Day Eleven - and all the days after

my passenger seat by the end...

As you can assume, I have made it to sunny CA. Apparently it has been in the 20s/30s in MD and while I wish I had more sympathy - I'm mostly just so glad I got out before those temps hit because BYE I DON'T FEEL BAD!

finally, signs for LA!

 Sorry, that wasn't supposed to be mean... I'm just really happy to have finally escaped winter.












 I arrived in Long Beach on Sunday night, my temporary sleeping quarters were all ready for me. I have brought minimal things in from my very full car, basically just what I needed, because I picked right up on Monday morning and am back to working full time. Yes, that is my "suitcase" at the foot of the bed, a very classy trader joes reusable grocery bag. I mean hey - it works!

The last day of my drive was uneventful, I expected to be excited when I woke up - but this whole time I have just felt very calm. The last 2 hours were long, it was dark and I was not interested in all the traffic.

sunset at Long Beach airport

Its so nice to finally be here, but also doesn't feel real yet because I'm so used to having a place where I stay to call home. At the moment, the closest thing to that is my car. I am excited to find a place (hopefully soon) where I can unpack and have my own space. I am sure my sister will feel the same shortly, if she doesn't already haha. She even graciously temporarily donated some drawer space to me so I can unpack just a bit, and we are sharing lots of counter space in the bathroom.


As strange as it is to not have a real "home" at the moment, I do feel very lucky because I have three sets of house keys attached to my car keys, and have 2 garage codes memorized to places I know I am welcome - both here and at home. Again, the support from everyone has been helpful beyond words.

This has been the truest test and pushing to my limits of my type-A plan everything ahead-ness, but I am becoming more comfortable with not needing everything to be organized all the time. I am taking every advantage I can to grow from this experience.

One cool thing about being here on the west coast for my job is that its easy for me to join my team whenever they come into town for a sales pitch. I got a chance to do that in Irvine and I hope to continue to contribute that way, I'm sure its pretty convenient not to fly someone across the country and also for the clients to have a point of contact who is more local aka. me!

last sunset on the road!

I have been so busy catching up with work and trying to find a place to live/buying food/doing laundry that I haven't made time for yoga or working out, and I really haven't made any new friends.

Hopefully soon I can start incorporating all that back into my life again - for now just a lot of very productive alone time!!

Day Ten - yay, more people I know!

Waking up in El Paso today was nothing special. I found a cute place on yelp for breakfast that was on my way so, as usual, I was very excited for my breakfast food!

After about a half hour drive towards Phoenix, I arrived for breakfast - I couldn't decide between the challah french toast and an egg/protein option, so I got both! Clearly I am excited to have made it this far, and am rewarding myself with crazy things like also ordering fresh squeezed OJ.

The restaurant was so cute, its also an event space, a garden, and it has a gift shop! It was so hot outside, I also was tanning while I brunched on the patio. Even once I was done eating, I decided to stay on the patio a little longer to get some extra vitamins from the sun!





Soon after I left for New Mexico, adding yet another state to my "photos with the welcome sign" collection.

Boy, was I happy to finally have finished my very long drive across Texas. It was at least 15-18 hours of driving to get across that one state!

I cannot report on the rest stops here, but I can say that in additional to becoming a connoisseur of rest stops, I have also gotten very good at taste testing the local tap water. The tap water in El Paso was very chemicaly, so I am hoping for something better at my next stop. 






Once I left I was headed to a gypsum park north of El Paso - this is also definitely one of my top 5 of the trip. Admission was free that day, so after a big ascent into the mountains, I arrived at the former missile site, ready to see something amazing. Its supposed to be a big reservation of what looks like stark white sand dunes where you can walk around/explore and also even sled around the dunes.

 The views did not disappoint, I would love to come back here. It was a perfect/gorgeous day, the sky and clouds were so pretty, I just felt like I couldn't take enough photos! Not that the photos can do it justice...

After visiting White Sands, I continued on the last long leg of my journey - to Phoenix where my friends were hosting me for the night. I saw another awesome sunset on my drive, followed by all those stars you can't see in cities like Baltimore.

Again I was so happy to see a familiar face, and spend time catching up. It has been so lucky that I had friends along the way to stop and visit. That has really been one of my favorite parts, because its rare that I would have had an opportunity to see them otherwise.

Day Nine - the longest drive

I was very sad to leave my ATX friends, but am convinced that I can get my sis to come back and visit them with me (Jess - if you're reading this, sorry in advance for the nagging). I had a great time in that city, so after a quick breakfast and packing of my things, I headed out.

these guys especially...

I stopped in Johnson City to check out a coffee/shop where I met these little guys and wanted to bring one home so bad! But, no room in my car...

this is really just for Jess/Lauren

The good news is, the drive from Austin to El Paso wasn't as bad as I expected. The bad news is that I had a truck kick up a giant rock onto my windshield resulting in a sizeable crack. Luckily I knew from other people that I should get it fixed as soon as possible so it didn't get any bigger. This happened around 4pm, I managed to be driving through a big enough town that had an auto glass repair shop in it, and got to them by 4:30 to fix it and be back on the road before 5! For some reason or another, luck was clearly on my side to have such good timing (before close) and be near an actual bigger city when it happened so that I could find a shop, plus they ended up not even charging me to fix it!! That's southern hospitality for ya.

