Colorado to Seattle

Every hour we drive further west, it's starting to sink in that this is more than just another roadtrip. I guess it's because we're never going to turn around to head home - we just keep moving on to the next leg west. It has definitely turned from a just crazy idea and planning exercise into a reality that we're going to live in the next three months. 

The western states are big!  While we're too cheap to pay for XM radio in our own car, our rental has it and it's been nice to listen to non-stop music and baseball games.  We live in pretty amazing times - Cubbie games beamed from space!  It definitely helps these long miles go by a little faster.  We're also reminded that not everything on this trip is new and interesting, the excitement of these travel days mostly consist of  pumping gas and eating Subway.

We obviously love Colorado, but have also been enjoying the Idaho, Montana and Washington mountains.  Just a day drive north and the trees are already starting to turn yellow and the mountains already capped with snow.  There's that cool nip in the air - fall has suddenly arrived for us!    

We added an extra day in the schedule to spend time with our friends Diane and Mike in Washington.  Washington has some great wine, so we took the afternoon to sample some wine tastings and bottles at the local wineries.  

Then because this was our last chance to have a real kitchen on the trip, we did some home cooking at their place for the evening. Here are the two wanna-be chefs' rendition of pasta carbonara.  I'm feeling very appreciative to get to spend some time with my BFF and get to do one more load of laundry!  I also got to catch up with another high school friend in Seattle, Brenda, after not seeing her for over 35 years!     

We turned in the rental car to complete this segment of the trip.  Time to give our backpacks a live tryout as we had a little 1 mile trek to our downtown Seattle hotel.  We'll be up early tomorrow to catch our ferry to Victoria, Canada.  On to the next leg!

"You may never know what results come from your action.   But if you do nothing, there will be no results."  - Gandhi