It was early when I woke up this morning. Really early. Too early. I dragged my suitcase through the hall while my eyelids were slowly winning their battle with gravity. One honk. a door bell. Chocolate cream frappuccino. The 7am train to Amsterdam. Schiphol.

The airport was nice and we were definitely on time. We checked in, had a drink (hazelnut-flavored hot chocolate) and some chicken nuggets (two each and we highly suspect McDonald's still had to slaughter the chicken before serving us) and proceeded to security and check-in.

The 8-hour flight was not as bad as expected. There were plenty of movies and tv-shows to keep us busy and we were still eager and excited about getting to America. As I gazed over the vast blanket of clouds with my diet coke in one hand and my chocolate chip cookie in the other I felt completely at ease. Relaxed. I was still thankful for our three hour layover in Washington DC though

Customs went surprisingly smooth
"Are you here on business?"
"No, I'm actually doing a roadtrip from Seattle to Utah"
"With who?"
"That guy" *points at Koen*
"Oh cool, you doing the PCH at all"
"Yea, yea, totally"
"I hear that's so amazing"
"Yea I hope so, I hear it's lovely"
"Well alright then, have a nice day"

Wut? :p I was thankful though since we'd already been on the road for 15 hours at this point. The next flight was a little trickier. There was no food to keep us distracted, only one choice of movie and very little space. I started getting a little anxious and tired and grumpy, so I was really thankful when the final 'fasten seat belt' sign lit up.

It tooks us a while to get our car as the clerk had some trouble getting all our data into the computer but it was definitely worth the wait. We got a totally awesome Dodge Journey SUV, helloooooooo! Awesome car five \o Not a lot of time for excitement though. When we arrived at our Couchsurfing host's lovely place we had been on the road for over 24 hours (we had daylight for 22 of those hours) and we were just dying to get to sleep.

It's 9am in the morning now and we are very thankful for Matthew's hospitality and awesome futon. Next stop: Walmart!

I woke up at 5am this morning, anti-jetlag or something, but after a few minutes I fell asleep again and only woke up a few hours later. Matthew had left me some absolutely amazing toast (Koen doesn't eat breakfast) in the kitchen before leaving for work and by 9am we were all packed up and ready to go.

I was really looking forward to our trip on the ferry boat, but the employee at the booth advised us to actually just drive around the whole thing because we'd have to wait for quite a while otherwise. Ok, good bye ferry boats, hello I-5.

Our first stop: Walmart. We decided to stock up on drinks, snacks and socks (I'd taken a bunch of socks out of the washing machine and only found out last minute that absolutely none of them matched. I also bought a souvenir for my friend Maaike which I'm sure she'll love :D But I'm not going to say what it is because she might just read this. We also bought a disposable cell phone so we can call our couchsurfing hosts and friends here in the States. I bought some twinkies, hoho's and pop tarts but couldn't find any cookie dough, which I'm really dying to buy.

I'd also like to get some stamps. I hope Forks has a post office. That's where we're driving as I'm writing this (Stuck in the middle is on, roadtrip irony). We had a very short stop in Port Angeles and went for a hike to Sol Duc falls. We're both soaking wet but we have some really pretty pictures and we saw some deer and a squirrel (yes, Belgians are easily impressed by wildlife)