The first little distance

Monday, July 18, '11
The first of many posts to come...
Last night Brian booked 3 campsites for our road trip between Crescent Bar and Iowa/Nebraska. It's nice to have that taken care of but it feels weird knowing that I played no role in choosing where we will be staying. We've decided to do this trip as cheaply as possible so it looks like we get to find out what a $14 campsite with no flushing toilet looks like... Yikes!

While Brian scoured the internet for cheap camping accommodations along our route, I continued packing and did some prep for our dinner.

Every year on our annual family camping trip we have a dinner competition.

Each couple is assigned a night in which they are in charge of of coming up

with an impressive menu and pulling off a scrumptious meal for the rest of us.

At just before 11p, upon reaching a good stopping point, I crashed. Brian followed shortly after. Impressively, without any communication regarding the morning, our alarms went off within 1 minute of each other, mine at 4:44a and Brian's at 4:45a.

[Applause for us on being so pagified!]

We snoozed for 20 minutes and enjoyed every second. My new store schedule has meant waking at 3a each morning so scoring an extra 2 hours of sleep was glorious! At 5:05a we realized there was no more time to spare so we got up and continued the overwhelming task of making ...
2 ice chests,
1 Rubbermaid,
3 duffel bags,
1 large suitcase,
7 bags +
3 boxes of groceries,
2 director's chairs,
1 not-so-compact tent,
1 Coleman grill,
1 lantern,
1 queen size double tall air mattress,
2 sleeping bags,
Brian's video camera bag,
my over sized camera bag,
my purse,
a laptop bag
and yet another bag of endless DIY magazines and adoption-related reading materials ...
fit in our VW Passat. Somehow, we conquered.
Following a quick Sbux stop and gas-up we hit I-84 at 7:30.

Topics of conversations throughout the drive included
 (but were not limited to):

.wine.

.personifying Christ.

.401K's.

.the progression of the Catholic church.

.Darigold.

.unions.

.our camping dinner.

and...

.the naked poet in The Knight's Tale.

(Jeffery Chaucer, author of the Cantebury Tales. :)

On our way into Quincy we remembered that we needed a few groceries so I searched "Quincy, WA, groceries" on my phone and our friend Steph's parent's [family] produce business popped up. Ironically, they crop farm and there's no store (no place to purchase their produce) but it reminded us that they live there and we couldn't help but stop and say hi. After a brief stop at the wrong house we were directed to her parent's. Brian thought I was out of my mind for walking up to strange houses and knocking with such confidence but I've always really liked Steph's parents so I decided it was well worth it. We were greeted by her mom and although we'd just intended a quick hello, she insisted that we come in. We enjoyed lunch and a nice visit before continuing on to Crescent Bar with both her home and cell phone numbers "just in case we needed a clean shower or a nice, comfy bed." She's so sweet. :)
We crossed the Columbia river a total of 5 times that day and then, with perfect timing, rolled into Crescent Bar just after my fam had and proceeded to set up camp and officially launch our vacation.