Our Move to Corpus (in pictures) Part 1...Days 1-3

On July 26th, we left Whidbey Island, Washington and began our move back to Corpus Christi. I guess its true that you never know what you have until its gone. Washington wasn't my favorite place, but it was a heck of a lot better than South Texas, and given the choice between here and there, I'd chose to move back to Washington in a heartbeat. I guess over the course of three years, I came to love a lot about the area, and I made some wonderful friends while I was living up there. Now its time to start all over, once again, in the place I consider to be my own personal hell on earth...welcome back to Corpus Christi, Texas!

DAY 1 - July 26, 2011

(all packed and ready to go!)

(Welcome to Oregon! For anyone who is freakishly observant [I would notice this], yes these are the same clothes that we're wearing by the "Welcome to California" sign a few pictures down. Thats because this picture was actually taken as we were leaving Oregon, not entering it. We stayed in Portland for our first night on the road, and the exit to our hotel came before the welcome sign on the interstate. When we left the hotel in the morning, we entered the interstate just past the welcome sign. It would have taken too much time to turn around and get the actual welcome sign, so we just took it on our way out of the state. For the sake of chronological order we're going to just pretend this was actually taken on our first day on the road :-).)

Day 2 - July 27, 2011

(Voodoo Donuts in Eugene, Oregon...the main location is in Portland, but the one in Eugene doesn't have a 2 hour line every day, making it much easier to access for people who don't have all day to wait in line for donuts. Check out the Food Network if you've never heard of Voodoo Donuts.)

(the signature Voodoo Donut)

(proudly displaying my box of Voodoo Donuts)

(Crater Lake National Park - Thomas loved that there was still snow on the ground in July, and I have to admit that seeing snow in the summer is something I'm going to miss in Texas [or for that matter, seeing any snow at all]!)

(Crater Lake)

(Thomas and me by Crater Lake)

DAY 3 - July 28, 2011

(Grants Pass, Oregon...we have no idea what the Intergalatic Headquarters of Bigfoot is, but since people in the Pacific Northwest are generally a little obsessed with Bigfoot, we had to add this picture to our growing collection of Bigfoot pictures from the area.)

(Great Cats World Park in Cave Junction, Oregon...We didn't know what to expect from this place since it was a last minute discovery, but it was very cool, and I highly recommend it to anyone passing through the area. Its not a zoo, and its not a sanctuary. Its a place where big cats [i.e. lions, tigers, jaguars, etc...] are raised and then trained for movies and photo shoots. Thomas thought it would be necessary to bring one of our cats into this picture with us.)

(African Wildcats, which look like regular cats, but apparently they can tear your entire body apart in minutes. The one on the right is a cloned cat, and the one on the left is her daughter. I have mixed opinions about cloning, but having never seen a cloned animal before, I thought this was kind of neat. She's 5 years old, and apparently very healthy.)

(A tiger performing for the handler and getting his reward.)

(The tiger eating his reward)

(A White Tiger)

(I think this guy was a jaguar if I remember correctly, and he's roaring on cue. All of the cats could roar, hiss, swipe [without extending their claws] and stand up on cue...they were obviously all very well trained! I can't even teach my normal house cats to keep their claws in when they swipe at things.)

(Welcome to California!)

(sunset near Crescent City, California)

More to come....!

Update

This is a test to see if this actually posts from my phone app. Its also a very short update because I haven't updated in a couple months. So here's a brief run down:

We are now living in Corpus Christi, Texas again...much to my disappointment. We got here on August 13th after about 3 weeks of traveling and vacationing on the West coast and the Southwestern states. We are currently residents of a local extended stay type hotel while we wait to close on the house that we just bought. Closing should be on October 11th if everything continues to go as planned. At that point I might have something a little more interesting to talk about.

In the meantime, stay tuned and I'll work on posting pictures from our trip down here.

Alaska and the Yukon Part 3

Here's a piece of advice for anyone who ever has to go through a military move. Don't ever do a full DITY move by yourself. It sucks. I haven't had a single moment of spare time for the past month or so, and thankfully Mr. V finally made it home from Japan to help me with the final days of packing. We've done DITY moves together twice now, but I'm not sure why I ever thought it would be a good idea to do one completely on my own.

But with that being said, I'm taking a short break to write a quick post about the end of our Alaska and Yukon trip.

I left off when we got to Skagway, Alaska:

To me, Skagway looked like an old Wild West town. It was the stopping point for many people who were on their way to the Gold Rush in Alaska. It sits next to the town of Dyea (divided by a mountain and some water), which is now almost completely abandoned. Both towns were Gold Rush towns and for some reason, Skagway survived, while Dyea died.

(Old Town Skagway - the entire downtown [which wasn't that big] looked like this)

Of course, I needed to take a picture of me on the display train for the Whitepass-Yukon train route. While this particular piece of the train was a display, this was the same train that we saw "practicing" when we drove into Skagway. They still run an old train from the 1890s for tourists to take the same route that the Goldrushers took.

