Detour!

On April 17^th, we set out from Wendover to Minneapolis.  The respite was nice, but it’s time to get back to work.  Checked the WY road report – looks good:

(These aren't readable at this size; the colors tell the story.)  I checked the highway report through Wyoming through the state government web site.  All clear – time to go!  We loaded up the totes in the back of the truck and headed off through the Bonneville salt flats.

Emily and I stopped for gas just outside of Salt Lake City.  While I was filling the gas, Emily was looking at the tires and thought that they looked low.  It could just be altitude change, but we decided to check them out.  I brought out my trusty tire gauge that I had had since I was 16.  All of the tires registered at around 20 PSI – oops!   We started filling the tires and that same trusty tire pump now registered the tires at 160 PSI – yikes!  We went to a local Jiffy Lube to get that corrected, and also replaced all of the fluids for colder weather.

Back on the road, we see an overhead sign that I-80 is closed!  What?!?  I had just check two hours ago and the road was clear – now it’s closed!

We went to the visitor center in Salt Lake City to get an update.  I asked one of the reception guys if he had any information on road conditions in Wyoming.  He didn’t, he said, but he did say, “I have the Internet”.  We spent the next 15 minutes looking at Wyoming travel routes and cameras, and concluded that I-80 would not work:

He also looked at I-90 (through Montana) and I-70 (through Colorado).  I-90 was showing closings  from Billings to the North Dakota state line and I-70 was closed at Loveland pass and at the Twin Tunnels.  After much discussion, I decided that none of these northern passages would work in the next week.  We’re headed south!

Our new route has added two days and 1000 miles to our trip.  We overnighted in Beaver, UT and considered taking a shortcut via Hwy 89 to avoid Las Vegas traffic.  Good this we didn’t; once we got on I-40 in AZ, we found out that the road had closed.  We sticking to interstates for the rest of our journey.

One exciting part of the trip was a drive over the new Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge!  We’ve watched it’s construction over the past few years, and it’s a marvel in engineering.  It cuts at least 45 minutes off the route from Las Vegas to Kingman, and the barriers deflect most of the cross-winds that the gorge receives.  There is also a footpath to walk the bridge (though I don’t think I’ll ever do that).  The bridge is 900’ above the Colorado river.

After stays in Flagstaff, Tucumcari, Oklahoma City and Cameron, MO, we’re stuck in Mason City, IA.  (25 mph crosswinds slowed us down between New Mexico and Missouri.)  A snowstorm is coming through the upper Midwest, and we’re not taking changes with the trailer.  We’ll get into Minneapolis tomorrow.  At least I have time to update this blog!

Here’s how the route was originally planned: (1900 miles, four days)

      California, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota

Here’s how the route actually played out: (3000 miles, ten days)

      California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Nevada (again), Arizona (again), New Mexico, Texas,

      Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota

I guess you can't always believe the Internet.

Leaving California...

After 15 years in our house and 19 years in California, we were ready to leave.  We lived on a fantastic cul-de-sac with great neighbors, but it was time to begin the adventure.

On April 12th, the sale of our house was registered and we closed escrow.  Emily and I did a walk-through of the house with Peter and JP (and their beautiful daughter Sophie).  We wish them the best and hope that they will enjoy the house and neighborhood as much as we did

Next step: clean out the house.  The interior of the house was already empty; everything that we wanted to keep had been transferred to the garage.  We loaded up the pickup with a load for the dump and the trailer with everything that was going to Minnesota with us.  For those of you who have seen my garage/workshop, this picture might be surprising:

By 5:00p, everything was out of the house, so the truck and trailer were loaded.  The house was locked (the keys left in the kitchen) and we left through the garage, leaving the openers inside.  We were locked out for the first time in 15 years (it’s not our house anymore!), but that didn’t stop us from having one last shindig on the driveway.:

Emily and I shared a bottle of champagne with our neighbors and very good friends Rory and Lindy.  They also brought chairs and snacks, so we chatted for a while and watched the sun go down.  After a short time, neighbors Bill and Peter also joined us for a final send-off:

From there, it was back to the Extended Stay hotel to pack up clothes, photos and other personal effects.  We spent the night and next morning finishing this work.  Here’s a picture of the trolley with the totes and suitcases that we packed in the hotel:

And we’re off!  Bound for Minnesota, we’re planning to take I-80 through Reno and Salt Lake City to get there.  The trailer is really slowing us down; we can do max 60 mph on the freeways.  We got to Wendover, NV, on the night of the 14^th after fighting a blowing snowstorm 30 miles out of town.  We decided to stay in Wendover at the Rainbow Hotel/Casino for the night.

After we checked into the room, I looked at weather conditions for Wyoming the next day.  Damn Xerxes!  This winter storm was going to close I-80 across Wyoming for the next two days!  Emily and I decided to make to most of it and spend a couple of days at the hotel.  We’ve always enjoyed cheap casinos, and Wendover provided a few for us.  We spent these two days playing $3 blackjack, $2 craps, penny slots  and nickel video poker, along with $2.99 ham and eggs breakfasts. It was a good time to decompress from all of the activity from the past month. We also spent time in the sportsbook watching the Giants, our last exposure to CSN and live Giant’s games!

