As we left Troy’s mom and stepdad’s town, we had a little tiny bit of rain. That was probably the most precipitation we had on the whole trip. Considering that we made this cross-country drive in February, during one of the snowiest winters in recent history, I think that’s pretty amazing.

My mom liked the palms lining this stretch of the highway along the Gulf coast.

Can you tell I was bored? Cameras make the best toys on long road trips.

Cell phones make good toys too. Annalie was typing in a text-message box on my cell phone. In case anyone is getting a headache trying to figure this photo out, I’ll explain that I took this photo by angling the camera at the visor mirror above the passenger seat. That’s why it looks like Troy is driving on the wrong side of the car. Unless you’re Sarah or Lauren, in which case this photo didn’t even make you blink.

I mentioned my geekwear on Twitter, including my Orange Orange t-shirt and one of these pins. Anyone get the references? The pin on the right (a gift from Sonja) could have a couple of geeky meanings.

Another self-portrait born of boredom.

In Texas, the bathrooms are bigger and fancier!

Here is proof that our other cat, Lily, really was in the minivan with us. She doesn’t like road trips and tends to stay in her carrier the whole time, only coming out to eat or drink or glare at us accusingly.

Louisiana sky. I never get tired of taking pictures of the sky and clouds.

Bridge over Lake Charles.

Sunset and a semi.

Sunsets may be larger than they appear. Although these rearview-mirror shots are pretty cool, it’s much easier to photograph sunsets when we’re driving west.

When we were at Tom & Carol’s, my mom was looking at Carol’s cookbooks and found a recipe published 1965 that called for “one 29-cent bag of Fritos.” We all had a good laugh about that, joking that it would be awfully hard to find a 29-cent bag of Fritos nowadays. So when we saw these 35-cent bags of Fritos at a gas station today it cracked us up. I bet this bag is a LOT smaller than the 29-cent bags in 1965 were.

I liked the packaging on these Hubig’s New Orleans Style Pies so much I bought two of them. I guess they’re a New Orleans institution, and no wonder—they were pretty good!

Poor Katy, she gets manhandled a lot by Annalie. She doesn’t really seem to mind, though.

I took this from a moving vehicle, so it was pure luck that I caught the sun shining off a serendipitous lake and that green flare/reflection over there on the right.

Alabama sunset. When I took this we were about one minute away from the Target where we met Bex & Jo.

Annalie in her Hello Kitty jammies + a kitty on her lap = happy Annalie.

Annalie the strawbender! She has done this for as long as I can remember. When she is drinking from a non-bendy straw, she creates a bend in it.

Snowy hills in Virginia. The first snow we saw on our trip was on the side of the road in Tennessee, but that wasn’t very much. This was the first sizeable amount of snow we saw.

I think these are the Blue Ridge Mountains. Any Virginians care to confirm or deny that?

This rest-stop drinking fountain at a rest stop seemed funny to me with all that snow in the field behind it. It doesn’t really seem that funny now, though. It’s entirely possible that I was a bit loopy at the time from a week of traveling.

When I took this photo we’d driven over 3,000 miles (5,400 km) across the country. We’d spent 8 days and 7 nights on the road, for a total of 54 hours of driving time…and yet these last two hours seemed to last longer than the entire trip.

One last rearview-mirror sunset shot before…

…the exit to our hotel. We made it!

A few days ago, I downloaded photos from my mom’s camera, and I found these pictures she took of Annalie and Bug. My mom was trying to take some nice pictures of their last day together before we moved, but they were both being so goofy that the photos are quite hilarious. We’re missing our California friends but I’m so grateful we have all the photos we do of our fun times together.

P.S. Dolly the dolphin made the road trip with us. Annalie begged to be allowed to bring her, and she agreed to not bring a pillow if Dolly came along. I’d say a good half of the time we were in the van, Dolly was on Annalie’s lap. Kids choose to attach to strange things for their lovies sometimes; I guess a four-foot plush dolphin isn’t the oddest thing I’ve heard of a kid dragging around with her.

If you’re seeing this in a feed reader, you might not be able to view the slideshow below—I couldn’t see it in Google reader, anyway. Click on through to see the photos!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR from bethany actually’s Flickr photoset farewell fiesta.

Brenda and Toby hosted a last-minute Mexican-themed going-away potluck for us this past weekend, and it was completely fun. I’m not going into detail describing it, because most of what I’d say would probably be pretty boring, and I think the photos above give a good idea of what it was like. Also, Brenda wrote a wonderful post about the party that makes me smile and tear up a little each time I read it, and there’s no way I could top that, so I’m just gonna send you over there to read her post. Before you click over, I’ll just say this: we have awesome friends here in California, and we’re going to miss them a lot. Thanks, you guys!