Road Trip! An arrival story.

Two months ago today we arrived in Ann Arbor, MI to begin our new lives in the Midwest. In honor of the anniversary of our arrival, I thought I'd share some photos from our road trip. (A lot of these have already been posted to Facebook, so sorry for the repeat. I'll try to keep it interesting.)


On Sunday, June 5th at 7am, we loaded up our final belongings, harnessed the cat, and left our empty apartment in Oakland, CA.

The rest of our belongings were traveling via shipping container and we had packed them all a few days before. Thanks again to Abba and Leor for all their help with the packing!

So, it was just the two of us with some necessities and our very precious cargo:

The cat was an angel for the entire trip and did not try to escape even once. He loved staying in the hotels too. Strange animal!

Since we left so early, we missed the traffic and made good time getting to the California/Nevada boarder and the Tahoe/Truckee area. It was very beautiful and there was still a lot of snow on the mountains and alongside the road.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye to California

and hello to Nevada.

The first day we drove for 16 hours and traveled through California, Nevada, Utah, and half of Wyoming.

It says "Welcome to Utah." Hard to take a picture at 70 mph.

Welcome to Wyoming, in the dark.

The second day was a little longer, 17 hours, and we passed through the rest of Wyoming, Nebraska, and 2/3 of Iowa. We never did find a "Welcome to Iowa" sign...

Pretty sure this was Iowa.

The third and final day was a quickie! Just 8 hours of driving. That day we finish Iowa and drove through Illinois, a bit of Indiana, and most of Michigan.

Of course, the "Welcome to Michigan" picture didn't turn out.

First photo of Michigan country!

At this point we celebrated 2300 miles on the odometer:

Then it was just a few more hours until we saw our first Ann Arbor sign and we knew we were almost home.

Around 3pm on Tuesday, June 7, we pulled into the driveway of our new home in Ann Arbor. We were greeted by the hot, sticky air of a heat wave and so many bird songs.

At this point, our model passenger decided he did not want to get out of the car. Though, he was later tempted by some kitten treats.

And now here we are, two months later, settled in, still fighting sticky, hot heatwaves, surrounded by bird song, and loving it!