Wednesday morning (4/17), we checked all of the state travel websites for Utah, Wyoming, Colorado and South Dakota.  We’re heading out – Minnesota bound!

LA county fun!

In order to obtain our residency visa in Ecuador, we need to have multiple copies of our life documents (birth certificate, criminal reports, etc.).  These need to obtained and apostilled within 90 days of our visa application.  We've been able to obtain all of the documents except one: our marriage certificate.

A question that I get frequently: what is apostillation?  A notary public will verify that I am the person that signed a document but doesn't take a position on whether the document is valid or not; he will just check my ID and confirm that I signed it in his presence.  Having a document apostilled will confirm that the information on the document is correct.  This involves two steps: obtaining the document and validating the document.

For our marriage certificate, we needed to obtain the document in Los Angeles county (where it's filed in the recorders office) and have it apostilled by the office of the Secretary of State in Sacramento.  Step one: get the document.

Emily and I drove to Lancaster to visit the LA county recorders office to get the document.  (Lancaster is a high desert city with no attractions - it's a drive-through city on Hwy 14 northeast of LA.)  We drove down on Sunday and visited the office Monday morning.  We had been told that a mail/email request could take weeks to process, but an office visit should get us the document in an hour or so.

We went to the clerk and presented our request.  She disappeared into the back office for a couple of minutes before returning; she had three copies of our certificate!  We were feeling pretty good about the process and the quick turnaround when she started looking at the certs.  She picked them up and went to talk to her supervisor.  After she returned (about 15 minutes), she said that the marriage date on the copies that they had on file were too faint and unreadable.  No problem, she said; she would email a request to the main office in Norwalk and she would call us that afternoon when they were ready.

Norwalk is a not-for-tourist city in south LA county, bordered by not-so-touristy cities of Bellflower, Compton and Downey.  If you ever visit LA, go to Disneyland  instead.

Now for the fun.  To try to expedite the process, Emily and I decided to drive to Norwalk about 80 miles away to see if we could offer assistance.  (Of course, we had the pleasure of navigating LA's fine freeways getting there.)  The supervisor we wound up talking with said that she had received the email request, there was nothing we could do, and that, "These things take time".  When we asked for a time estimate, she glared at us and said to return to Lancaster.

We were returning to Lancaster and were about ten miles away when Emily noticed that it looked like it was raining up ahead.  One problem: the "rain" was brown.  Sandstorm!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08L8FgCiwNA&feature=player_embedded
(Apologies: I didn't take the video and this was the best I could find.)

The sandstorm was pretty nasty: 60 mph winds and sand getting into our eyes, ears and everywhere else.  We had to go to Target to get underclothes (we had only packed for a one night stay), and the walk from the parking lot to the door was pelting us hard.  We spent an hour browsing Target hoping that the storm would die down.  Browsing Target for that long is a difficult thing to do!  We tried out the patio furniture, played video games on the PlayStation displayed, ate popcorn and browsed the magazines.  That's an hour of my life that I'll never get back!

Not hearing anything from the recorders office, we headed back to the hotel we had stayed at the night before around 3:00p .  We were able to get a room and found out later that we were fortunate to do so.  During the evening reception (dinner and a glass of wine), we learned that the Highway Patrol had closed the freeway north of Lancaster and that the hotel had filled up.  Even if we could get our marriage certificate that afternoon, we wouldn't be able to leave town; the freeway wouldn't be opened until sometime Tuesday morning.

We got up the next morning to a very pleasant, sunny day; the storm had died down overnight and the sand wasn't blowing anymore.  We went back to the recorders office to follow up on our request.  The clerk recognized us and brought her supervisor over to talk with us.  After explaining that we had driven down from San Francisco to try to get this done, she said that she would do what she could to escalate the process.

To kill time, we would up chatting with Jerry the security guard.  Jerry is probably in his mid-60's and sounds like he's lived a very interesting life.  He used to work security at a Hollywood studio with his 165 lb Rottweiler guard dog Duke.  One day, a group of stage workers were coming out of one of the sets when Duke started growling.  Jerry tried to calm his dog, but as the workers got closer Duke started growling even more.  Eventually, Duke launched himself at one of the workers and tackled him.  Jerry was thinking "lawsuit" as he approached the worker but instead discovered a .357 revolver tucked in his pants.  The worker confessed that he had been planning to kill Ann-Margaret.  He was arrested.  Ann-Margaret insisted that Jerry and Duke continue to remain on the payroll until the completion of filming.

Finally, around 1:00p, the supervisor came out to the lobby with our certificates!  Everything was legible and we were good to go!  We were back on the road for our 6 1/2 hour drive back to San Mateo.  Even though we lost a day during the week that we're closing on the house, all's well that ends well!

Here's to hoping that our process in Sacramento goes more smoothly...

(An update: apostilling in Sacrament took five minutes!)