The title pretty much says it all… After another night in Lafayette, Louisiana, we started the long drive back to Montana. On the first day we drove for 13 hours and ended up in Wichita, Kansas, having crossed 4 states. That was our longest day, at around 750 miles (1200km). We wanted to get as close to Denver as we could so we could spend the evening of the next day hanging out with Brett’s sister and her family again. From there it was up to Billings to spend another night with at Brett’s mum’s and then a short day in to Helena. In total, driving from Helena to Lafayette to Helena, we drove around 5,200 miles  (8,370km) in 18 days. Seeing as some days we didn’t drive at all the average of 290 miles (465km) per day is pretty impressive.

Going through Brett’s stuff has pretty much been what’s taken up the rest of the time until today. Actually, it’s not finished yet, though Brett flew out this afternoon. He’s off to work in the Black Sea for about 4-5 weeks, which unfortunately means I’m packing up my stuff in Australia on my own. Still, it’s cool that he got some work; a little inflow to the bank account never goes astray. I’ve been trying to fit in some of those last minute things that we didn’t think were going to make it (like you know, a massive carpet and a collection of coffee table books).

The packing has been a tiring process. We found out that to have someone else pack and pick up our stuff was going to be ridiculously expensive (around $7,500), so we opted to pack it ourselves. Unfortunately in the timeframe we had it wasn’t possible to organise a way to ship furniture, so we went for a boxes only option. Since then it’s been a to-and-fro dance; at first 50 cubic feet sounded like a lot, then it suddenly seemed like a tiny amount. Then we packed 14 cubic feet worth of boxes that took up more than 50 cubic feet of space. We rearranged and rethought our packing strategy and could fit far more in than we expected. But not as much as we’d optimistically piled up. Just a little bit more, but not _that_ much more, ok, one more thing, not _that_ big a thing. Anyway, you get the point. Oh and just about all our boxes are in some way outside the weight and size rules set by the company, though a concerned phone call revealed they’re more guidelines than rules. Phew!

At the moment I’m in the final stages of trying to cram as much as possible into our cube of stuff. The main problem I anticipate is that when I pack my backpack tomorrow evening, not everything will fit in. That could be a problem. The day after tomorrow I fly out to LA, spend a few days hanging out and catching up with friends, and then fly on to Australia. There I get to go through the packing tango again. Oh and the throwing out/giving to charity dance too. I anticipate another period of difficult decisions and frustrating to-ing and fro-ing. Still, it’ll be nice to be able to catch up with people when I take breaks from tearing out my hair.