Moving from Texas to Colorado
After out trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park we had a quick trip to Mexico and then four days to finish boxing up and packing everything we wanted to move to Colorado via a U-Haul. We’d purchased packing supplies from Home Depot and felt confident we could finish with everything in just four days. We miscalculated just a bit which resulted in quite a bit of an adventure in moving. At 10:30 PM, the night before we had to pack up a U-Haul and begin our drive to Colorado, we still had items to pack and no boxes left in which to pack them and no tape with which to close them. A true packing emergency (pew pew peeeewwwwww!!!).
This necessitated a last minute strategy session. First we gathered information: Home Depot opened at 6:00 AM, U-Haul pickup at 7:00 AM, and at 8:00 AM moving help hired to load the U-Haul would arrive. Then we implemented a plan of attack: that time table meant Hanz would drive to Home Depot to be there right after it opened, I’d stay and keep organizing and wrapping what I could, once he was back we’d pick up the U-Haul, and then keep packing up items until finished. While packing as fast as we could we’d have the helpers hired take the already packed boxes first so that, by the time they would have loaded all of those boxes, we would have the rest ready for them. With the plan for the next morning finalized, we kept doing what we could to pack until 12:00 AM and went to bed in order to execute on the plan later.
Everything was far more hectic than we intended, but we managed to get everything loaded by 10:30 AM … which is when we realized after shutting the U-Haul door that we didn’t have a lock. We hadn’t read the fine print about needing to rent a lock as well. At this point we needed lunch to combat this newest development. So we went back to our apartment, ate with plastic silverware, and headed out to find a lock prior to starting our long drive to Colorado.
To add an additional element of complexity, we were also moving one of our two cats to Colorado to stay with relatives. The cats are a long separate story. The too long didn’t read version is that they don’t like each other and so we could only bring our first cat on our travels. Tezcalipoca (or Tez for short) is adaptable and thus was the best choice to live in Colorado. The down side was that he hates car rides and we had two at least eight hour drives coming up. We gave him one light sedative when eating lunch about an hour before we left and then loaded him up into the front of the U-Haul with us. We managed to find a lock at the first place we stopped (🙏 AutoZone) and also picked up a couple energy drinks to stay awake for the drive.
The first two hours the energy drinks weren’t really necessary as Tez made his dislike for the drive known verbally and very loudly. We found that if we talked or sang he was far more comfortable and thus cemented a quest to talk for long enough for Tez to settle. Eventually, either through exhaustion or resignation (or both plus the sedatives) he quieted down and began to sleep during the drive. For the next couple of hours we concentrated on the scenery, the very straight roads, getting gas, and the sunset. We’d booked a hotel in Amarillo, TX, which was about halfway to Colorado, and finally stopped there finalizing the first leg of our trip.
By the time we arrived it was about 10:30 or 11:00 PM. We were exhausted, but unloaded the litter, food, cat, and water bowl into the hotel room. Once the cat was settled in the bathroom of the hotel, we needed dinner. Not much is open in the way of food at close to 11:30 PM in Amarillo Texas, but we were able to find a couple places and decided on a chain we’d never visited before, some place called ‘Waffle House’. Little did we know how good greasy food would taste there after such a long day. We both demolished our plates before heading back to the hotel to get some shut eye.
The next morning we gave Tez his light sedative and headed down to the free continental breakfast offered by the hotel. After breakfast we packed up all the cat stuff back into the U-Haul and began the last segment of our drive. This time signing did the trick to keep Tez more relaxed and comfortable, so we had our own impromptu musical about directions, sights on the road, and timing, there was even a guess-the-movie rapping contest. Some of the sights on the road included some very unexpected and extremely cool wind farms in north Texas. As well as some expected and impressively majestic sights, like the Capulin Volcano National Monument and the snowcapped Rocky Mountains that came into view as we crested hills in New Mexico.
The drive to Colorado was mostly uneventful. There were some parts, especially when driving through the wind farms while in Texas and New Mexico, that were so windy the truck tried to move sideways. We had have the steering wheel slightly turned to the opposite side of the wind in order to drive straight. While driving through New Mexico Marla read out a sign stating that hitch-hikers should not be picked up due to the proximity of a detention facility. Hanz couldn’t believe the sign was for real and we managed to snag a picture of the second one we saw for proof.
The rest of the trip was very scenic as we skirted the edge of Denver heading north. We arrived about an hour before unloading moving help was expected to arrive. We meet up with the relatives who will be watching Tez and we will be renting from while we travel. The unloading help then arrived and the process of unloading and organizing all of the boxes into the basement began. It took far less time to unload than it did to load and we were done in about an hour.
After that we had another six days to spend in Colorado with relatives. We went hiking, to breweries, and just generally enjoyed the Colorado sunshine. Then it was back to Austin to finish selling items, go to our favorite places one last time, and pack up the last suite cases and cat for Mexico. But the details about that will come up in the next chapter of our adventures!
