time, which means that this time of year the majority of the state is effectively on Pacific Time.  That one was a weird puzzle since our phone clocks updated accordingly, but, because it needs to be changed manually, our car clock didn’t.  Since we knew we were still in the Mountain Time zone, you can imagine our confusion.

That all worked out okay though, and we got into town with plenty of time to check in and go out to a nice local gastropub where they served us flights of Arizona craft beers and local varieties of mead, all while we sat next to a classic muscle car (this place is located inside a converted auto shop).

I was taken with how drastically the weather changed every time we’ve crossed state lines in the Southwest.  Texas had these beautiful, serene skies with big, billowy clouds, and New Mexico was unrelentingly sunny all the way across.  As soon as we crossed the Arizona border the storm clouds set in and we were treated to a desert thunderstorm.  I tried to get some pictures of the lightning, but that’s really hard to do even when you aren’t riding in a car that’s moving at seventy-five miles per hour.  It was still pretty spectacular to see, and I did get a few pictures of the isolated storms that were happening in different spots miles away from each other.

We ended up driving through that splotch of light directly ahead on the horizon with rain coming down hard on either side of us. There was also some much heavier rain later.

Today we’re heading out for the Grand Canyon, where we’re going to camp for a couple nights.  Power and internet are likely to be scarce resources out there, so expect another major update around Tuesday or Wednesday when we’re stopped Los Angeles for a couple days to see more friends.

Oregon Trail Days 4,5, and 6

It has been an incredibly busy three days.  Tonight we arrived in Clovis, New Mexico, which is the one stop on our east-west leg of the trip that doesn’t really have anything interesting to recommend it as a town, which means this is the ideal place to do a quick recap (and sort our bags, and maybe do laundry?).

One of our family mascots, Bacon, decked out in his finest for July 4th.

The holiday was a lot of fun with tons of quality time spent with my family.  I got to cook dinner on the grill for everyone while it was raining, so I naturally got soaking wet (this is sort of a pattern that I’m noticing with regard to Moving Week).  It was a lot of fun, and after doing that, I cooked s’mores with my dad (Rachael and I gave him a set of s’more ingredients and a fishing rod marshmallow skewer for Father’s Day).  To cap off the evening, Rachael and I set off fireworks for everyone to watch.  It was especially nice since some kids from the neighborhood stopped by to watch as well, so we had a decent little audience.  After all that excitement, I got some pictures with my parents.  We had a really good day together, but I know that it was hard for them with the move happening.  We’re hoping that we’ll be able to arrange to come back home for the holidays in a few months, but that requires a little bit more planning and discussion.  Altogether the day was good, but very exhausting; I slept very well in preparation for the first day of our big trip.

Rachael, Dad, Mom, and me.

In the morning, Rachael and I unveiled our specially selected Oregon Trail t-shirts.  Rachael is known for her love of dinosaurs, so of course she went with the design that has a T-Rex (this is another theme of Moving Week).

I really my shirt is accurate. I’m pretty sure it is. Rachael’s shirt reads, “You have died of temporal anomaly.”

Over that bridge is Mobile. Yes, there’s a bridge in this picture, I promise.

The first day of the trip involved crossing four states to arrive in New Orleans for an evening of fun.  Before we could go party though, we had to get there.  Our plan for this road trip is to parse out the driving in roughly two hour chunks; the first day involved about eight hours on the road, so that meant two shifts for both of us.  This worked out fine for the first round of driving, but very shortly after Rachael started her second shift, we approached Mobile, Alabama where a tropical storm was raging.  It was really cool riding into the storm, but not so much fun actually being in it.  Rachael declared that half an hour of driving in stormy weather with extremely poor visibility constituted a full shift, so we switched off early.  It worked out great except that just before we got to New Orleans she had another turn and so she got to drive into another major city with bad traffic, though thankfully without the terrible weather.

These were good, but after walking thirty minutes in the heat and humidity, we appreciated the water on the table a lot more.

In New Orleans, we stayed in an amazing bed & breakfast that had a lot of character and was located only about a half hour’s walk away from the French Quarter.  It was incredibly humid, so we sort of regretted walking all the way, but the city was enough fun to make up for this bit of unpleasantness (and we later decided to just call a cab to take us back to our hotel).  We checked out the beignets at Cafe Du Monde on the recommendation of folks in my family, and we ate at a pretty touristy restaurant that had excellent appetizers but underwhelming entrees.  Somewhere in there we walked the length of Bourbon Street and determined that it’s a really disappointing experience.  There’s not much that distinguishes it as an interesting vice district, and by the time we had walked the street’s length we weren’t really sure what the appeal was supposed to be.  It reminded me a lot of Panama City Beach: a place that’s designed to draw in college kids on spring break, but otherwise lacking in local character.

