Well today is the day. I picked up a UHaul trailer and
spent the weekend packing it. I have been targetting a noon departure for the
last couple weeks. And I am a packing savant since to me it is just a giant
game of Tetris, and I was VERY good at Tetris back in college when I played it.
The normal rules of travelling and packing with me is make a pile of all the
stuff so I can see it and just stand out of the way unless I specifically ask
for an item. However, this time it is different since I have to drag that crap
all the way across country and over the Rocky Mountains three times!!! So of course
that means on the night I am stating an epic roadtrip I was up until after
midnight finishing the packing and woke up at 3am to start pulling things out
of the trailer. I had done a mental approximation and was afraid I had too much
weight since I am towing with a small car, so have a much lower maximum than
most people who do things like this. Anyway, I rearranged/repacked and took out
about 150 pounds of stuff. And I only missed my ETD by about an hour.
The first day was not designed to be a long one, hence
the noon start. It was more to avoid having to start at 6am the next day and
fight rushhour traffic all the way across Atlanta. So I was only going to
around Talladega in Alabama. I had scoped out a campground close to where I
would be letterboxing so planned stay there the first night.
So back to the tale, I was planning to do some letterboxing
around Cheaha State Park. I went to the state highpoint, I power hiked down a
trail well after dark and had to climb a ton of stairs to get to the spot, I
never got a call back on my reservation voicemail at the campground, which I
would not find anyway since I just drove to where I had mapped it on the GPS,
and eventually just headed back near the interstate to get a hotel. Oh, and
remember that trailer that I removed weight from? It dragged a lot and
struggled with the hills in Alabama. That does NOT bode well for the Rockies...
About the time I was finishing for the day I was texting
my friend Erica a bit since she had helped me with the final packing and even
mailing the 150 pounds I previously removed. The gist of the conversation was
that I had a slower day coming up a few days from now in Oklahoma so I was
going to remove and mail some stuff from the trailer (again). But she
mentioned/volunteered that her boyfriend DOES live about 20 minutes away from
where I was staying so maybe I could just go ahead and do it then and be done
with it. [Mental Process: Find strong boxes, unload trailer, reload trailer,
pack boxes, find post office, ship versus unload trailer, reload trailer, have
Stewart take stuff to Erica to pack and send (who obviously loves me for even
suggesting this)] Once I finally talked to Stewart, I began unpacking the
entire trailer in the hotel parking lot because of course, the item I knew was
the heaviest was center/front/bottom. I had about half of it out when Stewart
and his two sons arrived and we quickly got it out, then I want through a few
things trying to scrape together another 50-100 pounds of stuff (computer
stuff, tools mostly) to also have shipped. I was up way too late and completely
exhausted but glad to have that done. So again, thanks Stewart and Erica.
Start: Suwanee, Georgia
Stop: Oxford, Alabama
~200 Miles Driven
~8.5 Miles Walked
4 Letterboxes Found
4 Letterboxes Found
1 Letterboxes Not Found
0 Letterboxes Planted
Pictures will be posted on Facebook in this album (and the link will be included in all future posts for this trip):
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