We've made it!!!! We're there, finally!

Home sweet home, finally. Today we completed the last stretch of our 7 days/6 nights , 3230 miles journey cross-country, across 13 states (NJ, PA, OH, IN, IL, MN, WI, ND, MT, WY, ID, NV and CA). We arrived in Napa at 11:00 am and were settled in the house by noon.

Jos's yesterday entry is soo true. The closer you get to the target, the farthest you seem to be. Today it was only 197 miles, but they were the longest 197 miles of our lives.

The crossing over Sierra Nevada was breathtaking and the perfect ending to our mountainous journey.Then we got to Napa and there were beautiful vineyards all along the freeway ( I can't say highway anymore, here in California it is freeway :-) ).

The Greys were restless too during the trip, I think they were picking up on our vibes. They love the house as you will see on the video I made. They are exploring everything and have already marked their territory on the yard.

The house is even better than what I remembered and I am very happy to be here.

We met one of our neighbors from across the street and she was very nice. She gave us very useful tips about grocery stores. Speaking of which, my neighborhood supermarket is AMAZING. I could not spend much time there today, but next visit will be long. I LOVE supermarkets.

Customer service so far has been impeccable and people actually smile at you! That is such a difference from the East Coast.

Tomorrow our stuff will arrive and then we will have to go through the laborious process of unboxing and organizing everything we want to use and storing what we do not.

This has been a phenomenal experience to us. We had fun, we got exhausted, but we never wavered from our goal. My husband is a very special man, and I do not think I could have done this with anyone else. I love him very much.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you that we managed to travel coast to coast without being pulled over by any police,which was surprising. I had expected at least one pull-over. ( I can say it now, no danger of jinxing anymore...) Actually, we did not see cops from Minnesota until we reached Nevada. That should go on the record book :-)

Well, I would like to thank all of you who cheered for us and encouraged us, who followed our blog, either actively or silently. You made our trip all the more exciting because we paid double attention to everything so that we could tell you later. Thank you for being such good friends, we love you all very much.

Picture Gallery

Sierra Nevada

damaged by fire

Greys: Yes baby, we're there.

De laatste loodjes wegen het zwaarst

Today was psycologically the last day, because tomorrow only leaves us 3 hours of driving.

The title of this post is a Dutch (or Belgian) expression, meaning that the last steps are the hardest.

And so today was the tough last step:

* The drive was mostly through Nevada, which is extremely beautiful, but not as entertaining for us because we'd seen it before.

* The drive was extremely long, because we added on 3 extra hours in order to make tomorrow extra-short.

* It was hot (in the desert of Nevada).

* We were counting the hours and miles (which makes it feel and look extra-long).

* Black cat on the road (see other post).

* Bugs (see other post).

* Dogs were restless (maybe they also feel we are nearing the end of the voyage)

* Rest-stops were few and not as well organized as we had hoped

So we got to the hotel, and tried to put our accomplishments above our tiredness.

Besides the 'laatste loodjes' expression, I also believe in the feeling that 'the harder and tougher it gets, the more satisfied one is, after all has been accomplished' (please don't seek any second meaning in this sentence :-))

So this small hardship today will make the victory and the achievement tomorrow even greater...

Beware of the Black Cat

Today was the longest day of our trip. We decided to stretch to Reno so tomorrow we will only have 3 hours to go, but that resulted in 11 hours in the car. We crossed the last time zone today so we are officially on Pacific Time now and we spent that extra hour we gained driving.


Of all the things one expects to see crossing the highway when you are doing 70 miles/hour, a black cat is NOT one of them. So there I was, bright and early, driving the first shift still in Idaho, when this black cat came out of the mediam and ran towards us. Thank the Lord that I was on thr right lane, so I had time to break a little and then the ....amn cat got scared and ran back to the left (or at least I think it did). I know I did not run over it. I felt my spirit leave my body, I swear it, and my blood rushed to my feet and my heart to my throat. I strung quite a few long curses too, it ouwld make a sailor blush hehehe. But it all ended weel, for us and the g...amn cat. I hate cats!!!!!


Idaho was ok, we had the opportunity to cut through some country roads and that was nice. The hay is packed in squares in Idaho instead of rolls, so I guess Idahonian cows do not like sushi hehehehehe.




We also were attacked but a "rain of bugs". Miniscule bugs that just kept dying on our windshield continuously like rain, it even sounded like rain. It was grossss!!!!!


It was a LONG ride through Nevada. It is beautiful, but quite inospitable and deserted. And HOT too. We went up and up and up until our ears popped and then down and down again. We have some pictures and just a few videos. It was a sort of a boring day, so unfortunately, this report is kind of boring too.


Tomorrow is the BIG day. We should be arriving in Napa by lunch time and all good spirits permitting, we will be in our new home by early afternoon. We will make our final entry then and show you all pics and videos of our home. Hang it in there everyone, we're almost there :-). Closing with a few pics of our troopers:

Honeymoon

I was thinking that today would be the first day of the count-down to the finish-line, after getting through the middle of the trip, and getting closer to the destination.
Also, today was scheduled to be one of the longest drives of the trip (discarding the flat tire incident), so the initial mindset was not 100% positive.

Things turned out to be different. We started off in a cold and crispy September-summer morning, with an incredibly beautiful landscape of Montana.
My wife had some Starbucks coffee, which also helped to set a good mindset early in the morning :-)

As the day progressed, I never thought about the count-down anymore, and was just engaged in the moment(s), spending another day with my wife with a wonderful backdrop of views, landscapes and picture-perfect scenery's. It made me think of honeymoon, even though I never had one.

