Cross Country Move – Day 5

Today we ended up with 540 miles and the best part about that is that we are now in Oregon!  Only about 370ish miles left to travel now.  It feels really good to have made it this far and be this close.

We started out the day in Rock Spring, Wyoming and as luck would have it, we found a donut place!  Cowboy Donuts.  Mia and I have a knack for finding local donut places in our travels, this one was really good too.  I had a Bavarian with cream filling which we New Englanders know as a Boston Cream.

NH Moose cannot decide

Lots of choices at Cowboy Donuts

NH Moose finds Cowboy Donuts

Cross Country Move – Day 4

Today was a long day of driving.  640 miles total!  Only about 960 miles to go.

Hitting another time zone made that possible, and also the simple fact that off of I-80 through Wyoming, you have very few choices of places to stay.
Let me start by saying, I take back the comments about Nebraska being boring……I-80 through Wyoming is almost 10 times worse.  At least in Nebraska you saw farms, cows, and some semblance of life.  In Wyoming though, other than Cheyenne and Laramie there is almost nothing to see at all.  Many of the highway exits left off at more or less dirt roads and there was not a single house or business in sight.  There had to be something though, we saw random cows and horses grazing, but not a house to be seen near many of them.
We crossed the continental divide today!  7000 feet, we also hit I-80′s highest point at just over 8,000 feet.  The wind during the Wyoming portion of the trip was absolutely brutal today.  It was difficult at times to get over 60 mph because of how strong the wind was.  Towing the trailer does not help either.

Tonight we are staying in Rock Springs, WY.  This town is pretty cool, it used to be an old coal town, and most of the current infrastructure appears to be in the pits where they dug out the coal.  Right now the city is in the midst of a resurgence because of the growing mining for natural gas going on here.

While here we ate at Bitter Creek Brewing Pub tonight.  It beat the hell out the chains we’ve been eating at this week.

NH Moose in Wyoming

NH Moose at the Lincoln Monument

Eastern Wyoming did offer some more landscape than Nebraska

Thanks for reading

-Pete

Cross Country Move – Day 3

Today was an epic day of monotony!  Only about 510 miles of progress today, but we did get out of Illinois, ALL the way across Iowa and into Nebraska.

Several things came to mind today as we drove along:

• Iowa is not flat…it is very rolling
• Wind Farms are cool, Iowa had several massive farms with 40-50+ windmills as far as the eye could see
• There are a lot of “Adult Super Stores” off of I-80.
• We drove by the largest truck stop in the world
• Nuts 4 Donuts in Princeton, IL was great!

As we drove through Iowa all I could think of was the world famous Trans-Iowa put on by the Guitar Ted.  We drove right through Grinnell where it starts most years.  I also thought of RAGBRAI.  Iowa has quite a bit of cycling related “things” in my mind.

Cross Country Move – Day 2

Another decent day of travel.  We started out in Erie, PA this morning, then hit Ohio and that felt like it lasted FOREVER! Finally hit Indiana and then into Illinois.  540-ish miles for today and a new time zone.  Lots of farms and flat land today.  I am looking forward to getting back to some states with mountains in them.

All I could think of during the Ohio portion of today was the Drew Carey Show and then Indiana we drove past the RV Hall of Fame!

I never saw more tractor trailer/ big rigs than in the Gary, IN area.  It was a nerve wracking 40 minutes of driving surrounded by vehicles that could easily crush me and Mia.

It also appears that Illinois is one of the distribution capitals of the USA.  We drove by massive distribution centers for Macy’s, Petco and Tirerack.com.

Cats did well today.  I think they may be getting a kind of used to this….we’ll see how the next 4 days go.

New state for me

NH Moose hits another new state too

Caleb chilling out during a rest stop break

Thanks for reading!

-Pete

Cross Country Move – Day 1

530-ish miles are now behind us as Mia and I relocate to Oregon.  We had a bit of a slow start to the day and didn’t pull into Erie, PA until a little past 8pm tonight.    Traffic wasn’t too bad until we hit Buffalo, NY.  An accident on 90 east bound and end of work day commuters added up to a lot of start and stop traffic.

We just ate dinner at some restaurant called “Boston’s”, not really recommended.  Kinda reminded me of a Chili’s or 99.
It also looks like Tim Horton’s and Krispy Kreme beat out Dunkin Donuts are here too.

Mia and I would like to thank everyone who stopped by, called, Facebooked, etc yesterday.  It meant a lot to us.

Paul, NH Moose and Me the day before the big move

Thanks for reading.

-Pete

It’s Always Going to be Home

So, only about 2.5 days left until our trip to Oregon starts in earnest.  House is almost packed up, just some last minute things that need to be done before the renters move in.

No matter where I live though, New Hampshire will always be home.  Mia and I were both born here, our families for the most part all still live here.  So even though we are Oregon bound, NH will always hold a special place in my heart.

The house I grew up in

Pictured above is the house I grew up in in Bow, NH and N.H. Moose shows you who’s house it is.

Thanks for reading!

-Pete

Moving is a lot of work!

Mr. N.H. Moose in front of the New Hampshire State House

So the past few weeks have been a blur. I stopped working on May 2nd and have been packing and tossing out crap stuff for about 10 days now.
The big push was this past weekend where we loaded up two cargo boxes from uhaul to ship to Oregon. Right now Mia and I are living very sparsely to say the least.
7 days from now we start our cross country trip. I will be documenting the trip with my little friend in the above picture. His name is Nicodemus Horatio Moose. AKA NH Moose. He will tell the story of our move from New Hampshire to Oregon.
Thanks for reading.

-Pete