Moving to Saco, Part 2
I guess this will be installment number 2 of probably 3 chronicling our moving to Saco. There wasn't supposed to be a second installment, we were just supposed to finish the move during the first week of August. As that time drew nearer, we started to wonder if we could actually bring up all of the rest of our stuff in one trip. Was it going to be enough? Two cars and a trailer to haul the rest of my clothes, stuff from the wedding, a little bit of furniture, the grill, a small forest (our combined plant collection) and a whole lot of other miscellaneous stuff?
Then, to make matters worse, we found our dream couch at Costco. This couch was seriously amazing, and would fit the space in our new house perfectly. And look, we can both sleep on it at the same time!
I wasn't jumping for joy over the color, but that's what throw pillows are for! We bit the bullet and bought it, knowing we were going to have to find a solution to our too-much-stuff problem.
Knowing that we were going to have to do all that we could to prepare for a move, Josey and his brother got to work on building the floor for the new trailer, so that it would be all ready to go when we were ready to go.
It turns out, it was a smart decision to build the floor for the trailer because we were "ready to go" just a few days later. We woke up to a crazy thunderstorm, and Josey was happy because a rainy day meant he got to go back to sleep - there is no work for landscapers when the ground is really wet. Sleeping in was glorious, and I thought it was going to be a lazy, relaxed day.
Boy was I wrong! Josey had the bright idea that we could take a load up to Saco. Like, right then. In he middle of the rainiest/stormiest day I have ever seen in Bozeman. Josey is fearless, seriously. My brain was saying "no, no, no driving in rain. It's dangerous! Hydroplaning! Blahhh!" and he was already out the door to get the trailer.
I got into the spirit quickly and packed up some stuff while he picked up tarps and got the trailer hitched up. With the rain, we definitely needed tarps. Costco has been our best friend lately it seems, we picked up two huge blue tarps for $24!
We loaded up as quickly as we could, because the rain was not letting up in Bozeman. I am glad I thought to change shirts before we left, we were drenched by the time the trailer was loaded up.
Luckily, the rain subsided as soon as we got out of Bozeman, and the drive was relatively uneventful for the first couple of hours. We shouted "NEW RECORD!" every time we passed a point where we were stopped during the first trip. You can read about our first moving trip to Saco here, and you can read about why we are moving in our first blog post right here. Anyway, Josey's expert packing job kept everything dry and on the trailer. This trailer was much easier to pull than the huge one we took the first time, and it handled the bumps in the road easily.
As we got closer to the hi-line, I was keeping an eye on the radar to try to tell Josey when the rain was going to get bad again. The storm that was in Bozeman was basically following us as we traveled East, and then it caught us when we turned at Big Timber to go North. The wind was blowing so hard, every camper or tall truck on the road was actually leaning sideways! Wish I had thought to take a picture of that... I did take a short time lapse video during this stretch of the drive, the clouds were moving really quickly.
We actually got lucky for a lot of this drive though - as you can see in the video it wasn't actually raining then. I was watching my radar app and could see that we were in a little pocket of relief, for about the last hour of the drive. What was interesting was what the radar showed on top of Saco...
See that pink dot? That pink dot is right where Saco is. The blue dot was where we were at the time, and the black space is where I didn't have enough service to load the whole radar area. Pink is bad. I had never seen pink on a radar before. That's about as stormy as you can get! When we got to Malta, we filled up on gas and headed East, just as the pink storm was leaving Saco. But we could see on the radar, and in our rearview mirror, that there was another storm coming. We were basically racing the next storm to the house.
We made it to the house and started unloading as fast as we could. The yard and driveway were all puddles from the "pink" storm. I fumbled around for the keys a bit, and when I opened the door I realized the fire alarm was going off. Like we had time to deal with that. We opened some windows, since we couldn't figure out if it was smoke, or C02, or a low battery, or what, and kept unloading while the alarm went off every couple of minutes. It felt like we were in a really bad TV show.
