Our first week in Minnesota

Wow, I can't believe it's been a week since we ended our road journey from California to Minnesota! It's been a very busy week. Monday we took advantage of the empty house so it was a day of painting and cleaning. Dad and Bonnie arrived on Monday afternoon. How fun to have our first visitors already. We also met several of the neighbors and they all were very friendly. We headed back over to Uncle Doug’s place for dinner and spend the night. Tuesday the moving truck arrived. Took the entire day for a team of four guys to unload the truck. It was also the first of what has become a string of hot and humid days this week. Temps in the upper 90's. That same night at Catie's urging we dug out the bedding and spend our first night in the new place. Nik and I slept on the couch in the media room and Chris and Catie slept in Catie's room.

Wednesday I had to go into the office. We had two Quad VP's in town so Stu my new boss suggested it would be a good time for me to come in ahead of my first official day so I could meet with them and also get a chance to meet the team in Minneapolis Imaging and Sales. We really have a nice group and I'm looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and digging in.

Thursday we really started to jam on unpacking. Chris focused on the kitchen. This is the heart of our home and the place where she wanted to start the sanity. I concentrated on finding, unpacking and setting up all the TVs, Tivo's, Satellite boxes, DVD players and VCRs. The DirecTV installer is coming on Friday so all this needed to be set up before he arrives. Also, this is the day that our DSL connection goes live so I needed to get the office set up. Two desks, two Macs and the printer are the minimum we need right now. What a challenge finding all this stuff. The packing crew in CA did a pretty crappy job of labeling boxes so I probably opened at least 50 extra ones before finding all the needed pieces. By Midnight this was all done any my Energizer bunny wife had made a serious dent in the kitchen.

Friday, man it's great to have Internet access again. I have a 7 Megabit connection so I totally screams. It's at least 5x faster than the connection we had in Cali. Really getting to be hot out. Temps in the upper 90's and humid today. I felt sorry for the DirecTV guy, he said that this is the hardest install he's ever done. 7 TV, 5 with Tivo almost blew his mind. After almost 4 hours he was done and we are back in touch with the world again. And not a moment to soon, the German Grand Prix is today through Sunday.

Saturday the goal was to get Nik's bedroom up and ready for him to sleep in. He and I have been sleeping on the coach, with Chris and Catie sleeping in Catie's room. The kitchen is pretty much done. Family room and Dinning room are next. We also got the Master bedroom bed set up so we all get to sleep in our own beds for the first time in over two weeks. It was hot again today, 100 degrees. Chris, Nik, Catie and I went and explored downtown Excelsior. Had dinner at the local Pizza Hut and walked along the shore of Lake Minnetonka. There is a nice little beach area and the west end of a park area called the Commons. We got our feet wet, the water really felt nice. Perfect temperature. I have to say, Excelsior is a very cool little town. It has a small resort town type of feel. And on the weekends it's really hopping.

Today we Alex's room set up in preparation for his arrival from California tomorrow. That took me most of the day. It was 102 and steamy today. Catie and I went to the beach for a swim in the evening to cool off. Man that water felt good. Slowly the house is falling into place. Lots of work yet ahead of us, but we will just keep chipping away at it. My first day of work is tomorrow, so I'm going to try and get to bed early so I can get a good nights sleep. All in all I feel pretty good about how much we've accomplished this week.

The Road to MN - Day Nine

We all woke up this morning early, the excitment of seeing out new house in just a few short hours had everyone up ready to go! We got on Interstate 94 and started our final drive east. Our first tast of Minnesota was a rest stop. All indoors, with a big lobby and vending machines. Very wooded and a beautiful lake. Nik and Catie were very excited to see their first MN lake. The last 250 miles from Fargo to Excelsior were uneventful. We arrived at our house around 1:00pm. The house looks great, even though the grass is a bit brown. Turns out someone turned off the sprinkler system at some point in the last six weeks.

After spending alittle time poking around we headed off to Uncle Dougs house for dinner. Dana and Bonnie where there as well as Darcy and her two little ones Re Re and Collin. We had a really nice visit with all of them. We will be spending the next few nights at Doug and Sue's house until the furniture get here and we find our bedding. It's good to finally be here, hopefully our furniture will arrive in a few days and we can get started!

