Hello Washer, Hello Dryer...

Hello washer, hello dryer,

Here we are at laundry mountain.

It's been so long since I've seen you,

And you brought your old friend the refrigerator!

As you can tell from my joyful song, we had our final shipment delivered today... sort-of... almost... mostly.

They lost our John Deere lawn tractor, a sofa, Big Blue the chair, and a kiddy pool.  Surprise, surprise - bring on the claim forms.  At least the important things arrived.  We were almost out of clean underwear!

Unpacking Pause

Things were really rolling along on the unpacking front until Thursday morning.  We had our bedroom and one of the spare bedrooms painted, our clothes were unpacked, and we were working steadily on removing all traces of Bambi and friends from our sitting room.  We were down to just a handful of boxes piled up in the living room.  Not too bad for just four days!

Then, as many of you who also get my updates of Facebook already know, I had to go in for hernia surgery.  No worries – after two days of drug-induced sleep, I am back and better than ever.  The only exception is that can’t lift anything that weighs more then 10 lbs.  Let me tell you what, EVERYTHING in our house weighs at least 10 lbs.  I can’t do anything!!  Can you tell I’m frustrated?  However, I have the best husband ever, and he listened very patiently this weekend while I talked him through moving most of the boxes out of the living room.  Here’s what it looks like now.

It’s still a mess, and the living areas still need paint, but we’re getting there.  On the down side, our storage shipment may or may not ever make it to our house.  It was supposed to be delivered no later than today, and there’s still no sign of our refrigerator or our washer and dryer.  Good thing we both have way too many clothes!

Boxes, Boxes, Everywhere!!

In an unexpected, but much appreciated turn of events, our household goods shipment was delivered on Friday!!!  That meant we spent most of Thursday scrambling to get the essential walls painted and ready for furniture, but it was so worth it to sleep in our own bed again.

Chris took a few pictures of the unloading and unpacking that I thought you all might enjoy.

The main living areas before the unloading started:

Moving crates all unloaded:

The main living areas after unloading the truck and unpacking the kitchen:

We still have lots of boxes to unpack, but we're getting there.  Hopefully, we will get our refrigerator and our washing machine some time this week too!

New House!!

After over a month of waiting, we got the keys to your new house yesterday!!  Here are the pictures you’ve all been waiting for.  Sorry they aren't great.  It was a cloudy day here today, and we have lots of burned out light bulbs to replace!


We don’t love the paint colors in the house, so we’ll be working our way around with new colors.  The first stop will be the master bedroom and bathroom along with one of the guest bedrooms.  We have to get these rooms done before our furniture arrives next week (fingers crossed!) because once a select few furniture items are in their place, it takes more than the two of us to move them.  Motivation to get their location right the first time.

In addition to painting, we’ve got a few other house projects lined up.  We’ve been deprived of projects for two years, so if I were you, I’d be buying stock in Lowes.  We’ll probably be spending most of our money there for the foreseeable future.  In fact, I started and finished our first project today!

Peel and stick tiles under the kitchen sink.

Moving Update

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, so I thought I should fill you all in on how things have been going.  In a word… slowly.  Very, very slowly. 

I wrote about our initial journey in this post.  Since then, we've found a house and negotiated all the nitty-gritty details of the contract.  We are scheduled to close on Monday.  Keep your fingers crossed that nothing changes that date!  I’ll post pictures of the house once we are actually the owners.  We have attempted to schedule our various shipments for next week as well, but in typical military-move fashion, nothing is working out as we had hoped.  We will be able to get our unaccompanied baggage next week, so we’ll have a vacuum, one bicycle, a TV and some clothes.  However, our main household goods shipment was held up in customs, so we may no see that shipment (or our bed) for at least two weeks.  Yippee!!  We have also been unsuccessful in scheduling the delivery of the items we put in storage when we moved to Lajes.  As of today, they will be picked up from storage on the 18th and delivered in 2-14 days.  Really… 2-14 days, that’s the best you can do?  At least I have the internet installation scheduled for Tuesday!

