The Stars at Night...

We have officially arrived in Texas! We actually arrived Monday afternoon. Monday night, we went out to a really good Mexican restaurant called Uncle Julio's (warning: the webpage plays music). When we told our waiter that it was our first day in Texas, he said "Welcome to Texas, y'all!" We hired a great moving company called Gladiator Movers to unpack School Bus (our truck) on Tuesday morning, and now we are most of the way moved in. Even after returning our truck, SYL confessed that she still felt the urge to talk to nearby cars through walkie talkies.

Today we visited the Fort Worth Central Market for the first time, and it was fantastic. I picked up some ingredients to make pizza tonight, and we got a lot of other exciting things as well.

We will post some pictures and more information when we get more completely unpacked.

Hiking in Wyoming

We arrived at Kate's relatives' place last night, in Wyoming. We had a nice walk after we arrived, and then they cooked us a feast of chili, corn bread, and salad from their garden. It is absolutely beautiful here, and today and tomorrow we will go on hikes, so blogging will be light.

The Utah

We have pulled in to Ogden, Utah for the night, after another productive day of driving. We took a small detour and tried a highly-recommended restaurant in Boise, Idaho, called Moon's Kitchen. There was a soda fountain and much fried food, and it was wonderful. Boise also looked like a fun city that I would like to explore more in the future. We drove past the Boise State University football stadium, but I was unfortunately not able to catch a glimpse of the famously weird blue field. Oh well.

"School bus, this is little blue, over"

Today we started our journey to Fort Worth, and I am blogging from a motel in Baker City, OR. We actually packed up the apartment on Saturday (quite quickly, thanks to much help from our great friends), and we spend the weekend with our friends Scoot and Meh and their adorable baby Zachary. Scoot wrote a really nice piece on their feelings about our leaving Seattle on their blog today, and I can assure you that we feel the same way. I have lived in Seattle since 1999, and Kate since 2000. In that time, we have both made a lot of incredible friends, and Scoot and Meh are some of our oldest and closest (actually Scoot and my friendship dates back past our Seattle days, to our childhoods in Michigan). It was hard to leave Seattle today.

Two things made our journey a little easier. First, Kate's best friend, SYL, is accompanying us. We are taking both a moving van and a car, and thanks to SYL's presence, one driver always has company. Second, yesterday we picked up a pair of walkie-talkies, on the recommendation of SYL's boyfriend K. We have given each a code name -- the big yellow moving van is "school bus," and the smaller sedan is "little blue" (hence the title of this blog entry). And they make coordinating things between the cars easier and more fun.

A famous spouse

Kate just had a travel photo featured on the Seattle Times website! Click here, and see the featured travel postcard. If you click on it, you will even see Kate's name! If Kate's photo is no longer featured, you should still be able to find it here.

UPDATE: Here is a screen capture of what it looks line in the online edition (click to enlarge):

The Windy City

I just got back from the gigantic annual conference from my academic field. The conference was really large and overwhelming but also productive, and the best thing about the weekend was that I got to spend time with Andy, the originator of the days of power, his wife Kate, and their dog Dexter (he also answers to "Richard Gere").

In addition to that, I got to see my old high school friend Leonard (he also answers to "Leotard"), his girlfriend Ester (she also answers to "Hector"), and Renny, his friend form college.

Here are some pictures:

A map of our trip

Click here for a map of our trip.

Jasper the Friendly Trip

We have been having a fantastic time on our trip (which we have named after our last destination, as per the subject).

We have very limited computer access right now, so no pictures until we return on August 6, but here are a few highlights:

- celebrating our third anniversary by white water rafting in class 4 rapids with a funny French Canadian guide

- backpacking over the continental divide in Glacier, on a 2 day trip where we hiked over 20 miles and climbed about a vertical mile (in retrospect it might have been a little better as a three day trip...)

- seeing many mountain goats, including a mother and kid who we later learned were fleeing a grizzly bear.