The mother of all road trips: UT-CA

Heading west on Interstate 80, with Salt Lake City in the rear-view mirror. The final leg on our 3,000 mile journey. We crossed the Salt Flats, where many a land speed record has been broken, and stopped for lunch in Wendover, Nevada where many a Mormon has been corrupted by the evils of state line gambling.

We opted not to stop under the blinking neon lights to tempt lady luck. Instead, we pushed on, through the strangely beautiful desolation of northern Nevada.

 As we drove, dust devils in the distance, my mind kept going back over the previous month. In what felt like a New York minute I had gone from living in Enfield, Connecticut, to vacationing in a Roman villa, to driving the width of the North American continent to start a new life in the San Francisco Bay area. All of this was swirling in my head like the dust in the desert. I am writing this post two months later and I must admit, I am still spinning.

On we drove through the high desert, past Winnemucca and up into the hills until we dropped down into Reno. One last pit stop in The Silver State and then up into the Sierra Nevada.

Finally, the Golden State, and how lovely a greeting. We spent the night at Shooting Star Bed and Breakfast in Lake Tahoe, with stunning scenery, clear, crisp air, and the best tasting drinking water a human could ever ask for.

Lake Tahoe really is beautiful, and we had the B&B to ourselves. Looking out over the water as the sun went down, mug of herbal tea warming us in the chilled air, we made the perfect advertisement for California living and we still had one more day before it would be official.

We enjoyed a hearty but healthy, perfectly Californian breakfast, prepared by a cute, healthy Californian woman and, after a quick stop at the Tahoe City Farmers Market (where we picked up the sweetest strawberries I have eaten in years), plunged into the home stretch of our journey. From Tahoe to San Mateo, the final few hours.

We sped past Sacramento. We darted by Davis. We rolled through miles of nut orchards, fruit orchards, farms and open spaces, until we reached the Bay Area. There we rolled in with our new neighbors, bumper to bumper on a cloudless afternoon.

I was afraid we were going to be stuck at the entrance of the Bay Bridge for the rest of our lives - our long, long trip, across more than 3,000 miles and, depending on how you looked at it, either one week or six and a half years, ending anticlimactically in a never-ending merge.

But the traffic eased up, as I have now learned it always does as you get past the city and start heading south on Highway 101. Once we did that it was just a few minutes to our new apartment. We signed all of the paperwork, unloaded the car, and realized we were starving.

So across the street we went, to the Korean place in the strip mall that is anchored by an Asian grocery store. We ate our soon doo bo, and our kim chi, and our eyes grew misty with the realization that we now lived across the street from this little strip mall, with its Chinese bakery, its boba tea shop, its Malaysian and Vietnamese joints, and its taqueria. We sat in stunned silence at the fact that we were here at all, let alone to stay.

It has been two months since that first night. Though we know the area better, and are developing our little habits and routines, it still feels a bit like we are on vacation. Some mornings I wake up thinking it must be time to load up the car and start driving back.

"Screw that", I say, and fall back to sleep.