Maybe this trip can be classified as one (I am sure Alexandra will claim that she needs an official honeymoon, but that is another story...). I am spending 24/7 with her, and we are doing this for a total of 7 days. We have never done this!!!
I can recommend to every couple to do this, because it is turning out to be a wonderful experience, despite the tough waking-up schedule, driving schedule, dog-maintenance-schedule, hotel-experiences, daily load and unload, junk-food, etc.

It is wonderful, and I started to think that I will be a little sad when it is all over...
How strange: I started the trip thinking it would be a tough undertaking, and now, I start thinking the opposite.

Even the greyhounds are starting to adjust to the ever-changing environment, and are starting to realize the daily sleep-overs are safe. The 24/7 time spent with them also allows me to bond a little bit more with Lady, who is always so difficult to relax. The two of them also bond as they spend a lot of time in the car, where physical contact is difficult to avoid: they almost always touch each other, whereas at home, they don't seem to be close to each other at all. At least not when we're around...

I know I wrote about solitude yesterday, and am writing about honeymoons today, which is quite conflicting, but that is the nature of the human mind. Contemplating, thinking, wondering, estimating, guessing and elaborating. Or maybe it is a Belgian thing...

Enough for now:
* Yellowstone is amazing: Everyone should visit it once in their lifetime.
* Montana is beautiful: I should have bought a couple of hats and boots. And maybe I should organize an official honeymoon there: just to make her happy and avoid all future references to a 'never had honeymoon'. I have to be careful though; maybe I'll lose her to one of those good-looking cowboys she craves for...

I love Montana

Today was a humbling day. Nature can have this effect on people. Whenever I go to such an astounding place, I feel very small, I realize that my problems are insignificant before such magnificency and perfection such as Mother Nature.

Montana is THE state so far. It is even more beautiful than I expected it to be. We started the day with bright sun and blue sky, moved into fog (to the point we could see a few feet ahead of us) and then cloudy. The we started going higher and higher and higher and the sun shone bright and clear again.

We stopped at a real road stop (not the McDonalds type) and everyone stopped talking as we walked in, like in a cowboy movie hehehe. The kitchen even had the old fashioned saloon doors.

Look at the hay rolls... We called them cow sushi (hehehe)

The open fields gave way to hills and canyons and then to the majestic mountains. And then we got to the Rockies. Oh my God, that is all I have to say.

We then took a shortcut through Wyioming that saved us about 70 miles and put us right in the middle of Yellowstone Park. And I really lost it. There are many pictures and videos from our short trip through the park, so Jos did his magic and combined them all together in one single video so that you can see it in sequence. It is unbelievably beautiful and very very humbling.

We saw Elks and Buffalos and forest devastated by wild fire. We went 7,000 feet high and our ears clogged. We saw weird looking bugs that made funny rattling noises, waterfalls and creeks and rivers. We had delicious ice cream and bought souvenirs. We did not want to leave.

The greys had fun with the bugs and left their mark on Yellowstone too, if you know what I mean :-).

Here is Lady, taking a comfy nap

And here is Shooter, as usual, looking around and checking where we are:

But we had to, so we are now in Idaho and we have one more night and two days to go. I am looing forward to getting to my new home and setting roots down. It is fun to travel but it is comforting to go home.

Halfway solitude

Loneliness, solitude, isolation, seclusion, ...

All these words crossed my mind as we were and are in the middle of our long journey today, and far away from home, wherever we call home.
Whether it is West Orange NJ, Napa CA, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Antwerp Belgium, we are very far away from all these places.

When an animal leaves the nest, a certain amount of stress or nervousness settles in, along with awareness of potential dangers and fear of unknowns. As humans, we cannot differentiate ourselves from this, and we also carry some discomfort from leaping into the unknown or from leaving the comfort of the everyday home.

I think another post touched on this subject too. Are we afraid? Or are we confident and secure? From instinct point-of-view, we are certainly afraid. It causes stress and other (normal or) abnormal attitudes.

Anyway, when I overcome my instinct, and rely on logic or on emotion, I conclude that I have many things I love with me.
My wife is with me, and wherever I go, as long as she is with me, I can easily call it my home. I sometimes wish more people I love would be with me to join the trip, and to share this wonderful (but somehow frightening) experience.

The greyhounds seem to think similar, and consider Alexandra and I part of their secure environment. As long as we are near, they seem to feel fine and relaxed, whether it is in the car or in the hotel. But as soon as one of us steps away, they get nervous and stressed. What do they consider their home?????

Wide open space, big endless sky and beautiful land

Today was a day of wide open spaces, huge sky (it looks bigger which is something I always heard people say about this part of the country) and land that is just breathtakingly beautiful. We saw real cowboys on horseback, riding through the fields and we even stopped at a Cowboy Historic Town, which made me think a lot of my dear brother-in-law, Flavio. No pics of the cowboys girls, sorry. (I was driving...)


We drove 350 miles through North Dakota and another hundred and something through Montana. ND is beautiful, the road is wide and you can see miles ahead.


The cargo trains are amazingly long and move very very slowly, I have a video of one of them because it would be impossible to show it through still picture.

There are sunflower fields, one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen and it reminded me of a colleague from work back in NJ, who planted sunflowers in her garden with her son.



Here is another funny picture to show how things are from a different dimension here. See our car and trailer compared to our neighbor in the parking lot, hehehe.



We came across Theodore Roosevelt National Park in ND and saw a very beautiful Canyon formation named "Painted Canyon". It was a very nice surprise. We stopped at the Scenic View rest stop and took a few pictures. The Greys enjoyed the break and, as usual, they cause a commotion wherever we stop. :-)



Are we there yet? No, baby, two more nights and three more days.