In the almost two months since we left the Los Angeles area, we’ve been on a steady march up the West Coast. The longest we’ve stayed in any one place during that time was one week, and many of our stays have been only two or three nights. We knew that we needed to be near Seattle for a flight back to Dallas for a few days in early May; we chose that location so that after we returned, we’d be ready to cross the Canadian border for our summer trip to Alaska.