The last leg of the journey...

And the next phase of the adventure!

We've finally made it into Washington and are now on the last leg of our journey from Spokane to Seattle. All in all, it's been a good trip. We've been very lucky on the road and have made some great memories as we've traveled from Washington to Washington.

The second half of South Dakota was actually really pretty, but not as pretty as the distant, snow capped peaks of the mountains in Montana. Idaho was a short and decidedly different experience. Luckily, we only drove through 65 miles at the tip to get into Washington. The harrowing race down the mountain from Montana into Idaho was enough for Joe and I to agree that we weren't doing that again anytime soon. :)

As much as we've enjoyed certain parts of this adventure, driving with even a little dog across country can be difficult. While Bear himself was fine, we had some difficulty finding places to eat where we could have him with us and often had to resort to eating our lunches in the car rather than then leaving him alone. Dog friendly hotels like to charge for pets (sometimes as much as $100 as a deposit with an additional charge for each day) and finding places calm enough to walk an over stimulated dog who has been in the car all day can prove difficult at a busy truck stop. We certainly wouldn't have chosen to travel without Bear with us for this journey, but if we were going to do this again, we would do a few things different.

One thing we would probably do is stock the car with more picnic friendly groceries so that we can simply take advantage of the rest stops for a picnic rather then having to find all our lunches on the road. That way we could have sat out with Bear at either a table or grassy spot and relaxed a little better while we ate. There have been lots of Walmarts along the way, so it would have been easy to restock our supplies and it probably would have been healthier (although we have been trying to take the Subway and salads approach whenever possible). Another thing we would do is to make sure to get more hotels in advance once we had a better idea of our schedule. Getting a hotel on the road while using spotty wifi is far more frustrating then setting it up a few nights beforehand from the free wifi at a current hotel.

In other news...

The great house hunt has begun! Knowing that Joe's work will be in Bellevue (or possibly Redmond, as he might be working on an Xbox contract), has led us to concentrate our search in different areas. We've actually been looking a lot near the Woodland Park Zoo, but we haven't given up on the beautiful Alki region yet!

We are hoping to find a home ASAP, preferably a townhouse with a small yard for Bear. If we can find something quickly and can reclaim our belongings from the POD people, we might even make it back home for Labor Day weekend. More on that to come!