Adventures up the I-5

Exactly one week ago, I was loading up my car in Los Angeles along with my two pals, Susanna and Kristin, getting ready to leave on our coming-of-age road trip.


Destination: Seattle, Washington...for my internship with World Vision this summer.

Here we are, all nice and clean, ready for the adventure of our lifetimes.

3 twenty-year-old girls
1200 miles to go
0 money to burn.

Well. In the span of one week, we have definitely experienced our share of adventure.
....but that's an understatement. puahahaha.

Today, I am blogging in a Panera in a city called Isaqua, mooching off free wi-fi, because I am still technically somewhat homeless somewhere in the state of Washington and haven't had much internet access in the past 5 days.

It was all going well until we crossed into the border of Washington actually.
We started driving up the I-5, then on Pacific Coast Highway 1 on Friday to our first destination: Santa Cruz.
drove along beautiful beaches.





saw my brother edric at UC Santa Cruz.




almost ran out of gas on PCH, and was forced to succumb to a ridiculous $5 / gallon.






After spending a beautiful sunny day in Santa Cruz at Susanna's grandparent's place, we were ready to push onward.

Next stop: Portland Oregon- 700 miles. -11.6 hours.

We pretty much hauled some butt and drove non-stop through Northern California and Southern Oregon. 80 mph became our new 60.

Arrived at my good friend Bo's house! Woohoo! We strolled around Portland, had dinner with good company, and gave our numb butts a rub from all that driving.

Would have loved to stay with Bo in Oregon, but our journey to Washington had to continue the next day. On Monday, we made it from Portland Oregon to a Tacoma Washington in a record 2 hours.

Upon arriving at what we thought would be our final destination around noon on Monday, we ran into some interesting and unexpected circumstances. The room we were subleasing near the University of Puget Sound was fine until.....

a nice, big, hairy cat strolls in and rubs against my legs.
my heart drops into my tummy. i almost feel a hairball forming in the back of my throat.

"This is Junebug [pause]. You're not allergic to cats are you?" asks the girl I was supposed to sublease from.

(a little background: when I was in elementary school, I slept over my good friend's house who had a cat. The next morning, my right eye was shut tight, red, itchy, with gross stuff leaking out of it. I've also had my fair share of asthma attacks in the past, having to go to the ER and all that good stuff. )

ALL BECAUSE OF ONE CAT!

At this point however, I have no idea where the nearest hospital would be if I were to stay here for the night, let alone the summer. SO basically, the place we were supposed to stay..um.. well didn't work out. Thankfully, the next day the girl got another person ( who wasn't deathly allergic to cats) to sublease her place.

but as for us... the 3 of us decided that we had to find another place to stay. but we had to find it soon. we didn't have much money to spend, so motels were out of our way.
We called up our friend, Mike Carper, who lives in Washington, crossing our fingers to let us crash on his family's couch.

Well. We waited for his response for about 6 hours. In the meantime, we spent our time parked in random parking lots in Seattle because we had nowhere to go. We spent our time pigging out frantically on pretzels and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to ease our nerves.

no home. no food. no phone call from Mike Carper!

10:12 pm. Apparently, Mike has been trying to find us a place to stay but hadn't had much luck since it was so last minute. and every other person who offered us a place to crash had a cat!! :(

well... as a last resort, Mike said that his grandfather would let us stay at his place.

-_- sooo we gathered up all our stuff, left the parking lot, headed over to grandpa Carper's place on Mercer Island. It' 10:30pm and pouring rain! HOW AWKWARD and INTRUSIVE CAN WE BE TO SHOW UP AT SOMEONE'S 90-year old GRANDPA'S HOUSE WHOM WE'VE NEVER MET BEFORE?! First of all, it was past his bedtime!

---um. well. we met his grandpa. his grandpa still thinks we're crazy kids. we had to be out by 8 in the morning however....so we carefully snuck out the back the next morning. sigh. poor grandpa.

So this becomes the 3rd day. We're all in the same clothes as we left in from Portland.
um. still homeless.

good news: Mike has a temporary place for us to stay in! It's in Isaquah! It's a house that his uncle is working on. Basically, it's empty, nobody lives there, it's unfurnished, half carpeted. No internet. No phone reception
Where's Isaquah you ask?

Basically, you have to drive in about 20 minutes through the woods off the freeway to get to the possible place we were going to stay at. Not exactly my idea of a hip, Seattle experience...BUT we were thankful for a temporary place to stay :) YAY! friends are awesome.

well...tres chicas. uno house isolated in the middle of the woods. with nobody around. our house doesn't even have a house number. background for the next hit horror movie anyone?

well, that's where we still are now. in the middle of Isaquah, getting some shut eye with makeshift beds (sleeping bags).

BUT! the good news is that we only have to stay one more night because God is awesome and seriously allowed this whole week of uneasiness, unassurance, helplessness to depend on him.

i'll update you all with the good news in a blog to come ;) .

...to be continued my friends.

-Elly