Since we knew there would be a big time lag between finding a house and actually being able to move in, we scheduled a trip back to South Dakota and Nebraska to see our families.  I wrote about that trip here.  It was great to see our family, and I was thankful to not have to spend those 10 days in a hotel.

Almost immediately upon our arrival home from South Dakota, we found out our car had arrived in Dallas.  We flew up to Thursday morning and drove it home Thursday afternoon.  We were lucky enough to meet my cousin Amy and her family for lunch.  Thanks Brown family for being our taxi service!  It was great to see you guys.  We also purchased a new-to-us car a few days after our arrival.  We are now the proud owners of a 2010 Toyota Prius.  We love the car and the 51 mpg we've been averaging!

We were also lucky enough to spend the last three days with my aunt and uncle from Denver.  I haven’t seen them since I tagged along with them to Hawaii last December.  My uncle was in town for a conference, so I spent the afternoons with my aunt strolling along the River Walk.

And that takes me to today.  Despite a long list of things I need to blog about, I’m really, really bored… Sam agrees whole-heartedly with that last part.

Maybe we’ll go to the dog park again this afternoon.  Or, maybe not.  It’s awfully hot and humid out right now.  Story of our new life.

The Long Road to our New Home

Moving is never easy.  It involves lots of planning and re-planning and back-up plans for the back-up plans.  If you’re lucky, you’re only on ‘Plan C’ by the time you finally arrive.  We were lucky and arrived using only ‘Plan C’.  We are now, however, well on our way to ‘Plan E or F’.  Here’s the run-down of our trip from our little rock in the pond to everything-really-is-bigger-here Texas.

Last Saturday we packed our bags for the last time, then mailed whatever wouldn’t fit.  You know, things like the shower head we forgot to take down before the movers came.  Sam and Roxie decided thy wanted to get mailed too.  Silly puppies.

That night, we enjoyed final BBQ with our CE friends.  We really couldn’t have asked for a better way to wrap up our time in Lajes.  Just looking at the pictures makes me miss you all!

Bright and early Sunday morning, the circus that is our family arrived at the terminal for check-in.

Thankfully, two of our friends volunteered to help us get two very large dog kennels, two dogs, four suitcases, and two back-packs into the terminal and onto the plane. 

Many, many more of our friends arrived at the terminal to wish us farewell.  It’s hard to say ‘see you soon’ to so many great people all at once, but it seemed a fitting end to a tour that started with a welcome attended by just as many people.

That night, we landed in Baltimore, picked up our dogs, and tried to wrangle four luggage carts to the pick-up point for the hotel shuttle.  Thanks to some help from the shuttle driver, we managed to get everything to the hotel and into our room where we all promptly collapsed.  The time change is a real pain for the first couple of days.

Monday morning, we reloaded everything into the shuttle then made our way to the cargo terminal to check in the dogs.  Once the dogs were checked in for their flights, we went to the passenger terminal and checked ourselves in for our flights.  I managed to make arrangements for the dogs to be cargo on the same flights we would be taking.  The theory being, if one of the flights was delayed along the way, we would still all arrive in San Antonio at the same time.  We flew to Atlanta, where we saw the dog kennels sitting on the tarmac waiting to be loaded in the plane, before finally landing in San Antonio at 7:45pm (that’s nearly 1am Azores time). 

We loaded the circus into another shuttle, this one took us to the car rental counter.  I would have loved to see a video of us making our way through the airport with everything in tow.  I’m sure we were quite a sight.  We got our upgraded rental car (thank you Enterprise!) and collapsed in yet another hotel room.

Tuesday morning, we dropped the dogs off at the kennel (no pet-friendly rooms available in lodging on base) and started our search for a new house to call home.  We saw nine houses and eliminated all but two of them from the search.  We finally got to enjoy our first meal at Chipotle!  It really is the little things.

We also got our first taste of traffic and driving in the big city.  Now, as I had hoped, there are lanes on these road.  However, the paint is so worn that you can hardly see them, and people don’t really stay in their lanes.  Rather, they weave in and out of the streams of traffic trying to get just one car ahead in the line.  It’s enough to make you crazy.  But not as crazy as random pedestrians, stopped cars, and ridiculously narrow roads. 

