When we moved to Washington, I hadn't started blogging yet so our journey was not preserved on the blog. I saved emails that I wrote to family members each night with our progress and pictures that we took along the way. It's something I'd like to remember, so I thought I'd share it with you now. I'm going to split the post up into 5 posts, one for each day that we spent traveling.
I should probably give you some background ... our move to Washington was VERY unexpected and we had about a month to get ready for it. During that month we had to take finals (me), graduate from law school (me) and attend survival school for two weeks (J.). J. returned home from survival school late on a Saturday night. We left Sunday around noon to move all my belongings from Indianapolis to Meridian, Mississippi, where J. was stationed at the time, and the Navy movers would be coming to pick up his belongings. We figured this was the cheapest way to move across the country. My mom and I spent Saturday picking up the U-Haul, moving all my sister's belongings home from college (about an hour south of Indianapolis), picking up things I had at my mom's house and loading up the U-Haul with all my belongings that we could lift without a man. By the time J. came home from survival school, we had the U-Haul pretty much packed up. He had a few things to help us put in the next morning but we felt great about our progress!
My mom and Baby Lucy with the empty U-Haul
Sunday morning, he packed up the rest of my stuff and set off for Louisville to see his parents one last time before we made the big move. I had one last lunch with my mom, sister, gay hubby and roommate before heading towards Louisville and Meridian in my car. Louisville was only about an hour and a half drive from Indianapolis and then Meridian was another 6ish hours, maybe more in the U-Haul.
J. and I left Louisville mid-afternoon and headed south. He made a call to his roommate to let him know that we were on our way and his roommate responded with "Umm, are you planning on staying here?" J. told him yes, we were and his roommate asked where we would be sleeping. Remember, J. hadn't been home in 3 weeks ... J. told his roommate we planned on sleeping in his room. Then G.S. delivered some bad news ... the Navy movers had come on Friday and packed up all of J.'s belongings and carted them off already. Umm ... no bueno. They were supposed to come Monday morning to pack and Tuesday morning to load ... which was why we were hurrying down to Mississippi with all my belongings so they could be loaded up with all of J.'s belongings.
We had a slight panic attack but it was a Sunday and there wasn't anything we could do until we could speak to someone at the moving company on Monday. We made it to Mississippi and spent the night on our air mattress ... purchased for the time we would be in Washington before our furniture arrived.
The next morning, J. spent several hours on the phone with someone at the moving company, who felt terrible but couldn't really help us out. We were leaving early Tuesday morning because we had to be in Washington by Friday so J. could check-in at the Navy base. We had exactly one day to figure this mess out. No one could come pick up my stuff until the following week, which obviously wasn't going to work, so J. ended up driving it an hour away to drop it off at the moving storage facility.
Meanwhile, we had to register our new car, get its oil changed, drop-off the U-Haul that we drove from Indianapolis and pick-up the U-Haul trailer that we would be using to pull my car.
And then, Addy decided to run away. In Mississippi (and especially in the neighborhood that J. lived in which was WAY out in the country) all the dogs just run around and play together. We had been in and out of the house, getting things off the U-Haul and packing up the car, getting ready to leave the next day so we let Addy and Lucy play outside with the neighbor dogs while we were out there. They were having a great time :) We went inside for 10 minutes to eat a quick lunch and when we came out, Lucy was still out there and Addy was gone. J. had to leave to get my stuff to the movers and get the truck back to the U-Haul store before close, so I spent the afternoon looking for her. I drove around and around the lake for 3 hours looking for her. The longer she was gone, the more worried I got that she had fallen in the lake (she doesn't swim) or gotten out of the neighborhood (in which case we probably never would have found her). Finally, someone called J. and said they had found her and would drop her off at his house. She had fallen/gotten in the lake and then gotten stuck in someone's boat house and couldn't/wouldn't get out.
I had to give her a bath (which she HATES) and then I sent her inside to hang out for the rest of the time before our departure. I was now very pressed for time, so I had to go into town to run all my errands smelling like a wet dog. I had the oil changed on the car and went to meet J. at the U-Haul store. He was late getting there, but luckily, the guy working was SO nice and understanding and stayed open late so we could return our U-Haul and get the trailer hooked up.
We finally made it home and hoped that the rest of our journey would be much less eventful ...
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