Day One of our trip started out normally. We woke up, showered, dressed, had bagels for breakfast. With all of the things that needed to be loaded into the car; dishes to be washed, or at least placed in the dishwasher; cats instructed to mind their behavior while we were gone; etc, we didn’t hit the road until 11 AM, a full hour later than I had expected we would be leaving.

We made a couple of foolish stops on the way – a stop at the electronics store to look at laptop mice, a stop at the furniture mecca to buy the pillows which we had intended to pack, but alas, had quite forgotten. We had actually, once we realized we’d forgotten the pillows (which, thankfully, was before arriving at our campsite and attempting to sleep), intended to stop at the department store at which Mr. Photo’s sister-in-law works, but sadly, about two exits too far down the freeway, we realized we had, in fact, gone too far.

For our trip, we took my brother’s advice, and invested some cds into audiobooks. Thus, the entire way north, we have been listening to the pleasant timbre of Douglas Adams’ voice telling us the slightly sad, but all too amusing, tale of Dirk Gently and the Long Lost Tea-time of the Soul.

After leaving the brand new Ikea in Portland clutching our pillows at 3 PM, we realized that making it to Seattle on schedule was going to be a bit challenging. My aunt and uncle were expecting us, and likely by 6 PM. Still, we made a valiant attempt at challenging traffic, which, on the whole, was not the misery we had expected. There was the usual slow-down, shifted about 20 miles south for reasons only the gods might understand. It seems that ordinary Washington motorists feel leery about travelling past both the Army and the Air Force bases at anything faster than the racing pace of a snail, which is to say that traffic moved at approximately 20 miles per hour past those regions, only to pick up speed once we made it into Tacoma.

We stopped in Tacoma to fill the tank and trade off driving – I am the better navigator, and so needed to provide direction for our trip as something other than “Oh, I think we wanted that exit back there.” We did arrive at our destination at 7 PM, just in time for dinner, and spent some hours with my aunt, uncle, and cousin – and his fiance and their daughter, who is a toddler, just coming out of her shy phase and starting to warm up to actual people rather than plastic toys. All in all, a pleasant evening and much fun to prepare us for the next day.