It took some work to get the couch through the door, but we made it, and we even managed to keep all the muddy stuff on the tile and off of the carpet. (Score!) We unplugged the faulty smoke detector, and started unpacking as we watched the next storm rush in.
The next part of our story is embarrassing, funny, and educational. Read on.
We were pretty hungry by the time we got everything in the house, so I decided to turn the oven on and put a pizza in. I'm glad I thought to stock the freezer on the first visit! I stuck the pizza in, and within a few minutes I realized I could smell a little bit of smoke. I opened the oven, and saw that the tin foil lining the bottom of the oven was smoking in one spot. I closed the oven again, thinking that some cheese must have fallen off the pizza and was burning on the bottom of the foil.
A minute later I checked it again, and it was still smoking pretty badly, so I turned off the oven. Josey and I talked about what a pain it was to have tin foil in there, since stuff lands on it and burns, so he grabbed tongs and started to pull out the tin foil. He got most of it out, and we turned the oven back on.
Well, within just a few minutes, I could definitely smell smoke. Josey's comment was, "lets just let it burn off," so we did.
Or at least we tried to. I opened the oven again and this time we had billowing smoke. I said something along the lines of "we are on fire" and "get ready for the smoke alarm," and sure enough, within seconds we had not just one, but all of the fire alarms going off at once. There were flames in the bottom of the oven, something I had never seen before. How was there open flame?!
Quickly, Josey and I realized our mistake. On our first visit, we had opened the sliding drawer underneath the oven and stored some flat pans and such there. I had always known that area to be for storage. Well, it turns out, underneath the stove is the gas heating element/open flame.
Josey grabbed tongs and quickly started moving smoking, burning hot items from under the oven into the sink - the plastic covered wire cookie cooling rack that was slightly on fire, and 5 really hot baking pans. Dumbstruck, I stood there with the water running over the hot pans while Josey ran around with a stool trying to turn off fire alarms in every room in the house. It's amazing how long it took us to just shut the oven off (duh), although I guess it probably all happened within the span of about a minute.
So, what have we learned here? Well, not only do we have natural gas stovetops, but we also have a natural gas oven. We now know that the slide-y drawer underneath the oven is not for storage. We learned that plastic covered wire cookie cooling racks can burn when touching open flame. We also learned that yes, the smoke detectors work.
And with that, we were really tired. We didn't get a whole lot more unpacked, we basically just set up our bed, slept, got up, set up our new PO box, and then drove home. I am really glad we took the trip up, but I was also really relieved to get back to Bozeman. It was such a crazy whirlwind trip. I'm really ready for all of this moving to be done, so that we can settle in to our new lives. Maybe then it will feel more like home. For at least this next week though, I'm still calling Bozeman home, and by golly I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.
Til next time!
Chelsea
Then, to make matters worse, we found our dream couch at Costco. This couch was seriously amazing, and would fit the space in our new house perfectly. And look, we can both sleep on it at the same time!
I wasn't jumping for joy over the color, but that's what throw pillows are for! We bit the bullet and bought it, knowing we were going to have to find a solution to our too-much-stuff problem.
I figured I would try adding video clips, just for fun?
Knowing that we were going to have to do all that we could to prepare for a move, Josey and his brother got to work on building the floor for the new trailer, so that it would be all ready to go when we were ready to go.
Teamwork!
Parking lot construction...
Boy was I wrong! Josey had the bright idea that we could take a load up to Saco. Like, right then. In he middle of the rainiest/stormiest day I have ever seen in Bozeman. Josey is fearless, seriously. My brain was saying "no, no, no driving in rain. It's dangerous! Hydroplaning! Blahhh!" and he was already out the door to get the trailer.
I got into the spirit quickly and packed up some stuff while he picked up tarps and got the trailer hitched up. With the rain, we definitely needed tarps. Costco has been our best friend lately it seems, we picked up two huge blue tarps for $24!
