Vermontaversary

Thirteen years ago today, my wife and I arrived in Vermont. We'd been living in Juneau, Alaska for about five years, and had decided that that wasn't where we wanted to settle down, so we researched, saved money, and then packed what we couldn't sell, plus three cats and a guinea pig, in a small minivan, and drove it onto the Alaska Marine Highway. We disembarked the ferry at Prince Rupert Island and drove from there, ten days, to Vermont, with a short layover in Minneapolis to visit some of Siobhan's friends.

On arriving, we had no jobs lined up, nor a place to live. Just a minivan full of cranky animals and a small savings. We had never even been to Vermont (except I, apparently, was in Rutland once as a very young child, but I have no memory of that). But we'd done a lot of research and we were sure that this was the place for us, and it was. We got in late in the evening, had pizza delivered to the hotel, and by nightfall we had lined up several showings of rentals the next day. We had a deposit down on one by the end of the day, ready to move in on the first of the month, and moved to a cheaper motel until then. We spent the five days resting, taking the cats to walk in Hubbard Park, and looking for work. Siobhan had a job within a couple of weeks; I took a few weeks longer.

I could write about why we picked Vermont, or how we prepared for it, or what the trip was like, or what we did during those first weeks, but I'll save those to write in other posts.