We continued house hunting on Wednesday and plan to finish up tomorrow.  ‘Good enough’ is much easier to find than ‘perfect’, so this search is going much faster than our search in Kansas.

Chris checked into work yesterday, and I moved the dogs to a kennel we could actually afford to keep them in for more than two days (seriously Petsmart, it’s a dog kennel not an apartment!)  Then, I went shopping for interview clothes and other items that I haven’t been able to buy for the last two years.  Things like the only brand of make-up that doesn't make me break out in hives.  I also attempted a bit of grocery shopping.  Shopping in the teeny, tiny little commissary at Lajes left me under-prepared for what I was getting into.  Let’s just say this was the score of yesterday’s shopping trip:  HEB – 1, me – 0.  Another description… “Holy choices, Batman!”

Chris is at work again today, and I’m in the hotel trying to figure out if I should just suck it up and get my own web address so I can make my blog look like I really want it to.  Choices, choices.

All Good Things…

It has been said that all good things must come to an end.  So it is for us.  Our time on the island has officially come to a close.  When you hear from me again, hopefully, it will be from San Antonio. 

In case you didn’t notice, I’ve been working on a new name and a new look for the blog because Life in Lajes just won’t quite work any more.  The new name is Forever Home.  I hope you like it!

As we travel to our new home, I leave you with a list of things we’re going miss about the island as well as some things I am looking forward to in San Antonio. 

10 Things I'm Going to Miss:

1. The ocean… it’s everywhere here.
2. Our friends.
3. Three euro bottles of wine… don’t worry, we shipped home three cases.
4. A three minute commute… if you drive really slowly.
5. Not having a job / waking up whenever I want every day.
6. Sunrise or sunset over the ocean.
7. Cheap cell phone service… even if it does tend to include a steady stream of text messages in a language I can’t read very well.
8. A small base community full of people who really do care about each other.
9. Three hour flights to Europe and the vacation time to take advantage of them.
10. Scuba diving and snorkeling with some of the most beautiful sea life I’ve ever seen… yes, even better than Hawaii. 

10 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Target… or any store that’s open past 5pm, doesn’t close for lunch or at random, and actually carries things we need.
2. Chipotle… or really just the variety, speed, and convenience we’ve been missing when it comes to food.
3. Multi-lane roads with clearly marked lanes and drivers who stay in them.  Sidewalks and pedestrians who use them.
4. Produce that I can at least pretend came from somewhere on the same continent, and well-stocked grocery stores that are open every. single. day. 
5. Mail service that takes less than 3 weeks.
6. Having an American phone number.
7. Being in the central time zone.
8. A community outside the Air Force. We love our AF friends, but sometimes, you just want to get away and spend time with people who can’t have an entire conversation in acronyms. 
9. Having our own single family, detached house with a yard bigger than half a postage stamp… it will however, come without the ocean view. :(
10. Red Box, Netflix, Pandora, and a million other media sources that have been off-limits due to international copy write issues.

One Last Party!

Another weekend, another party!

 

Instead of a 'welcome home', this one was a ‘see you soon’.  A 'see you soon' for us.  It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two years since we first landed on this tiny little speck of land… the island of Lost, somewhere in the middle of nowhere.  The ladies sent me off with a great Pinterest-inspired gift… wine glasses dipped in chalk board paint.  All you need is chalk and no-one ever forgets which glass is theirs again. 

 

We all spent the night talking, eating, and just enjoying, what was for some of us, our last chance to be together. At least in this place.

 

We couldn’t have asked for better friends to share our time here with.  We will miss you all… until ‘see you soon’ becomes ‘so good to see you again’.

Moving Day Two

Yesterday morning, in under an hour, the last of our belongings were packed into three small crates.  We still have what will fit in two suitcases each, but that’s all we’ll have access to for the next six weeks (hopefully not more).  We also turned in our internet and cable boxes yesterday.  Not that we could watch much cable without a TV, but the internet is going to be hard to live without until we leave.  Good thing we have neighbors that are willing to let us tap into their wireless on occasion.  You know, to do important things like update the blog.