The Road to MN - Day Eight

First off, did I mention that the town of Glendive is a total dive! As Alex would say it's a real one horse town. It is the largest town east of Billings Montanta and there is nothing else in North Dakota until you get to Bismark. There was a Geocache in town so it wasn't a total loss. I did the Loose Caboose cache to log my find in Montana. After a decent breakfast we headed out of town, east on I-94. Our highlight for the day was visiting Theodore Roosevelt National Park. TR is in western North Dakota and is located on land that used to be his cattle ranch. He lived here for several years before becoming President. He credited is stay in North Dakota for making him tough enough to be President and also for the inspiration to create the national park system. We all owe Teddy thanks for having the wisdom and vision to put aside and preserve these national treasures.

The park itself is located about 40 miles east of the Montana/North Dakota boarder, just off the interstate. There is a nice scenic loop drive that gives you a really nice overview of the park. It takes about 90 minutes to do the drive, unless like us you get out of the car and explore a bit. There are several Prarie Dog towns throughout the park. Catie and Nik got a kick out of seeing all these little guys standing on there hind legs checking us out as we drove by. There is also a herd of Bison and a herd of wild horses that are freely roaming the park. We saw both and it was bretty cool. On Bison was only about 50 feet from the road so we got a really a great close up look at him.

Just outside the park is historic Medora. The town was built in the 1880's by French nobleman Marquis de Mores and named by him for his wife. In 1883 he build a large slaughterhouse and meat packing plant complete with an ice house for refrigeration. The plan was to slaughter local beef and ship it via the newly completed railroad back to the east coast. The plant never really made it and was abandoned. In 1907 the old buildings were destroyed by fire. The Marquis operated his meat packing plant during the years the Teddy ran his Maltese Cross ranch on the land that is today the National Park that bears his name.

Nik and I did a cache just outside the park entrance called the Frenchman's Folly. We also spend some time exploring the shops in medora and had lunch in a rustic dinning hall, complete with stuffed Buffalo and Elk.

The rest of the drive to Fargo was uneventful. The terain slowly leveling out to the mostly flat farmland. I can't believe we are spending our last night on the road tonight. It's really gone by so fast! Chris' back is doing really well. After the initial scare of Day two, it's gotten steadily better each day. We are all excited to get on the road in the morning to see our new house.

The Road to MN - Day Seven

Got a bit of a late start this morning, the kids were pretty tired so I let them sleep in until 8:30. Unfortunatly this ment we didn't have enough time to stop and visit the water fall that Great Falls is named after. This is a spot that gave Lewis and Clark a pretty hard time during there exploration of the Lousianna purchase. Combining this late start with the 450 of road we had ahead of us we didn't have much time to stop along the way.

The first 150 miles was on state and local highways leading from through the rolling wheat covered hills between Great Falls to Lewiston. After a brief stop for lunch at the Buffalo Trader Cafe. Next we passed through Billings which is up on a high bluff overlooking the Missouri river. Finally we ended our drive winding our way along the Yellowstone river on our way to Glendive Montana. I was stuck today by the diversity of the scenery we where blessed with seeing today.

The Road to MN - Day Six

First things first, Chris' woke up with her back feeling really good this morning. I mean, it's not perfect but it is so much better than it was a few days ago. Our drive today took us through Glacier National Park. This is a park I've been looking forward to visiting for a very long time. We entered the park from the west with a plan to drive the "Going-to-the-Sun" road which goes all the way through the park and exits on the east edge. We had an audio driving tour for this road that our friends the Porters had given us, so we listened to this during the drive. I was nice to have the highlights pointed our to us, there were several senic areas we would have probably missed if not the the audio. One thing that was pretty disapointing was how crowded the park was. It wasn't so much the number of people, as it was the totally inadiquite amount of parking there was. There was not a single parking lot today that had any open spots. In fact, most had signs declaring a minimum 30 minute wait for parking. We have been to parks with a ton more traffic that didn't feel nearly as crowded as this place.

This aside, the park had some very beautiful scenary. The continental devide runs through the backbone of the mountains here. There are several perminant glaciers. Mountain goats are roaming free around the devide. Crystal clear mountain lakes with color so blue you can't believe it's real. I'm glad we had the chance to visit, I think I'd like to come back at a less busy time of year. Late spring or early fall would be cool. We ended up our day in Great Falls Montana. It's hard to believe that we are 2/3 of the way through the trip. Time truely fly's when you're having fun!

