Well we finally made it out west. We had a fun trip together in the car for a total of 7 days! So from the previous post, after our quick trip to Chicago, it was crazy at our house. We were busy packing and doing more packing, selling stuff on craigslist and trying to enjoy our last night in our home. Tuesday the house was cleared out and amazingly all in one 16 foot trailer, then Wednesday it got cleaned, did a last walk through and we were on the road. Before we left, our wonderful friends, who I already miss, the Martins and Boardmans made a yummy dinner for us and celebrated Evelyn's 2nd birthday since she wouldn't be there on the actual day.
Can you guess what animal this is, isn't it so cute? Even if you can't oh well it still tasted delicious.
We decided to take a minor detour in our trip and head north before we turned west. We always wanted to see more of the Upper Penninsula so we thought this would probably be our only opportunity. It was a very pretty drive, luckily we caught it at just the right time and got to watch the beautiful sunset.
Mackinaw Bridge, pretty cool to go across.
On our way out we stopped at Best Buy to get Evelyn a portable DVD player and some movies so she could be entertained while sitting in the car for hours at a time, but we mostly tried to get her to do a lot of this...
After a night in the UP we headed towards Minneapolis. We stayed there a night but didn't really see a whole lot of the place, and lucky for us there was an Anime convention going on at the same time, so we saw a lot of very interesting people or "characters." Friday was a long day, we finished crossing through Minnesota and headed into South Dakota. Though the drive was pretty flat it was actually a very pretty drive. That night we ended up in Keystone, SD. Saturday morning we got up and went to see Mt Rushmore. It was pretty cool to see it in person, I just can't believe how massive it is and learning about the way it was constructed was really amazing. Evelyn didn't know quite what to do with all the free space she had to run around in, since she was used to sitting in the car now, so of course she just wanted to be held the entire time.
I bent down to take this picture of Evelyn and for some reason she thought she was supposed to bend over as well.
Evelyn enjoyed pushing the handle down that would then show dynamite exploding on the rocks.
After spending some time at Mt Rushmore it was time to get in the car again and keep heading west. I can't tell you how many cows we saw along the road, so we decided to stop on the side and let Evelyn go see the cows and get her picture with them, they didn't know what to make of us.
Pictures of the drive and of the grasslands.
So on the road we went and ended that night in Evanston, Wyoming. Side note, on our drive to Evanston, there was stopped traffic on the freeway and there was no where to go, we were out in the middle of nowhere, so Kyle looked on his phone for GPS to see if there was any other way since we saw an exit not too far ahead, well there was a side road so we decided to take it. The road soon became loose gravel, which then became dirt, which then became weeds with old tire marks following a path. We had now ended up crossing someones ranch and were on the wrong side of barbed wire and no way to get back to the freeway. Well we continued on, moved some barbed wire, crossed another ranch and ten miles later finally ended up behind some neighborhood and made it back to the freeway. It was quite an adventure but hey we saved ourselves hours of sitting on the freeway. Sunday morning we drove a couple hours and made it to my brothers house in Alpine, Ut. It was fun to see my brother and his wife and my cute nieces and nephew. I also got to see my sister who is attending the Y and my parents since they were there for my brothers graduation. Well my wonderful parents were leaving to come back to California that evening and volunteered to take Evelyn with them on the plane and we could finish the drive on our own. Well we took advantage of that and stayed 2 nights in Vegas on our way back. We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel, where we did not fit in with that crowd, and enjoyed the 90 degree weather and sat by the pool all day. Here's my view from the lounge chair. Oh how I love to relax and enjoy the warm air. Kyle and I had fun hanging together and having a few quite moments to ourselves.
Tuesday afternoon we finally made it to my parents house and are now enjoying being with family and trying to get situated. Kyle has already begun to study for the bar and is back to long hours of sitting and reading, oh what fun. So there's our trip, hope all is going well for everyone else.
