The Big Move From Utah To Texas In Photos

As you may know, we moved from Northern Utah to Central Texas last week. Logan to Austin. We drove there and it was quite the road trip. In fact, the longest one I’ve ever gone in. A lot of packing, mental and physical preparation, carrying, loading, unloading, had to be done. But I survived and even though I didn’t have the best time ever, I dealt with it better than I imagined.

Packing came first. I started about three days before the move. We don’t have a lot but we still had to rent a trailer especially cause of our king mattress, our largest possession. So I borrowed the hubby’s computer speakers, opened Spotify, shut the door behind me, and threw all our clothes onto the floor to begin folding from scratch to pack really well.

All the clothes shown above are mine and they all went into the purple suitcase on the left. Well, about 90% of them did. Some of the music I played included: The Wombats, Lit, Bad Veins, and OK Go. I gotta say it was all pretty good packing music. It took a couple hours to fold, roll and pack all our clothes.

You know how I sometimes make myself laugh? When my brain comes up with sayings that are not actual sayings. When I lifted some dining chairs to take them downstairs my mind thought this: “these chairs are light as fruit cakes” cause they were surprisingly not heavy at all. Fruit cakes? That doesn’t make sense. Why? Brain, I think you meant feather.

We left on Tuesday, August 23 at 1pm with a passed apartment inspection.

Yes, Vincent the cat got a whole condo to himself. We had the space for it and it really paid off. He did so well in it, didn’t complain much at all. Like me. Haha.

Or first stop for the night was Moab, Utah. 

Moab was 5 hours away but with a heavy trailer, very hilly roads, trying to save gas, and stopping for gas 3 times, we arrived at Moab around 7:30pm. We found a campground, paid the $15 fee, and parked it for the night.

I made “dinner”. Tuna, sunflower seed, and avocado sandwiches and chips. Josh also had some pasta salad and hard boiled eggs earlier during the trip.

All homemade. We bought a cooler for the trip to bring food and save money. Worked out really good.

Oh yes, seasoned with organic lemon and TJ’s sea salt.

I’m an avocado master. I always know when to cut it open and how to save it to eat the rest later, as we did during the trip, without it turning brown.

Other things in our cooler included hummus, peanut butter, apples, one ginger beer for me, one root beer for the hubby, homemade banana bread, homemade granola, homemade pasta salad, hard boiled eggs, and last but not least dark chocolate.

Plus those four cool looking beers we bought at the gas station in Moab from the Moab brewery.

Two Czech guys on motorcycles were parked next to us and were gonna camp there for the night and invited us over to hang out by the fire they lit. It was a great fire. So we had our beers and they had theirs; they were drinking Stella and Heineken and they had like 12 empty bottles but they didn’t seem drunk at all.

I knew about Czech people drinking beer like water. They live in Chicago though and were there for a 1-week trip touring several national parks in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah on their motorcycles. They were nice and friendly. I’m just glad Josh can do most of the talking when meeting new people. I mostly sat and listened, enjoying the fire, the beer, and occasionally chiming in the conversation.

One thing I was very happy about that night was no mosquitoes! They frickin’ love me and the love is NOT reciprocated, sorry mosquitoes.

Everything up until then went really well. That night sucked. We couldn’t fall asleep until after 5:30am because we were so uncomfortable in our stupid unreliable air mattress that we set up inside the car.

And what the hell is it about camping that at home you never have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee, or very rarely, but when camping you have to go pee 3 times! Stupid.

The hot sun woke us up around 9am. We had breakfast. Peanut butter and honey on bread. Homemade banana bread and protein bars. We changed, brushed our teeth, put everything away and we were off around 11am.

The rest of the day went pretty well considering we slept so bad. We drove to Four Corners Monument, about 2.5 hours. I had never heard of it until now, when Josh suggested we go since it was on the way.

Four Corners is the only point in the United States where four different states meet.  Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.

I actually had never been to Arizona or New Mexico, so now I can say I have. I can say my hand has been to Arizona and my leg has been to New Mexico. Actually, we did drive through New Mexico this time, so my whole body has been there now.

There was an entrance fee of $5 per person which we didn’t know about. Josh said that whether it was worth it or not, it had to be done. If you drive by it so close, you gotta visit, apparently.

There was a short line of people to step on the point. I thought the line was good so that you can get a photo without crowds. The people in front of me were doing all these fun poses like head stands and back arches so when it was my turn I stepped on it and said: “I don’t have anything fun planned out”. Someone in line yelled out “jump in the air!”. So I did.

And we were off to our next stop for the night. A rest area near Roswell, New Mexico. We got there at 2am and slept only until 6am, but we slept SO much better than the first night because I decided to ditch the air mattress and use bedding instead.

^ “Hole In The Rock”.

Two nights and 1400 miles later we arrived in Austin.

Our car deserves a pat on the back for bringing us safely and carrying that load up and down tons of mountainous roads. “Good boy!” It got sick after we arrived though. It’s currently on its second day getting fixed at the mechanic. I’m usually the one who gets sick after long drives but didn’t.

And we’re in search for an apartment now. So that’s the update.