(this is a horrible picture of me, but its the only one I have of this)

Here's a picture of a view of Skagway taken from an overlook as we drove to Dyea, where we stayed for the night:Since Dyea has basically been abandoned, except for a handful of homes and a bed and breakfast where we stayed, the road out there hasn't exactly been kept up well. While I love traveling, adventure and seeing new things, roads like this terrify me. So needless to say, I didn't enjoy our drive into Dyea, or the drive back to Skagway that night and the next day. This is a one lane road, with a few scattered pull offs to the side in case you run into a car trying to drive the opposite way (and of course those pull off are on the water side of the road, not the side where you can't fall off of anything). The pictures don't do it justice. The drop off the side and into the water is steeper than it looks here.We stayed at the Chilkoot Trail Outpost which is a Bed and Breakfast made up of a group of cabins, that are owned by a husband and wife. If you ever make out this way, I HIGHLY recommend this place as a place to stay. The people who own it are wonderful. They are locals who have spent their whole life in the area and love talking to tourists. They were excellent sources of information about the area. They recommended places to see, told us the local history and they go out of their way to make all of their guests feel welcome. They insist that everyone who stays with them make s'mores at night, and eat a huge, home cooked breakfast in the morning. The cabins were really nice so it definitely had a rugged, yet very comfortable feel to the place. We only stayed here because once again, we were here about a week before the true tourist season started. So any hotels in Skagway that were open were either small and full, small and sketchy or not open. We were a little skeptical about the Chilkoot Trail Outpost since its in a town that no longer exists, but we were VERY pleased with it and would absolutely stay there again if we ever make it back up this way.

(the owners really try to keep the history of the area alive...hence the gold in the key chain to our cabin)

(Chilkoot Trail Outpost cabins)

(The Bed and Breakfast sits next to the beginning of the Chilkoot Trail - one of the 2 main Gold Rush trails. Mr. V got up and ran part of the trail early in the morning, but I chose to sleep in that day.)

(Mr. V and me by the false front of an old building in Dyea. Its the only piece of the main town left standing today.)

(me in the window of the false front)

(remnants of Dyea - almost everything is gone now because when the town was abandoned, most people took the buildings apart and moved the pieces with them.)

(evidence that there was once a town in Dyea)

When Dyea was a functioning town, it was the stopping point before heading out on the Chilkoot Trail. Just looking at pictures of the trail makes me wonder just how desperate these people were to find gold. It looked like a treacherous, steep trail, and in 1898, a huge avalanche killed everyone who was in the process of climbing up the trail that day. There is an old cemetery at the old town site where almost every single grave is a person who was killed in that avalanche. The cemetery is appropriately called the Slide Cemetery.We headed back into Skagway that night for dinner and took a few more pictures of the town:

We ate dinner at a Thai restaurant (which was amazing - so if you're ever in Skagway, eat at the local Thai place!), and then Mr. V wanted to get a drink at the Red Onion Saloon, an old brothel from the Gold Rush Days.

(we still aren't sure why the inside of the saloon is decorated with bed pans...)

(inside the Red Onion Saloon)

That night, the owner of the B&B had a campfire ready for us when we got back since she insists on everyone making s'mores while they stay there.

The next morning we took some pictures around the B&B before leaving:

(on the front porch of our cabin)

(inside the main lodge...the owner told us that she makes every guest get their picture taken with her "friend" aka...a somewhat creepy mannequin...)

(on the front porch of the main lodge)

(by the front entrance)

As we drove out of Dyea, we passed an area that had bald eagles EVERYWHERE! We see eagles all over Whidbey Island all the time, but the amount of them here was just amazing. I think we counted at least 30 eagles total in the whole area at once.

Back in Skagway we checked out an old Gold Rush cemetery (we really like old, creepy graveyards if you can't tell), which led us to a pretty waterfall...


We checked out the Klondike Gold Rush National Park, where Mr. V decided that we both needed to duplicate an old picture hanging up in the old train station:

We checked out the homestead of the man who was the founder of Skagway and his son's house:

(the founder of Skagway's cabin)

(me looking through the window to see the inside of the house - this house is the founder of Skagway's son's house)

Then we finally hopped on a ferry for a LONG 7 hour ride to Juneau, where we spent our final night in Alaska. The only saving grace for this part of the trip was the fact that we got to see some pretty scenery and some glaciers, and we also got to see some orcas! Mr. V and I were thrilled about the orcas because we live in an area where a few pods of them swim by pretty frequently. We've gone to various places in the Puget Sound and taken several ferry rides where people have sworn that we would see some whales. But after living here for 3 years, we've never seen any of the orcas...until we got on the ferry to Juneau. The pictures aren't great, but they are the only orca pictures we have from our time in the Pacific Northwest!

(orcas!!)

After our last night in Juneau, we checked out the Mendenhall Glacier which is right in town, then we hopped back onto a plane to head back to Whidbey. All in all a great trip!!



A final picture - Flying over Whidbey Island and Oak Harbor on the way home!!



If anyone has any interest in seeing about 2000 pictures of the trip, my full albums are here:
Alaska and the Yukon Part 1
Alaska and the Yukon Part 2
Alaska and the Yukon Part 3
Alaska and the Yukon Part 4
Alaska and the Yukon Part 5