One couch box of two onto the trailer. It was absolutely pouring!
Grainy, rainy selfie.
The load.
As we got closer to the hi-line, I was keeping an eye on the radar to try to tell Josey when the rain was going to get bad again. The storm that was in Bozeman was basically following us as we traveled East, and then it caught us when we turned at Big Timber to go North. The wind was blowing so hard, every camper or tall truck on the road was actually leaning sideways! Wish I had thought to take a picture of that... I did take a short time lapse video during this stretch of the drive, the clouds were moving really quickly.
See that pink dot? That pink dot is right where Saco is. The blue dot was where we were at the time, and the black space is where I didn't have enough service to load the whole radar area. Pink is bad. I had never seen pink on a radar before. That's about as stormy as you can get! When we got to Malta, we filled up on gas and headed East, just as the pink storm was leaving Saco. But we could see on the radar, and in our rearview mirror, that there was another storm coming. We were basically racing the next storm to the house.
My phone camera definitely overexposed the light in front of the car, but the grey in the rearview mirror is entirely accurate.
It took some work to get the couch through the door, but we made it, and we even managed to keep all the muddy stuff on the tile and off of the carpet. (Score!) We unplugged the faulty smoke detector, and started unpacking as we watched the next storm rush in.
Looking out our back porch.
We were pretty hungry by the time we got everything in the house, so I decided to turn the oven on and put a pizza in. I'm glad I thought to stock the freezer on the first visit! I stuck the pizza in, and within a few minutes I realized I could smell a little bit of smoke. I opened the oven, and saw that the tin foil lining the bottom of the oven was smoking in one spot. I closed the oven again, thinking that some cheese must have fallen off the pizza and was burning on the bottom of the foil.
A minute later I checked it again, and it was still smoking pretty badly, so I turned off the oven. Josey and I talked about what a pain it was to have tin foil in there, since stuff lands on it and burns, so he grabbed tongs and started to pull out the tin foil. He got most of it out, and we turned the oven back on.
Well, within just a few minutes, I could definitely smell smoke. Josey's comment was, "lets just let it burn off," so we did.
Or at least we tried to. I opened the oven again and this time we had billowing smoke. I said something along the lines of "we are on fire" and "get ready for the smoke alarm," and sure enough, within seconds we had not just one, but all of the fire alarms going off at once. There were flames in the bottom of the oven, something I had never seen before. How was there open flame?!
Quickly, Josey and I realized our mistake. On our first visit, we had opened the sliding drawer underneath the oven and stored some flat pans and such there. I had always known that area to be for storage. Well, it turns out, underneath the stove is the gas heating element/open flame.
Josey grabbed tongs and quickly started moving smoking, burning hot items from under the oven into the sink - the plastic covered wire cookie cooling rack that was slightly on fire, and 5 really hot baking pans. Dumbstruck, I stood there with the water running over the hot pans while Josey ran around with a stool trying to turn off fire alarms in every room in the house. It's amazing how long it took us to just shut the oven off (duh), although I guess it probably all happened within the span of about a minute.
So, what have we learned here? Well, not only do we have natural gas stovetops, but we also have a natural gas oven. We now know that the slide-y drawer underneath the oven is not for storage. We learned that plastic covered wire cookie cooling racks can burn when touching open flame. We also learned that yes, the smoke detectors work.
And with that, we were really tired. We didn't get a whole lot more unpacked, we basically just set up our bed, slept, got up, set up our new PO box, and then drove home. I am really glad we took the trip up, but I was also really relieved to get back to Bozeman. It was such a crazy whirlwind trip. I'm really ready for all of this moving to be done, so that we can settle in to our new lives. Maybe then it will feel more like home. For at least this next week though, I'm still calling Bozeman home, and by golly I'm going to enjoy every minute of it.
Til next time!
Chelsea
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