A vegan, her husband and two cats go on a road trip…

Greetings from St. Louis!  We are at the half-way point of our cross-country move to Colorado Springs and so far so good! But let me back up.

The movers were scheduled to arrive at 8:00 a.m. Monday. We hired them to do a full pack.  One person showed up at 8:30.  Another at 10:30 and a third at 3:00 p.m.   Yeah, that four-hour pack and load didn’t happen. Nine hours later our belongings were packed

(Um, that’s only half of my kitchen boxed up!)

and loaded onto the truck.  We were five hours behind schedule.  We packed the car, cats and all,

with a plan to drive as far as possible. We had dinner in the car (Whole Foods vegan “chicken” salad sandwich wrap and a banana for me). We left during rush hour in metro-NYC, so we didn’t get too far. Nearly eight hours and only 400 miles behind us, we stopped at midnight in a small town in Pennsylvania. It was a Ramada, they took cats, it was a pretty gross room. The cats were freaked (and Ernie found a gross spot on the carpet that he kept rolling in…..eww…).  No pictures to save you from it all.

We woke up early to get the hell out of that hotel and the minute we were in the car our spirits were high and we were ready to get back on track.  This vegan scone from Whole Foods and cup of coffee from the Kroger in West Virginia helped.

We hit the road and covered many miles.

We ate lunch in the car again, another wrap sandwich with a side of baby carrots, and suddenly we were in St. Louis, just as planned! 

We checked into the downtown Omni and let’s just say the cats arrived in style.

They were rolled into the festive hotel lobby by the bell hop.

I took a hot bath, put on pajamas at 5:00 p.m., ordered a bottle of wine from room service, and Dave headed out to pick up our carry-our dinner from Sen Thai Bistro. I had the Cashew Nut Noodles, hold the eggs, add the tofu.

So good!

Then we slept 11 hours.  You read that right.

We woke up to very happy and comfortable kitties.

Ernie, the adventure cat, found a way to crawl commando and cram his 14.5 pound body under the end table while CK assumed her rightful place on my lap to update her Facebook.

We just ordered breakfast from room service (steel-cut oats made with water and served with a side of soy milk) and soon we will begin day three of the four-day road trip.

We are opting for a shorter drive day – five hours – so that we can stay in a decent hotel tonight.  Tomorrow we’ll drive the final eight – nine hours and should be in our new place in Colorado Springs tomorrow night!

I’ll conclude with this vegan road trip tip.  We shopped at our local Whole Foods in New York Sunday night to get a few things for the road “just in case” finding vegan options would be tough for me. We picked up a couple of vegan scones, whole wheat wraps, vegan “chicken” salad, granola bars, baby carrots, apples, bananas and protein bars.  Today we’ll shop at the Whole Foods in St. Louis on our way out of town and do they same thing – we will have all the food we need in the car for that long, final stretch of I-70 through Kansas and Colorado tomorrow.

Tagged as: traveling with cats, vegan road trip