Monday, April 16, 2018

We've been on the go for nearly three weeks. Prior to finishing our contract with work, we had a three-day weekend when we did the majority of our packing, specifically gathering every single piece of gear we'll need for the entire summer (the Camino de Santiago, European wedding, the Great Divide Trail, and 300 miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, plus random car camping in between). After those three days off, we worked a 3-1-3: three 12 hour days, one day off, then three more 12 hour days, totaling 72 hours in seven days. And exhausting 'go-for-the-full-12-hours' type shifts! After we completed our shifts, we had one day to recover before needing to be out of our apartment by 5:00pm the next day. At least the weather was decent as we loaded up our u-haul.

Thursday we were out of our apartment by 4:30pm and started the drive north. We stayed in a hotel in Los Banos before arriving at Mat's family's house the next day. We immediately unloaded our belongings into a storage unit then headed back to Mat's dad's place to spread out our gear and made sure we had all we needed for Europe and everything else packed up in the storage lot. We rented a 6x14 ft unit which held everything! Family visit on Saturday evening, then Sunday morning we headed out to my grandparents' ranch with Barley in the GTI, leaving our truck with Mat's dad.

We arrived at my grandparents' ranch Monday afternoon. We spent two nights there getting Barley settled before driving to my brother's house to visit him and his family and my mom for four days. We left our GTI with my brother and nabbed a flight to SFO yesterday. We stayed the night at Mat's aunt's place where we had lunch with Mat's other aunt, uncle, and cousin. Phew! Today we slept in and lazed about the apartment relishing the quiet and relaxed time. A quick trip to REI for some last minute items, then BART to the airport to grab our flight on British Airways to Europe. The economy class wasn't full so Mat and I enjoyed a row to ourselves. They even had Spanish red wine with dinners so we got a preview of what we'll be drinking for the next month!

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