So, here’s to camping out in our own house.  At least we still have a mattress to sleep on… if you can really call that box of springs upstairs a mattress.

Pack-out

Every time we move, we go through something called “pack-out”.  This just means the moving company packs up all our stuff and moves it out of our house.  Monday and Tuesday of this week was our pack-out from Lajes. 

As I mentioned before, I spent all of last week deciding what we can and can’t live without for two months.  All the goodies we didn’t want packed were stored in a closet in the garage and in a room upstairs. 

If you don’t hide what you want to keep, it WILL get packed.  Everyone has a story about moving a full trash can of garbage or the last of the baby diapers because they didn’t hide them from the packers.

For about six hours on Monday and three hours on Tuesday, the movers packed up all our worldly possessions and loaded them into eight shipping crates. 

Chris and I supervised while trying not go crazy.  Watching people pack your things is REALLY boring, but you have to be there so no one runs off with your boxes.  The pups thought it was pretty boring too, especially because they were banished to the back yard both days.   

Hard to believe in a month we will be boarding a plane bound for the good old US of A.  Better get out there and enjoy the island while we still can!

Let the Moving Begin

About this time two years ago, I was anxiously waiting for Chris to return from six months in Qatar.  As soon as he came home, we went into full-on move mode.  Here we are, two years later and we’re back in full-on move mode.  The car got dropped of for shipment yesterday.

I’ve been sorting and organizing the house all week.  It’s hard to decide what you can live without for two months and what you really need to have sooner. 

Then, you have to decide if what you think you need will actually fit in your suitcases.  Then, there’s the dogs, and the job, and the… uggh.  I think I need a break already.

Packing the Car Video

What is this?  Another post so soon after the last one?  We are going to get spoiled if things keep going like this!!  Don’t worry, it probably won’t happen again.  I finally beat our video editing software into submission today and finished the “Packing the Car” video I promised a couple months ago when we started this crazy journey.  We video taped ourselves loading up our car the morning we left Kansas for our half-cross-country trip to Baltimore.  Dad, I would like to thank you for teaching me how to defy the laws of physics by allowing two objects to occupy the same space.  There is no other explanation for how we got everything in the car :).  See the video below… Enjoy!

I'm Back!

All right folks!  The "every day is totally new and picture-worthy" stage of our move is officially over.  Because it's been almost a month since I've had a crazy adventure to post about, I figure I can talk about whatever I want to now :).  For those of you who have been impressed with the quality writing I’ve produced thus far (all 2 of you), you may want to stop reading.

Our furniture finally came about a week and a half ago. I've spent most of the time since then unpacking and trying to fit all of our junk into various closets around the house.  Let's just say I really miss our huge master bedroom closet in Wichita!  It’s almost all put away, except the bathroom, the office, and Chris’ side of the closet.  That’s his problem… not mine.

In addition to unpacking, I've been channeling my inner '50's housewife and donning my frilly apron for lots of baking, dinner making, and cleaning.  Seriously, I did all three this afternoon while wearing my apron (It's practical - don't knock it).  I stopped after I finished Swiffer/mopping our tile floors and just rolled my eyes at myself.  Then the timer went off, and I ran to pull the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies out of the oven.

Once I get everything put away, and our house isn’t a maze of boxes anymore, I’ll put up some pictures of the inside.  I’ve gotten a couple requests for inside pictures, but we just aren’t there yet.

In other news, I’m thinking about planning our first big trip off the island.  I posted on Facebook for suggestions, but if anyone has any ideas for places (in Europe – no, Kansas and South Dakota don’t count) that would be good to visit between now and the first of the year, let me know!

Until next time… 

Bull Fight, Fence Installation, and More Island Tours

Sorry to those of you wondering where I wondered off to for the last couple weeks.  We finally moved into our house on base two Fridays ago, but we didn't get the internet hooked up and actually functioning until Friday.  Lots of fun stuff has been happening since then.  Here's the run down:


After looking at many houses off base, we finally decided that on-base housing was the way to go.  Base housing has a great location, a great view (we can see the ocean from almost every room in the house), American-style appliances and electricity, and a yard for the dogs.  We got the keys on the 17th of September and had our small, unaccompanied baggage shipment delivered that afternoon.  The dogs got to come home from the kennel, and I finally had a kitchen again after going nearly 6 weeks without!!