The Road to MN - Day s Four and Five

Spent the night in Cour d' Alene Idaho last night. We had a great drive from Portland along the Columbia River, up through Eastern Washington and finally into Cour d' Alene. Chris zonked out almost imediately after getting settled into our room. She's not used to having to do all the driving, but since we have two cars we both get to drive full time. She woke up this morning with a much reduced amount of back pain, so praise the Lord she is feeling better.

I woke up around 5:00am this morning to so some Geocaching. I have never found a cache in Idaho or Washington, to this was my chance to check both of these states off my list. I got out just as the sun was coming up, my favorite time of day. I found the On the Line cache in Washington. I was also able to find the Garlic cache in Idaho, located next to a Greek Resturant. So, I've now found caches in 19 states, 40% of the way to my goal of finding caches in all 50 states.

Today we drove through the Idaho pan handle and through the Bitter Root Mountains in western Montana on the way to Kalispell. This town is the gateway to Glacier Nat'l Park where we will be exploring tomorrow. Nik and I have been listen to the audiobook Undaunted Courage, the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition written by Stephen Ambrose. A big part of there adventure took place in this part of the country. We drove by Lewis and Clark University in Idaho and I-90 follows the same path as the Clark Fork river.

We arrived in Kalispell around 5:30pm. Chris got out of the car and for the second day was able to walk to the hotel without crutches. I pray she continues to heal so we can enjoy the rest of our trip and actually relax and recharge our batteries from the stress of the move. I'm short of running out of steam from the early caching and long day of driving so I'm going to sign off.

The Road to MN - Day Three

Woke up this morning and Chris’ back is a still pretty bad, but not quite as bad as it was last night. We decided to see how it felt at the end of the day. Our drive today took us along the scenic Oregon coast. It’s like no other place I’ve ever visited. Huge rock formations jutting out of the ocean. Large waves crashing up on the rocks. Crystal blue sky making it all the more beautiful. With Chris’ back still shot, we didn’t spend much time stopping to take in the sights. Our main goal was to try to get to our friends the Blocks in time for dinner. So, after lunch, we headed inland to hook up with I-5 to whisk us up to Portland. We pulled in to Dan and Eileen’s house by 6:15pm. We enjoyed catching up on each others lives over a dinner of burgers and dogs. The kids played a new PS2 game called Guitar Heroes. It’s an interactive game were you play guitar to classic guitar songs, kind of like Dance Dance Revolution, only with plastic guitars. Dan and I also took a turn and it was great fun. Looks like a great Christmas gift idea.

The Road to MN - Day Two

Got on the road around 9:00am this morning. We adjusted our plan and rather than head straight west to the Pacific Coast Highway, we are making a diversion to Napa Valley. Our favorite vineyard V. Sattui is there and we wanted to pick up a case or their famous Gamay Rous. We spent about an 2 hours at the vineyard, shopping and enjoying lunch at lunch of hard salami, Italian bread, blue cheese, roasted veggies, roasted garlic and strawberries in there garden. After lunch we continued north on highway 29 to highway 101 north. This route took us through the Redwood Forest all the way to the coast. Our final 80 miles was along the northern California coast, ending up in Crescent City. We rolled in to our hotel around 10pm. Chris’ back has been tightening up since yesterday morning and now it’s full blown out. It was all she could do to get out of the car and into the hotel bed. It was so bad that I started looking into the option of having her fly to Minneapolis from Portland, our destination tomorrow. My thinking is that after Portland it gets a lot harder to get decent air travel options. I’d then have to fly someone out to Portland to drive the car the rest of the way. Chris and I spoke quite a bit about this and decided we’d see how she feels in the morning.

The Road to MN - Day One

Chris and I spent the morning finalizing the cleaning, packing and painting at the house. We finished up at around noon. After getting the two cars organized and packed we said our goodbyes to our good friends the Herbst’s. We spent our last two nights in California staying with them. Rick and Donna and Ann and Shelly adopted us as surrogate family when we moved into the neighborhood back in 2000. I can’t thank them enough for all the love and support they have given us over the years. Alex will be staying with Rick and Donna for the next two weeks, hanging out with his best friend Nick. After Nick’s last performance in Grease, Nick and Alex will be flying to Minneapolis so that Nick can visit us for a week.

We finally got on the road around 2:30 pm, with our first nights goal of making it to the Bay Area and our hotel in Berkeley. The drive north was un eventful and we rolled into town at about 8:30pm. The Holiday Inn Express was a great little hotel, close to the freeway and of course as yummy continental breakfast included.