Friday, May 7th

We had packed the kids, dog, and ourselves into our trusty blue Prius and set off to Columbia City Bakery in order to get some breakfast and coffees. I had packed Axia into her Sherpa brand soft dog carrier and left her in the car, which was in a shady spot and had its window cracked open. We spent about twenty minutes in the cafe; when we came back out, we discovered that Axia, in her zeal to be totally unfettered or uncaged, ha chewed a hold into the nylon mesh at the front of the carrier. Big sigh – that carrier had seen her transported from Hawaii to Washington state, and from Bremerton to Silverdale to Seattle. Now its time is at an end. Services at eleven.

Moving on. Or, not moving on. At least not quickly or far. We had barely made our way to the eastside when our Gaboli's hunger started to manifest itself in the well-known litany of grunts, arm-waving, half-screams and, finally, crying that no amount of talking or replacing of pacifiers in mouth could assuage. We pulled off at a gas station in Snolqulamie so that the kids could be fed and the Anderson – Burrell twin show could once again hit the road. Which it did for about another hour or so, when Gaboli's primitive needs of food and mom broke through the more moderns appeasements of pacifiers, music and vehicular motion. We went through another couple of cycles of this before an accommodation was made; the mother would sit in the cramped space between the two car seat, holding hand, making bottles and replacing ejected pacifiers, while the father would drive. In this fashion, we were able to make our way with relative quickness through the rest of Washington state, Oregon and into Idaho.

We stayed for the night at the Shiloh Inn Riverside in Boise, which is an okay enough place. The front desk service was excellent, the room was clean but needed some major updating / refurbishment, and the continental breakfast was decent enough for the purposes of calorie provision. They charged us $25 extra for Axia, but they took off almost that much due to the fact that we were first time guests.

We ordered food from Flying Pie Pizza. We had the Stromboli Pizza which was okay. The toppings weren't really anything to talk about and the dough was average. They were cool enough to deliver beer to the room for us – we had a six pack of Alaskan Amber.

After the first day, we came to the conclusion that the five hours of discomfort that we would have gone through had we flown would have been greatly preferable to the twenty-four that we would have to eventually endure driving to Utah. We also decided to un-invite Axia to any future outings; we love the dog dearly, but she clearly was ill-suited to long drives.