Day five started with us leaving New Orleans early (the sun had barely risen, and the heat was already oppressive when we hit the road) to trek across Louisiana into Texas.  Our plans for this day were built around visiting with friends who live in Texas, so we spent a lot more time driving overall.  We did stop at the border rest stop where I found a bronze of an alligator snapping turtle.  You can see from the selfie that I was overjoyed.

I also couldn’t see my phone screen, so I had no idea if this picture would turn out okay.

Not pictured: the terrible traffic surrounding Houston.

Our first stop was in Houston, which had a really impressive skyline on the way in.  Rachael once again got saddled with driving the obnoxious city traffic, and we agreed on the spot that I would do the drive up to Austin because her bad luck with driving shifts was getting kind of ridiculous.  Go figure the only obnoxious thing about the Austin leg was that there were a bunch of toll roads that we had to learn how to navigate all while panicking over the possibility that we might not use the right toll road and get some sort of big fine that we couldn’t pay because, y’know, moving.

On the way out of Austin (that was this morning on day six), I sort of fell in love with the wind farms located across Texas.  I’ve never seen these giant wind turbines before, and they are hella impressive.  I want them everywhere now.

Can I keep them, please?

This was a pretty good reason to drive ninety minutes out of the way.

Because we hadn’t planned anything major for today’s leg, Rachael and I decided this morning to add a detour to our route and plan on visiting the Big Texan Steak Ranch for dinner.  The main reason we wanted to go to there was because of the giant statue of a dinosaur in cowboy boots, and otherwise we were just going to drive for eight hours without any major landmarks along the way.  It ended up being a really good decision, because this place was amazing.

The Big Texan’s signature attraction is the seventy-two ounce steak that it serves in the restaurant; anyone who can eat the entire steak and its sides within an hour gets the meal for free.  We didn’t care about attempting that, but we did get to see a guy try for it while we were having our own dinner (they have those brave enough to try sit on a stage in the middle of the dining room so everyone can watch them chow down).  Our waitress explained that if he wasn’t done by around the thirty-five minute mark he probably wasn’t going to do it; by that point in a meal your brain has had time to signal that you need to stop eating, and it stops being pleasant to put that much meat down your gullet.

Besides the steak, the attraction also just had a lot of really kitschy photo opportunities.  It’s an old Route 66 icon, and it glories in its goofiness.

I don’t know why the hot dog is wearing a waistcoat, but I’m prepared to find out.

After dinner we did a final stint on the road towards Clovis, where we’re bedding down for tonight.  The sunset was spectacular along the way, especially with all the wind farms visible across the plains (this last bit for the day was driven across the Texas panhandle, which feels very much part of the Great Plains).  You know that moment at the end of the third level in Flower?  So much of this drive was reminiscent of that.

I want to go to there.

We finished up in New Mexico, which immediately feels very different from Texas (we think they actually pave their roads wider in Texas just to make you feel like everything’s bigger).  The plan is to hit Albuquerque tomorrow morning, so it’s time for me to get to bed.  We have another early day, and I’m pretty wiped.

Road Trip Days 2 and 3

There’s not a whole lot to say about the last couple days that we’ve been parked in Atlanta.  We’ve visited a lot with family and friends, and we’ve been busy doing some last minute errands to get ready for our road trip.  It’s been a much busier couple days that we anticipated, but it’s still been really good.

Pictured: things now in my belly. (Roasted cauliflower, kale, ratatouille, rosemary red potatoes, mushroom ravioli, sesame tofu, and roast turkey)

For our second day in Atlanta, we took a trip to Your DeKalb Farmer’s Market, a huge international farmer’s market that has an impressive food court where you pay for your plate of food by the pound.  We didn’t go just for the food court; the plan in going to the farmer’s market was to buy a new set of spices to ship ahead to Portland.  The spices for sale at this farmer’s market are incredibly inexpensive (you can get half a pound of most spices for under a dollar).  It’s one of the best deals in Atlanta, and we’ve taken advantage of it several times in the past.  The way we figure it, this spice run will last us a couple years, and by that point we’ll have figured out Oregon well enough to know where to go to get good spices.  Following that stop, we decided to hit a Trader Joe’s to get road trip supplies for our first few legs.  The funny thing about Trader Joe’s stores is that they simply aren’t located on the south side of Atlanta.  Our GPS said that there was one only about fifteen miles away from the farmer’s market, but with traffic it would have taken us over an hour to get there.  So instead, we took the loop that circles Atlanta to hit up a Trader Joe’s on the north side of town that was significantly farther away, but which we could reach in only about forty minutes.

Atlanta is a weird town.

