Packing and Planning
Wow has February flown by! After leaving Dropbox in January Hanz and I have been laying out plans for travel, organizing lists, and prepping for packing. Lists have been checked twice to determine what to sell, what to move, what to donate, and what to dispose. Furniture, electronics, books, and more have all slowly but surely found new homes.
Those of you that know the varied stories of the current car’s issues (convertible top failing to close, puddles, beeping, etc) will be glad to hear it’s in the donate list (it’ll go to NPR!). The only down side: we will no longer joke about our car being old enough to vote in the United States.
In our last month in Austin it’s serving us well transporting the boxes we need to move and will be doing one last long Texas drive to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. Plus two unexpected drives to Houston, so a busy last month for the car.
If you ever need to expedite a passport renewal in a couple of days the Houston passport agency is the bomb. Hanz noticed the expiration date of my passport … and I wouldn’t have had the 6 months of validity needed to enter other countries about halfway through 2019. Thus we figured out how to rush a passport, which entailed two round trip 6 hour drives to Houston from Austin. One early in the morning (we had to be awake at 3:00 AM) and a second one in the afternoon two days later. On the bright side, I have a new passport and we don’t have to do that again until 9.5 years from now.
We will make two trips to Mexico City in March. Our companion pass with Southwest came in just in time and already has proven it’s worth. Packing those Mexico City trips in was intentional, as Southwest will be canceling flights to Mexico City end of March… and opening up routes to Hawaii. I guess we’ll just have to do both. Possibly doing a trip as sweepstakes winners! Southwest had a sweepstakes in Austin on Valentine’s day and we were recently notified that we were potential winners. We’re just waiting to hear back and keeping our fingers crossed.
Our plan for Guadalupe Mountains National Park is to spend two nights camping and backpacking. Finally, one night at a hotel to rest, and most definitely shower, before finishing the drive back to Austin. We cannot wait for our first backpacking trip of the year. Guadalupe Mountain and Bush Mountain here we come.
For the drive to Colorado we secured a U-Haul rental to transport us, our plants, cats, and everything else. Amarillo is our one stop along the way, in order to break the trip up into two eight hour drives. We’ll be storing items and renting a room from family in Colorado. Once the U-Haul’s unloaded and we’ve spent a weekend in Colorado, it’s back to Austin to finish moving out.
Traveling starts after that! Mexico City again and then more of Mexico until late July when we go on a trip of US national parks in the North West.
