(Monday, September 11)
Today was a prep day, in anticipation of the "real" journey beginning tomorrow. So far we have been in familiar territory, roads we drive and areas we visit regularly, places we know well.
Tomorrow we head out into more unfamiliar places. We have made this trip before, it isn't completely alien territory. Still, it's not one of our usual routes.
There wasn't a lot to do or see today, but there was a lot of family time. My son is a huge fan of Dutch Bros Coffee (so am I) and we make it a habit to have at least one morning visit to his local shop , where we usually sit and talk over our coffee treats. This morning we got most of our talking time in the car however, as we got it ready for the next leg of the trip.
We filled the gas tank at Costco, ran the car through the car wash, and then spent a long time cleaning and vacuuming the interior. One of the disadvantages of our small town is the lack of certain services, and one of them is a car wash. We have one self-service wash, with a single unmanned drive-through bay, and a couple do-it-yourself bays, one of which is extra-tall for RVs. But it's currently out-of-order, waiting for a replacement part to arrive. It also has only one coin-op vacuum - and if your interior is dirty you'll need an entire roll of quarters. The car wash here has attendants, and unlimited use vacuums.
The drawback, as my son said, was that I took OCD Boy to clean the car. I can tell you, the inside of the car is CLEAN - something we greatly appreciate after being without a car wash vacuum for several months. But it meant that we didn't have a lot of time to linger over coffee, as he had a class to teach at noon.
I came back to the apartment and started yesterday's report while my son went off to teach his class and my husband went to get some lunch.
Once both the guys were back we had another family tradition: a movie! We're all movie fans. Today's choice was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I loved the art style, the story had a good deal more heart than I expected, and (Bonus!) we had a private screening. We were literally the only three people in the theater.
We hung out, went to dinner, and visited my son's favorite ice cream shop, Ampersand. They're a lovely place with monthly special flavors. We tried a "flight," four scoops in a divided dish, sampling three of this month's specials - coffeecake, mariposa almond fudge, and pumpkin cheesecake, along with the standard dark chocolate. For the record the pumpkin cheesecake was the hands-down favorite.
So the car is ready for tomorrow, the laundry is done, and it's time for a shower and bed. We will have our last tradition tomorrow morning - breakfast together before we hit the road.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's adventure!