After that outing, we had a relatively relaxed afternoon in.  My parents came over to have dinner with us again, and as an early birthday present, they gave me a fitbit (I figured this would happen).  It’s a really nice gift, and I’m having a lot of fun keeping track of all the weird little fitness stats that it records.  We went for a walk after dinner where Rachael and I showed my dad and my aunt how to play Pokemon GO.  With the sun going down and the breeze blowing from an incoming thunder storm, we had a really nice time walking around the neighborhood.

Today was much busier.  On the way in from Athens the other day, we discovered that one of our car’s twelve volt chargers wasn’t receiving power.  Seeing as how we’re going to be on the road a lot for the next two weeks, and we’ll need to be able to recharge various electronic devices, this was kind of an important thing to get fixed.  That meant that we had to make an appointment with a local dealership to bring our car in for service and let them know that it had to get done today, what with the holiday tomorrow and our plans to leave early on Wednesday.  Coincidentally, today was also the day we had set aside to visit one of our oldest friends from school and her family, so we really needed to have a car while ours was in the shop.  Fortunately for us, my aunt saved the day by loaning us her car.

At our friend’s house, Rachael played an extended game of let’s pretend with our elder god-daughter (she is nothing like Cthulhu, I assure you) that involved a phone, the Fairy Council (eventually replaced by the absolute monarch Fairy Queen), and dressing up in various silly costume pieces and flapping around the living room.  There are pictures, but none of the ones I took are any good, so you don’t get to see Rachael wearing a witch’s hat and opera gloves.  Overall the visit was great and far too short.  Once it was time for the kids’ naps, we bid everyone farewell, went to pick up our car from the shop, and returned to our temporary home.

The evening’s been spent figuring out what to eat for tomorrow night’s Independence Day get-together and deciding exactly how many fireworks will be needed.  At this point, we are confident that everything is in order, and our last night in Atlanta is sure to be a fun, if bittersweet, one.

Road Trip Day 1

Loading the crate was good.  We had rainy weather all day, but we were relieved that it was dry and overcast while we were actually loading.  We still got soaking wet after getting caught out in a mid-day shower.  I wish we’d gotten a picture of the inside of the crate after it was packed, because it looked really impressive.  I’ll have to make a mental note to photograph the crate when we get to Portland in a few weeks.

Of course it would be rainy on the day we moved out.

For our final night in Athens, we did a tour of some of our favorite downtown spots.  We started with the rooftop bar above the Georgia Theatre (the menu and drink list are unimpressive, but the view of downtown is undeniably good), then, after a sprint through a sudden rain shower, we had dinner at Transmetropolitan, a pizza place where you can get “Sicilian” pizza slices, which come on top of inch-thick semi-crunchy dough, and then we finished at Trappeze and Highwire, a pub with pretty good food, an excellent rotating beer list (there were so many sour beers on tap that our waitress brought us a free sample of one that she particularly enjoyed), and perhaps our favorite dessert menu in Athens.  Rachael had red velvet cake, and I had the salted caramel cheesecake.  There was a live lounge singer in Highwire who sang crooner songs all evening.

The view from our outdoor table in front of Transmet. The rainstorm had just passed and the sun was starting to shine through on the sides of the buildings across the street.

We discovered that Mama’s Boy has a basket of homemade fortunes by the door that you can take on your way out. “Everything educates, and some things educate more than others.”

Last morning in Athens started early because we had to do last minute cleaning and loading up the car.  After we got our walk through with our landlord done, Rachael and I went to Mama’s Boy for breakfast.  Mama’s Boy is a really popular Athens restaurant that serves breakfast and lunch.  They have a small parking lot and outdoor seating just for people waiting to get inside the tiny brick building (pro-tip: the wait isn’t that long, but finding parking is difficult; however, the restaurant is located on the edge of a city park, and if you just drive around and park on the other side, you can take a short, scenic walk to get back to Mama’s Boy).  The food is decadent, slightly fancy versions of breakfast standards like bacon and eggs and french toast; everything is served with a giant fluffy biscuit that you’re supposed to eat with the raspberry jam they provide on the tables in squirt bottles.  We’ve not been able to eat there very often because the trouble to get in has always been too much hassle in the past, but for our last meal in town, we wanted to do something special.

The last stop before we said goodbye to Athens was Memorial Park where we visited the local wildlife zoo and saw the turtle pond (the turtles aren’t part of the zoo).  It was around mid-day at this point, so we were feeling hot and tired after a day-and-a-half of moving, so we cut it short to hit the road.

A turtle conga line in Memorial Park.

Our first stop on the road trip is with my aunts, who are hosting us through July 4th.  They made us spaghetti with meat sauce, and my parents came over for dinner as well.  We talked a lot about all the exercise we’ve all been getting lately (mostly by accident), and now it seems that I am destined to acquire a fitbit at some point in the future so we can have more family togetherness.

Believe it or not, the best picture I could get of Charlie (left) and Buddy (right) was this one where neither of them was looking at the camera.