I left around 10:30am and got here around 7:30pm - which includes a time zone change and a cracked windshield repair, so I'm happy with that travel time. I stopped around 12:30 for lunch in Fredericksburg at Sunset Grille, that little town was a cute treat to drive through, And I made sure I filled up my tank so that I wasn't stranded on the desert highway with no fuel.

I actually got to see the sun set on my drive here, and then arrived once it was dark - so seeing the city lights from far away as I drove up was pretty neat. Plus I got to see all the stars also!

I was planning to try and go out on the town tonight, but I'm so exhausted from my drive that I'm just gonna call it an early night. I'm less than 12 hours from LA now, so this distance is pretty real!

Day Eight - procrastinating the unavoidable

Tomorrow I have to drive to El Paso, this is worthy of procrastination because its a 9+ hour drive and I have never driving this far in one day before in my life. I suspect the drive from MD to Nashville was similar, but I had my sister with me then!

Today was a day that started with a lot of exciting activities, such as fixing my speakers, putting air in my tires (due to temperature changes), getting more mouthwash, all that fun stuff.

Rocket Pizza + Triple Chocolate Brownie

Yesterday I called to schedule a trail ride because TX. So once I got all my errands done, I headed that way since its an hour out of town. On the way, my friends suggested an awesome brick oven pizza place called Pieous, and it did not disappoint. My trail ride was very relaxing, and I'm glad I got in some time at the barn - I haven't ridden in years and basically forget how to do it.

me and Badger!

Once I finally got back to town, my local friend took me on a tour of where he works - this super cool place called Mobile Loaves and Fishes. It originally started as a way that a group of friends regularly brought food to the homeless population in ATX but what its grown to is astounding! The place I visited is called the Village, its a place that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supportive community for the disabled, for about 250 chronically homeless people.

a few of the residences

Each trailer or tiny home is specific to that resident, there is a health clinic on site, a city bus stop, and a market including food grown at the Village.

The requirements to qualify/stay there are non-traditional (ex. sobriety not required, pets allowed) and beyond having so many awesome features and amenities available, there is a lot of focus on helping provide income to the residents - including many jobs at the Village itself (cleaning, preparing food) plus opportunities to use facilities at the Villages (ex. blacksmith shop, carpentry shop, art/ceramics studio) to create sell-able merchandise.

The whole thing is just really awesome. I can't say enough good things about it, and I can't wait to come back to visit and see how much its grown! Check out more details here: https://mlf.org/community-first/

I also booked my airbnb for tomorrow - while I'm not excited about the drive, I am happy to have planned ahead a bit for once on this trip!

Day Seven - halfway

I literally can't believe I'm only halfway through this trip, its taking forever and flying by at the same time. I stayed in Austin today, and will be here again tomorrow also.

Leroys and Lewis

I kicked off today by sleeping in super late (8:30 instead of 7) and then since a cold front had just moved in, I had 0 motivation to get up and go outside/do anything besides that. So I had a bowl of cereal and got back in bed - and it was amazing. Eventually I figured I would regret actually doing nothing all day, so I pulled out this trusty old laptop and tried to figure out what I wanted to do.

My friends gave me lots of suggestions yesterday, so I checked those out and looked to see if there was anything else I should add to my list for ATX. Since I don't usually have the leisure of planning days in advance, I thought about today and what I really wanted to make sure I did: yoga and something outdoors.

After spending way too much time trying to find a yoga studio, and equally as much time figuring out the whole rest of my day + tomorrow (yes, I spent way too long trying to pick a studio), I eventually headed out.

in the prehistoric gardens

The first thing I needed to do at this point, was eat lunch. I had found a lunch spot thanks to yelp and headed that way as my first stop. I eventually narrowed it down to food truck and bbq since I thought that was very Austin of me. I was hoping for brisket, but settled for pork tongue - which was delicious. Unfortunately the cold front made eating outside less comfortable, but I insisted on the full experience.

After lunch I headed to Zilker Botanical Gardens just down the street, I stopped at Graffiti Park next. It was so awesome, I wish I lived here so I could see it change every so often. Lots of other people stopped by while I was there, some just for photos and others to paint. I even met a guy at the top who had been there 1.5 hours already and was racing the rain to finish! He asked if I was an artist also, and I had to admit that I'm not really - just sometimes acrylic on canvas, but that I recently gave everything except a few of my favorite brushes away since I was moving.

Then I checked out the first/original Whole Foods, stopped at 24 diner which was so delicious - I got chili and cornbread (with butter made from crack-cocaine I swear it was so good). I even met two older/cool dudes and the bartender there (since I ate at the bar cuz tables were a long wait) and then headed to the yoga class I finally decided on.

dinner at 24 diner

I haven't practiced since a few days before I moved, so it felt like forever since I really gave myself some time to do yoga. I hope I don't have to go that long again, I feel much better now! And the instructor for our class was originally from LA, moved to DC for school at GW, and then drove back to live in Austin!! What are the odds our stories are pretty similar? So anyways, that was cool.

Between random graffiti dude, friends at the bar/restaurant, and yoga instructor - I'm making so many friends!! Everyone is so nice here also, I love being somewhere where people hold open doors and say "thank you" or "excuse me" all the time. My kind of people.

Finally made it home from yoga pretty late tonight, had a quick chat with my friends before bed about how long/boring LOTR is, and then we were all ready to pass out!

I have some plans for tomorrow, but I think I'll just wait until they happen to tell you ;)