Gainesville Rock City

After stopping in Tampa to have dinner with Cara's grandparents, we made it to Gainesville with the U-Haul and car in tow, which puts us about 400 miles into our trip. The drive up with Cara's car towed behind was challenging and I'm glad we are just taking the car the rest of the way.

When we got to Gainesville, our POD was already at Cara's house (and it's HUGE), so we've been packing up everything and loading it in. On our trip we will only be taking a cooler for food and drinks and the clothes we need for the next two weeks, everything else is going in the POD.

We wanted to try to eat at all of our favorite Gainesville restaurants before we leave town, so we had Satchel's Pizza last night (with Connie and Matt) and Ivy's Grill this morning.

At the store behind Satchel's (Lightning Salvage), we found an awesome poster of all the bars of Gainesville, so we had to buy it for our new apartment in Portland.

Away we go

Starting tomorrow morning, Cara and I will embark on an epic road trip from South Florida to Portland, Oregon. I will be starting my job at Intel later this month and we will be looking for an apartment in downtown Portland as soon as we get there.

If we were to drive straight there the most direct way, it would take 53 hours and span about 3,200 miles, but we decided to make a nice trip out of it and we will be journeying across the country for the next 2 1/2 weeks, spanning about 4,200 miles.

Our travel plan is as follows:

June 26th - Rent U-Haul and pick up furniture from KK and PopPop's house in Miami Beach, say goodbye

June 27th - Drive to Gainesville to finish packing, return U-Haul, load up our POD and hang out with friends for a few days

July 1st - Drive to Atlanta, Georgia, go to a Braves game with Ivan and Mike Aguilar

July 2nd - Drive to Huntsville, Alabama, stay with Cara's parents for a few days

July 5th - Drive to Cincinnati, Ohio, stay with Landyn and JJ

July 7th - Drive to De Pere, Wisconsin to visit with Cara's grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins, then drive back down to Chicago for the weekend

July 8th - Dave Matthews Band Caravan concert in Chicago, stay with Mike Canada

July 11th - Drive west from Chicago for most of the day, will make it at least to Omaha, Nebraska

July 12th - Keep driving west, will make it at least to Denver, Colorado

July 13th - Drive to Salt Lake City, Utah, stay with James

July 14th - Drive the rest of the way to Portland