North for Alaska: Day One - Junction City OR to Bellingham WA 362 miles

Uggghhh… By this time, our whole family is dragging. We have just done a major amount of work in the last week and we are TIRED. All of us are looking forward to a week of driving. I’m going to miss swimming every day (which I was doing through Monday afternoon) but the slower pace will be a nice change. It took us several hours in the morning to actually get moving, but we did eventually. Oh, also, our house went on the market around 7:00 am.

After lots of hugs and tears, grandma left for work, leaving us to depart on our own. After breakfast, we finished packing and cleaned up our messes before heading out. Instead of leaving at our desired time of 9:00, we ended up leaving around 10:30 which was fine because it enabled my dad to talk to an old friend before we left.

Leaving from Junction City meant that we took the back way out to I-5. We were meeting friends at Costco in Albany to say bye, but coming from a different direction confused our driver (my dad) and so the adventure began before we had even left the state. What should have been a quick 40 min jaunt up the road, turned into an hour long trek filled with wrong turns. Finally we reached Costco and met with our friends from Lebanon. Afterwards the trip really began.

Aside from several rest stops and a bit of traffic in Seattle, the stretch from Albany to Bellingham was uneventful. Oh, did I mention that we are taking our rabbit, Willow? Having an animal in the car with us makes things slightly more interesting, but for the most part, nothing happened. We also stopped for lunch in Centralia WA, to have lunch with my aunt. Once we reached Bellingham at approximately 8:00pm, we spent some time with good friends of my mom and dad. As a result, we reached our hotel around 11:00 and went straight to bed. That ended day one.