The dogs love the new house.  Roxie likes to chase lizards in the back yard, and both dogs have decided they need to keep watch over the front of the house from up on one of our tables.  Silly dogs!  

When we first moved into the house, there was no fence in the back yard for the dogs.  We went to the Self-Help office, picked up the necessary materials and construction requirements, and filled out some paperwork.  Because the Americans are tenants of the Portuguese Air Force on this base, any construction has to be approved by the Portuguese Air Force.  So, we waited a couple days for approval and got to work.  Of course, we over-engineered it just a little bit.  Pretty sure you could drive a truck into the poles now that the concrete is hard. 

On Wednesday, September 22nd, the Lajes Society of American Military Engineers (SAME) chapter took a tour of a local wind farm.  The wind farm is made up of 6 wind turbines and can supply up to 20% of the power for the island.  Construction of several new turbines is scheduled to start this year.  When the project is done, the island will be able to receive up to 40% of its power from wind energy!  Wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power are the main sources of electricity for most of the islands in the Azores, as transporting and storing fossil fuels on the islands is very expensive.

The week ended with the Civil Engineering (CE) Squadron's end-of-summer picnic.  We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers and played rediculous games against the other people in Chris' Squadron.  We had beautiful weather and lots of fun.

On Saturday the 25th of September, Chris and I went on the Outdoor Recreation Center's "Tour of the Northern Coast".  This tour included a trip to a local vineyard and winery, as well as stops at a folk museum, a church, and a basket weaver’s shop.  We finished the day out with lunch at a local restaurant.  The vineyard was very interesting because the grape vines on the island are not grown on a trellis as they are in other areas.  Instead, a 1'-2' think bed of lava rocks surrounds the plants, and the vines grow on the ground over the rocks.  The rocks absorb heat in the day and release it as night, helping to regulate the temperature of the grapes.  The wine typically made from these grapes is a green wine.  Chris and I got a bottle hoping that it would be really green.  It wasn't... it looked like white wine, but it tasted good.  One our way home from the north side of the island, the tour van got stuck in our very first "cow jam".

Saturday the 25th was a busy day for us.  After our tour, we joined our friends Steve and Jill for our first bull fight!  We found a nice high wall and waited for the action to begin.  For this type of bull fight, a long rope is tied around a bull and 12 men are positioned at the middle and end of the rope to help keep the bull under control.  The bull is then allowed to run up and down a long section of a local street.  People (usually just one or two crazy ones) run up and try to touch the bull or wave something like an umbrella at the bull in an attempt to make it chase them.  Then, when the bull gets too close, they jump up on one of the walls lining the streets to get away.  All the bulls wear round protectors on the ends of their horns to help keep people safe, but I still wouldn't have wanted to be any closer then we were!

Most of last week was spent talking to the cable and internet guys and filling out paperwork all over base.  Friday night and Saturday were spent decorating for the CE Haunted House and hanging out with our new friends.  There are new 7 CE officers and spouses about our age with no kids.  We spend a lot of time with each other and always have a great time. 

This weekend was also Doggie Days at the base pool.  We took Sam and Roxie hoping that they would be really excited to be in the water.  Turns out, neither of them like being in water when they can't touch the bottom.  Chris dragged both dogs out to the middle of the pool just to see if they could swim.  Sam did a great job, but Roxie's technique could use some work (watch the viedo below).  We gave up on the swimming after a couple of attempts and just let them play with the other dogs. 

This week we are looking forward to getting our car and possibly the rest of our stuff.  The boat with our car was supposed to come in this morning, and there are rumors that our household goods are on the same boat.  If that's the case, I will be up to my ears in boxes by the end of the week.  It will be so nice to have everything in one place again!

Hope everyone is doing well.  Drop us an e-mail or post a comment to say hi, and be sure to check out the new photo albums on the right!

