Homeward Bound

The day has finally arrived, we are going home! These last few days we have really been feeling ready to be back. We were all up early and with a final send off from Rashae and her family we loaded in the van for the final leg of our 9 week vacation.


This was really the only time during all our car trips that I was really anxious to be to our destination. It was nice to gain an hour from the changing time zone and we made great time. We didn't plan very well and after passing an exit with lots of fast food places for lunch we thought we'd just stop at the next one. It turned out the next place with any sort of fast food was just outside the Dalles and over half way into our trip. Our choices were McDonald's or Subway and I just couldn't bear eating at McDonald's even one more time. Our kids would eat Subway food but not as good as they eat McDonald's so Jeff was so nice to sit in the car while I ran into get me a sandwich and then we all went to McDonald's. James was very persuasive and we ended up buying him an ice-cream treat in the adjoining quick mart. They only had two sizes of treats, big and bigger. He ended up with this big ice-cream drumstick with brownie bits on top. Thankfully Jeff had the foresight to get an empty cup and spoon so after James failed attempt to eat it off the cone we scooped it all out into the cup. This worked great since he was eating in the car.

The drive really flew by, especially in the scenic Columbia River Gorge. Being back in Oregon we both agreed that of all the places we've been over the past two months, we really love Oregon the best. We pulled into our house at 3:30pm which was much earlier than we thought we'd be home thanks to our short lunch stop. We unloaded the van and put most of the things away. We had done all our laundry at Rashae's house so it was really nice to not be home and have piles of dirty laundry. We were so ambitious that we even cleaned out the van and took out all the seats to vacuum. We wiped down all the seats and side walls but there really wasn't too much to clean since we had kept the van pretty organized for the entire trip.

Jeff's parents were the most amazing house sitters you could ask for! While we were gone they collected all our mail and watered things in our yard. They came over the morning we were to arrive home and turned on our air conditioning and aired out the house. They put a gallon of milk in the fridge and even planted bright new flowers in the planter on our patio table! The best part was they invited us over for dinner the day we got in since we didn't have any food and were really tired from traveling.

When all was said we were gone 57 days and put 3,934 miles on our van. We made some great memories and visited so many friends and family. We're just counting down the time until our next sabbatical in 6 years and 10 months!