There and Back Again

Early Saturday morning, July 21^st, 2007—Dad, Mom, Stephanie and I loaded up the van with suitcases, instruments, snacks, and more, and then hit the road at 5:30 am. We started heading north on I-5. Stephanie and I slept most of the way until we reached Seattle, 7 hours later. And, that, is where the fun began to start.

We reached Seattle, and we drove to the airport, following directions from Mapquest.com.

We were trying to find parking (which isn’t always easy with the big 15-passenger van), and Stephanie and I thought it was quite funny, as we went on the same road that went around the airport quite a few times, trying different lanes to see if we could find parking in different sections.

Finally Mom ended dropping Dad, Stephanie and I off at the loading and unloading zone and she went to go find parking for the van.

We went inside, found the baggage area and looked around to try and find the girls.

We found Christina and Victoria, and then waited for their luggage to arrive.

There they are!

The Sisters.

We got Christina’s and then waited for Victoria’s. After 1 1/2 hours later, we realized that Victoria’s wasn’t going to arrive. Yes, Victoria’s luggage was lost, either in Denver, or still in Washington, D.C.

Normally this wouldn’t be much of a problem—you could just wait until the airport delivered your luggage. But, it was different with Victoria’s luggage…her performing outfit was in it, which she needed to wear 4 hours later for our performance. The airport offered to pay $25 to cover expenses, but $25 doesn’t cover a new wardrobe for a movie, and 4 new outfits.

Saturday, 2:00 PM—When the going gets rough, the going goes shopping. After getting lunch at Subway, we hit the SeaTac Mall and quickly went through every store, trying to find 4 matching outfits. You’d probably think it would be fun for 5 girls to go dress shopping, but it wasn’t fun. On Saturday it was quite a stressful job, knowing we HAD to find 4 new outfits in less then an hour. Thankfully we found 4 outfits. As it was raining, we called up the Bluegrass Festival coordinator, and asked how things were going. He said they were going well, except that they were an hour behind schedule, which was a relief to us.

…until we reached the ferry boarding place. After paying almost $50 to cross, we discovered that it takes 35 minutes to get across Puget Sound, and that the next available ferry crossing was leaving at 5:30 pm.

We waited with a lot of other cars for 5:30 pm to arrive (It was 4:15 pm at this point). Each of us girls went and changed into our outfits and then continued waiting in the van. We were tired and hot, so Dad had the air conditioning running. It was about 5:30 pm when Dad tried to turn the engine on, and it wouldn’t start. The battery was dead. As we watched all of the cars around us drive on to the ferry, dad hurried to find jumper cables. I guess it happens a lot to the cars waiting, as a security guard brought a big cart with jumper cable equipment and she and Dad jumped the van. We drove on to the ferry, right before it took off. We didn’t want to turn off the engine, because we were afraid it wouldn’t start up again. Dad went and asked a security person if they had more jumper cables on board, or if we had to turn off the engine at all for the ride across. “No, they didn’t have jumper cables, and, yes, we had to turn off the engine. But don’t worry, if your car doesn’t start up again, we’ll push you off the ferry.” Dad came and gave us the news and we looked out over the water, pretending not to notice that we were moving. Feeling guilty, we turned off the engine.

Dad, Stephanie and I went to explore the ferry. There were three different levels, I think: one for cars, one for people to sit inside and wait, and one on the top.

It was really windy, as you can see by the pictures of us. It messed up our hair…

We walked along on the second level, and went outside on the decks.

We arrived at the island, and the van started right up. We drove off of the ferry, and began driving to where the bluegrass festival was being held. I loved the island! It had a lot of hills, and everything was green. I wish we could have stayed longer and explored the town.

By this time it was raining really hard. We arrived at the outdoor venue of the festival, and people were loading up vans, packing everything up, there wasn’t an audience, etc. We guessed that they had canceled the festival, and had just forgotten to call us and let us know. Dad and Christina went out to investigate. They came back to report that they had moved the festival to another dry indoor venue.

We arrived, and starting at 7:45 pm, played for 45 minutes. It was so much fun! It was one of our best performances we’ve ever had, I think. This was really surprising, considering that we hadn’t played together for over 2 weeks, since we were at the cabin in Utah for the 4th of July. The grange where we performed at had great acoustics, and there was a decent audience of about 40 people, who had been willing to come to this other venue to finish watching the festival. I think it was disappointing for the festival coordinators, because the turn out for last year’s festival was about 1600.

By the time the festival was over, and we had finished packing up our instruments and CD’s, it was around 10:30 pm. We had had a really long day and were looking forward to relaxing in two rooms at a cozy inn that the festival was providing for our family. We arrived at the Poulsbo Inn, and discovered that the inn had given away our two non-smoking rooms, and that there was only one smoking room left, with only 1 or 2 full size beds. It wasn’t going to work.

We then went to the only restaurant in town that was open at 11 o’clock at night, and had dinner. Next, we drove to Bremerton, 20 minutes away, to rent some rooms at a hotel there. But, the hotels in that town, too, were already booked.

By this time we were so tired, and we didn’t know what to do. I suggested that we just drive home to Grants Pass tonight...it’s only 7 hours. J “Yes. Only 7 hours,” the drivers said. We ended up parking outside of a Super 8 Motel, and sleeping in the van for 6 hours.

We woke up, drove a ways, and then around 7 am, we pulled into a rest area and changed into our church clothes. We continued driving to Portland, Oregon, and attended Household of Faith church in Gresham, Oregon. We have friends from speech tournaments who go there, so it was great to see them again. We especially wanted to go there, because Austin Kearney’s (who plays “Caleb”) family goes to church there. It was great to see them and Christina and Victoria were able to give them updates about how the movie is going.

Victoria, Stephanie, Clairen, Moriah, Christina, Gavin, Will, and Natalie.

The Kearney Family, minus Austin.

They're representing Oregon well.

We stayed for their church’s fellowship meal, and then headed down to Grants Pass.

We arrived in Grants Pass at 6:30 pm, and headed down to Riverside Park, to see if our friends were still playing Ultimate Frisbee there. They were, and it was great to see everyone!

After that, a family invited us over for dinner, and we stayed there for a few hours visiting, and watching a little behind-the-scenes footage that the girls had filmed in VA.

We arrived home at 11:00 pm, and Christina went down to milk the goats. We unloaded from the van the things we needed most, and then took showers and went to bed.

It was an adventure.

-Natalie