Finding a House and Other Rites of Passage

I can hardly believe we've been here for over a week now! This is going by so quickly. Chris has been working diligently all week to in-process the base. I have been doing the handful of random things around base that I can actually do without him (like getting a library card!).

Typical one-way street

Our big adventure for last week was finding a place to live. We looked at base housing (nice, but everyone told us the really great places were off base). Then, we scheduled a tour to look at off-base houses. We drove around the island while Tony, our driver and translator, told us stories about growing up on the island. We looked at 5 houses, all very nice places, with nice yards for the dogs. But... with tiny little ovens, no dishwashers and no heat. We were willing to make to with these less-than-desirable items until we borrowed a friend’s car and drove 25 white-knuckle-crazy-driver-filled minutes from base to the town of Biscoitos, where the houses were located. The picture to the right shows a typical one-way street.  The only difference between this and the main, two-way roads is that there is more room to kind of pull off the street to park.  Not that any of the locals actualy pull off the street to park.  Let's jsut say driving here is insane.  After Chris made the drive to Biscoitos a few times, he decided the large houses and yard weren't worth it. We would need to find something closer.

He spent most weekend calling rental listings closer to base and setting up tours. Unfortunately, every place we looked at was missing some big item that we needed. In the end, we decided that base housing offered the best of everything we were looking for. We move in on Friday!! It's been almost a month since I've been able to cook an actual meal. I am sooo ready to have a working kitchen again!

While we were driving all over the island looking at houses, we made a few pit stops to check out the local scenery. Our stops included another swimming hole in Biscoitos. This one was much more extensive than the one we went to last weekend. We didn't get in this time, but the water looked freezing - still. We also stopped at a few scenic overlooks along our drives. The coast line of the island is very pretty!

Cochorrao Especial

Last night, we took our first dive into the local culture. Praia da Vitoria, located about 5 minutes from the island, is hosting a car show all week. We decided to head downtown and check it out. We drank a beer in a local Mexican restaurant (don't ask??) and watched the police drum corps march past on the street to open the festivities. Then, we walked through the car show tents. Mom - I think we found your old VW in green! We were amazed by the size of the classic cars on display. Even in the 60's European cars were much, much smaller than American cars. We checked out some new cars too. Again, much smaller than American cars, but just as expensive.

We also decided to check out some food from the local street vendors. We ordered a 'Cochorrao Especial'. It turned out to be a hot dog on a giant bun with sautéed mushrooms and onions, shredded carrots, corn, ketchup, mayonnaise (no one here believes in mustard), and tiny little french fries. It was interesting to say the least! The show runs all week and is supposed to have go-kart races, street car races, and other activities. I'm sure we'll be back into town to check it out!

New to the blog this week:  More pictures in the 'Island Pics' album, captions for all the pictures, a daily island forecast (it automatically updates most days), and a map of the island with some of the hot spots labeled.

Indroduction to the Island

Jet lag is brutal. Especially when you've committed to a 10:00 am church service. For those doing the math, that's 5:00 am central time. Needless to say, we weren't all that ready to get up when wake-up time rolled around. Steve and Jill (one of Chris' fellow CE officers and his wife) invited us to attend contemporary service at the base chapel with them and then offered to show us around the island afterwards.

Church service was interesting to say the least. However, we were relieved when Jill looked at us later and said that was the strangest service she'd ever been to on base. We'll try again next week and hope for something more along the lines of normal!

After church, we went to lunch in downtown Praia de Vitoria. The food was good, nothing too out of the ordinary yet. After lunch, we drove around Praia and over to the neighboring town of Porto Martins. The roads on the island are very windy and narrow. We are very thankful that our Honda is small! On the drive, we were nearly hit by a crazy person trying to pass when they really shouldn't have been passing. Thankfully, Steve is an awesome driver and managed to avoid the crazy guy.

