So it finally happened! The move, that is. We arrived early yesterday evening in our new home. Well, our temporary new home, anyway. We’re scheduled to be here until mid July, at which point we move from corporate housing into our real apartment.

It was an interesting experience getting out here. Originally the packers and craters were going to come Tuesday and they were going to move everything out Wednesday, after which we’d start driving east. Well it turns out they decided to pack and move in the same day. I was amazed what just two guys were able to accomplish! We ended up keeping the two cats in the mostly empty apartment Tuesday night and staying in a hotel in Chicago ourselves. Wednesday we had a lot of errands to take care of before we hit the road, and we seemed to encounter one delay after the next. We finally got on the road around 4:00pm, and hit a bit of traffic getting out of Chicago. The rest of the drive went pretty well, and we stopped in Cuyahoga Falls (near Akron), Ohio for the night. By the way, driving through northern Indiana and Ohio is SUPER boring.

The next morning we got a slightly later start than intended, since I botched setting the alarm, but it worked out Ok. After breakfast and gassing up, we were off by around 11am. We had a bit more driving in Ohio then entered the vast expanse of Pennsylvania. Let me tell you, PA is way more scenic than the territory we covered in the previous day’s drive. Lots of hills, verdant forests, rivers and bridges. We eventually got to NJ and hit a bit of traffic at the end of the drive, which was the worst part of the trip (other than perhaps a ton of work zones). But in the end we made it early Thursday evening.

So I mentioned the two cats… Well driving with two cats is not as super fun as you might think. The vet recommended against sedating them, but said we could try something called Rescue Remedy. So we dosed them for the first time Tuesday before the movers arrived. It seemed to help them relax and they didn’t squawk too much about being locked in their crates for a couple hours. We gave them more Wednesday before setting out, but with the previously-mentioned delays it was awhile before we actually set out. They were quiet most of the way, but the older one started meowing constantly and the other got a bit feisty in the last hour and a half. On Thursday we dosed them shortly before setting out, but I think the older cat must have built up a tolerance. She meowed nearly constantly for the first three hours (of a roughly 8 hour drive)! I was starting to consider jumping out of the moving car. She eventually fell asleep, but had a couple more outbursts. The younger one barely made a peep and slept most of the way, which is good because he’s much louder.

Would I do this again? Well let’s say I’d strongly consider any and all altenatives!