Updating the blog a day late because of all the travel. Beth and I returned very very late, or I should say early this morning, from dropping off Alex at school in the land of far far away. Last Sunday the 21st, Beth, Alex, and I all headed west right after church. The good news is that directions for how to get to Seattle are easy (Get on I-90 west. And then what? Then nothing, just get on I-90 west and go to Seattle!) the bad news is from here it takes 4 days to get there. We left Warsaw right after church, drove through somewhere for lunch and went separately as far as O'Hare, where we left the van and continued west in the Honda we got for Alex a couple months ago. We got dinner somewhere in Wisconsin and made a reservation for down the road a ways, driving basically until it got dark and then another hour or two. So after the first day we made it as far as Albert Lea, Minnesota (~520 miles). Repeat the second day and get as far as Sheridan, Wyoming (~750 miles). Repeat the third day and get as far as Spokane, Washington (~670 miles). Repeat the fourth day and get to Redmond, WA (~280 miles). So a light day of driving on day 4, at least. Along the way on day 2 we stopped at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, and Wall Drugs in Wall, SD. The Corn Palace, we should have skipped. It was nice to stop driving for a while and see something but it was kind of lame and not what anyone expected. It's a basketball stadium decorated with corn, and who cares. Lame, waste of time. Wall Drug was about like I remembered it from when I was maybe 6 years old...still have the signs up for 500 miles in both directions, still have lots of jackalopes, still have creepy animatronic singing cowboys. So two stops in about 3 hours. Otherwise, we went right on through except to eat and get gas :) We did learn on the first day to fill up whenever you can when out on the plains, because the next gas may be many miles away. We never let it get too low after making it to an open gas station with maybe 10 miles left in the tank. But overall, the drive was easier than I thought it would be. Having 3 people sharing driving certainly helped.
So we got there, overnighted at a motel in Kirkland (Beth forgot her phone at the hotel in Spokane, so we had to have it overnighted to us at the hotel) and got Alex moved in on Thursday. He's in overflow housing since we signed him up a bit late in the game, but it's not so bad because he's being put up in the Redmond Hilton. He can't have any open heating elements so no electric skillet or toaster, but he does have a rice cooker and a fridge and microwave, so hopefully he'll eat all right until he gets into a more permanent apartment. He has a very nice setup there in the meantime, and he said he wouldn't mind if he has to stay there all semester. I bet. He still has some things in the storage unit for now at least, since there's no room for his dresser or night stand and such, so we'll hang on to that for now too. We visited Target and Safeway a few times each and got him everything we could think of that he needs. The shuttle will still come to the hotel he's at so he can still ride that instead of driving back and forth to campus.
Later on Thursday we went to see the Space Needle. It's expensive so we thought we'd take Alex because he probably won't be going himself. Parking wasn't horrible once we found the area and we got right on up. It was hazy enough that Mt. Rainier wasn't visible from to top but the views of the city were really cool as was the entire thing.
We visited with Scott Mason a few times while we were out there. He's managing a recreation establishment...not sure what else to call it....the kind of place where you can golf by hitting a ball into a sheet and a digital vision system determines how good a shot it was and where it goes. And then play hockey, carnival games, soccer, and such the same way. We had dinner and he took us there on Thursday (his night off) and comped us a couple hours playing, which would probably have been a couple hundred bucks. We went to visit him at his apartment Friday so we could do laundry...all that laundry from the road...and hang out until he had to go to work. Saturday we got a car wash (for free! since it was free car wash day at the place, which was a nice curprise) and oil change in the car, then Alex had a game club meeting he wanted to go to (plus IHOP afterwards) so we dropped him off, then Beth and I went to check out Pike Place Market, which was a mistake on a Saturday. The GPS took us to the main entrance, which was swamped with people and not a place I wanted to be driving. Literally enormous crowds, everywhere. The sign at the original Starbuck's said a 2.5 hour wait for service. I couldn't find an actual place to park nearby, so it would have been a very steep walk down to the market that Beth may have had a hard time with. So we punted. By the time we saw what the place was like, neither of us wanted to be there any more. And we just turned around (as soon as we figured out where) and went back to the hotel. Sunday we got Alex in the morning and checked out some more of the town of Redmond, finding a cool open air shopping center with a cool game store that Alex liked a lot. Late afternoon we headed for the airport, Alex driving us in extremely heavy interstate traffic and dropping us off. He did great. And he got back to the hotel before we were even through security. The flight back to Chicago was uneventful, but to save money get got a late one. It was 11:00 local time when we landed, and about 3:00 Warsaw time when we got back home. I actually got up to put the trash and recycling out and try to go to work but ended up sleeping another couple hours before actually starting work. From home, thankfully.
So there we have it...nest, emptied.