The four of us went swimming in one of the ocean-side swimming holes in Porto Martins, following our tour of the area. The swimming hole is created in a natural inlet along the coast. The inlet is dammed up with rocks so that at low tide, no water from the ocean gets in, but at high tide water from the ocean can get in and clean out the pool. The dam keeps the waves in the pool to a minimum even at higher tides, so it's a nice place to swim any time. These pools are supposed to be the best places to get into the ocean as most of the island is surrounded by very steep cliffs that make access to the water nearly impossible. We had a good time swimming, but we didn't stay for too long - the water is COLD! Chris is thinking a wetsuit will be necessary before he gets back in the water. I'm thinking that might be a really good idea too!

We are sooo not in Kansas anymore!!

We are FINALLY here and it is AMAZING!!

Checking into the airport this morning was a little bit of a challenge with the dogs, but we eventually got them and ourselves loaded into the plane. The trip was only 4.5 hours, not the 7 we had been expecting. We flew over nothing but ocean for about 4 hours of the trip, but we did get a pretty neat view of our island as well as a couple of the adjacent islands when we landed. (See the new photo album to the right for pictures of the island).

We were greeted at the airport by what seemed like the entire base. Every squadron that had new people arriving sent a group to pick them up. The group from CE consisted of all the officers and a couple of their wives. Everyone was very welcoming and so helpful in getting all of our luggage (and dogs) picked up and loaded into various vehicles. We dropped the dogs off at the kennel and our luggage off at our hotel room and headed to the Major's house for more introductions and a round or two of poker.

We didn't get a chance to look around the base much as it was getting dark by the time we got all our luggage loaded, but what we did see looked even better than the pictures! I can't wait to see more tomorrow.

On the Road (Day 4)

Nothing too exciting to report for today. We drove to Baltimore, picked up our rental car from the Airport, and drove to the port to drop off our Honda. We had a few minor issues at the port (like 1/4 tank too much gas that we had to drive around and burn off!), but after 3 hours, it was checked in and ready to load onto the boat. After the port, we drove to the hotel and did a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day. It was SO nice not to be in the car all day!!

Tomorrow is the big day. Wish us luck!

On the Road (Day 3)

Day 3 of our journey was by far the most picturesque portion of the trip. We started the morning driving up the Shanandoah Valley in Virginia. We took a scenic detour onto the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway for a few hours. The Parkway runs parallel to the interstate, but is located near the top of the mountains rather than in the valley. There were lots of scenic overlooks for pictures, and the dogs enjoyed the chance to stick their heads out the windows for a while. There are lots of pictures in the photo album.

We took a quick detour into West Virginia about noon before heading toward DC. West Virginia looked exactly like Virginia, but I guess that's to be expected when you only drive 2 miles into the state!

Our hotel in DC was great. Although, someone needs to explain to me why the nice, expensive, hotels charge you for every little thing (internet, breakfast) and the cheap ones give it to you for free. Shouldn't it be the other way around?? Anyway - our hotel was located about 2 blocks from the National Mall, so we took the dogs out for some sightseeing. It was 95 degrees and humid, so we didn't make it as far as we would have liked. We got to see the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial (from far, far away), the White House, the Capital building (also from far away), and several of the Smithsonian buildings. Not too bad for just a couple hours of walking. We discovered a bonus to our hotel when we got back from our walk - we got to watch the sun set behind the Washington Memorial from our hotel room. Pretty cool!

On the list for tomorrow... the last 45 minutes of driving Baltimore, shipping our car, and re-packing our suitcases for the flight on Saturday.

On the Road (Day 2)

Day two of our trip took us all over the south-eastern US. We started the day with a walk on the campus of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN. The campus was beautiful, and the dogs enjoyed the exercise. We drove through Tennessee and the Great Smokey Mountains to Asheville, NC - home of the Biltmore Estate. Unfortunately, you can't see any part of the Estate from the gate, and we weren't going to pay $50 each when we only had an hour or so to spend there. The gate was pretty though??

Next, we detoured through South Carolina (check out the pictures for the giant peach-shaped water tower we saw!) and back up into North Carolina, before ending the day in Roanoke, VA. On the list for tomorrow - Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, a quick drive into West Virginia, and then, an afternoon in Washington, DC!

I have never been to Washington, DC, so I am very excited to take a nice long walk around the National Mall with the dogs. Chris and I are both REALLY tired of driving, but we only have a few more hours to put in tomorrow!!