TX to OR

[Written 6/9 but posted today due to some spotty wi-fi service at our new apartment]

If you’re interested in some of our travel details between Texas and now, I’ll try and give a quick summary of what we did. We left Denton at night so we drove through West Texas in the dark (well, mostly. we didn’t actually get out of Texas until the next morning - that state is huge!) We drove through El Paso and saw Mexico on the other side of the interstate, but not the official border. New Mexico was beautiful - a pretty drastic change of scenery for us. We weren’t in the state very long since we were driving on I 10 at the narrow bottom part of the state. Then we entered Arizona. I hadn’t been to Arizona since the last time I visited my grandparents there in probably 1999 or so. I really love the state and it was great to be back, looking at all the magnificat cacti, and especially great to visit Phoenix again where my grandparents lived. We pulled into town about 4pm and went straight to my friend Elizabeth’s house in Scottsdale. Her place is awesome and we spent a while catching up, we met her fiance Justin, and then we met my cousin Bert and his fiance (well, now wife - they got married on Saturday!) and the mother of his soon to be born daughter, Yolanda for dinner. It was so much fun seeing everybody and we had a really great night.

The next morning we headed out early when Liz had to leave for work towards San Diego to visit our friends Mandy and Rick in San Marcos, just outside of San Diego. Since they weren’t going to be home from work until early evening, and since this was the shortest leg of our trip, we decided to get off the highway (or as I guess they say in California, the freeway) and take a scenic detour through the deserty mountains south of I 10 and east of Escondido (right next to San Marcos) and take the back way into Rick and Mandy’s. I’m really glad we did this because the area is really amazing. We drove through a state park (Borrego desert or something like that) and experienced the highest wind I think I’ve ever experienced, maybe even more intense than the hurricanes we went through in Florida, or at least the highest winds I’ve ever been outside for. It was insane. I thought our car was going to blow off the road, and we got showered with tons of blowing sand. We saw several sand storms in the not to distant distance, and even drove though a couple. When we got out to take some photos, I didn’t want to get too close to the edge of the cliff things because I was afraid I was going to fall off, and I didn’t want to put Ika down for fear she would be blown away. Anyway, it was really great and I’ll have some photos on flickr soon. So once we got to Rick and Mandy’s we had dinner at their house and some drinks and spent the evening catching up. It was so good to see them again - like so many other people it had been a while! They both took Thursday off work and we spent the day touring the San Diego area, which was really cool cause neither Abe nor I had ever been there before and it was great to see Rick and Mandy’s new home (they moved out there at the first of June a year ago). We lunch in Carlsbad and drove through other beach communities on our way down to La Jolla to see the seals. Then we went downtown and checked the city out. That night we got some sushi and Ika and Roxy finally made friends and started playing together. That was some great entertainment!

After some breakfast Friday morning, we hit the road once again for our last leg. It took forever to get through L.A. (even though it wasn’t even rush hour), but I did get to see the Hollywood sign in the distance and eat at an In and Out Burger for lunch. When we got to San Luis Obispo we got on the Pacific Coast Highway. What a freaking beautiful drive! We took it to Monterey Bay, but I’d like to see more of the highway farther north in California and Oregon someday. We even got to see the sun set from the PCH which was beautiful. And I really think I’d like to vacation in Big Sur someday - it looked awesome! We made it just past Sacramento and then stopped to sleep for a couple hours. The next morning we got up and drove to Portland! We passed Mt. Shasta on the way, and whoa, what a mountain! The drive on I 5 in northern California and southern Oregon was beautiful. We pulled into Portland around 3pm on Saturday and drove straight to an Urgent Care. I had been having trouble breathing for the past few days and couldn’t take it anymore. And it’s a good thing I didn’t, because it turns out I was having an acute asthma attack and had to get 2 nebulizer treatments, be put on Oxygen, get a steroid shot in the butt, and take more steroids for the coming week. This was not how I was planning spending my first few hours in my new home state, but in the end I’m glad I did because when I left I could finally breathe again! We spent the night at our friends’ Jim and Erin’s house where Ika got to bother their dog Chunk. And we went out to dinner with Erin, Aaron, and Emily to a southern style restaurant which was fun.

And yesterday we took the dogs for a long walk, grabbed some breakfast, and headed out to Hood River and our new home!