It’s hard to believe that we left Portland eleven days ago! We are having such an incredible time that the memories of our stressful last week in town have long slipped away. What an emotional roller coaster ride that week was for us! Between our ever growing to-do list, saying good-bye to dear friends, and eating a lot of good P-town food, we weren’t sure if we were ever going to be able to leave. But we did! And we are forever grateful for all the love and support we received along the way. Our community of friends, family and neighbors truly helped us out in so many ways — Gracious!
The Beginning
We drove out of Portland on Saturday, September 26 at 10:30 am. Our goal was to make it to Ashland (in southern OR) by late afternoon to catch the wedding reception of a dear family friend. Three hundred miles later we arrived on Mt. Ashland to celebrate Natalie and Ryan. It was wonderful to see our “adopted Oregon family” and to share big hugs before we parted ways.
Since we were in Ashland we made a game time decision to spend the night with Harry‘s grad school friend, Andy Fischer. It was fun to see him and hear his thoughts about how we should spend the next few days. We weren’t even on the road for 12 hours before our plans changed! But we really liked his suggestions and local knowledge is exactly what we’re counting on to shape our travels.
The First Night
The Top 10 Reasons Sleeping in our Van on the First Night was so Memorable:
10. Andy lives in a city neighborhood and we were parked in his side yard next to his Subaru with the tail end of our van hanging over the sidewalk.
9. We realized that when we turned our head lamps on people could see right inside the van (so much for tinted windows).
8. Several people walked by with their dogs and curiously watched as we got ready for bed.
7. When we finally got up on the platform in our sleeping bags we did a happy dance!
6. When our happy dance ended I realized that although we had a lot of head room, and plenty of room to roll over, I felt kinda claustrophobic.
5. I manged to work through my pending psychological meltdown by taking some deep breaths.
4. We were actually sleeping in our van!
3. We both slept incredibly well because our bed is seriously comfortable and also because we were both exhausted from the previous week’s emotional and stressful task of packing up our lives and leaving Portland.
2. When we rolled out of bed (well, we actually have to slide out of bed) the next morning Andy‘s neighbor stopped to chat about traveling, etc — and this happened even before I’d gone inside to use the bathroom.
1. We actually slept in our van!
