Trip East to Date

6-13-12 - Evansville, IN

The trip East has come to a rapid slow down.  That was the point of all this wasn't it?  We made it to Evansville, IN, (Elizabeth's hometown if you are wondering why a person might stop in such a place) last Saturday.  I would qualify this week and next as the calm before the inevitable storm of wedding preparation that will be at the end of the month.  After going thru a month of accumulated mail Elizabeth's parents have been holding for us and dealing with some other; you quit your job, have no address and plan to travel for a year; stuff, we have settled nicely into doing little or nothing.  Actually, if you know us you know that that's a lie; we are not good at doing nothing and are just spending more time doing what we want and enjoying the little things. 

Elizabeth hanging out with Lexie with the Ohio River in the background

Me, cocktail, Ohio River - oh, and it's 2:00 PM on a Tuesday!

Some thoughts and facts from the trip so far:
1. We've driven about 2,800 miles
2. Averaged 28 MPG and 67 MPH (that's pretty good considering all the junk we packed into the little Volvo)
3. Both of Elizabeth's plants have made it safely to E-ville (although we got some weird looks as we carried them in and out of the hotels each night)
4. Both of Elizabeth's guns made it back to E-ville safely (although we got some weird looks as we carried them in and out of the hotel each night, especially at the Union Club at Purdue)
5. We slaughtered approximately 15,234 bugs of varying size and color on the front of the car.
6. We traveled thru 9 different states, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.
7. We visited with both sets of Elizabeth's grandparents
8. We stopped at Purdue (where we met and went to university) for the fist time in 12 years since we graduated.

Sweeeet Suite!

9.  Nicest hotel - Union Club in W. Lafayette.  Mostly because of it's location.
10. Crappiest hotel - Comfort Inn in Rawlins, WY.  Mostly because of it's location.  We stayed in a suite that had two folding chairs in place of the couch.  Tough times in Rawlins I guess.
11. Nicest hotel proprietor - Super 8 in Phillips, WI.  An Indian guy who let us borrow some lawn chairs so we could watch our first lighting bugs in many years and then brought us out some "spicy" food that he and his family had prepared for dinner.  It was good, but not as spicy as some Nevada food.

Old Phillips Water Tower

12.  Hillbilliest restaurant - "Bucks" in Rawlins, WY.  "Do you have any IPA's on tap"  - "Huu?  I think we have Bud Light will that be ok?"  "Yea, just bring a couple of Bud lights"
13. The number of deer/elk/moose size things we saw dead on the side of the road in Wyoming - about 25.
14.  The number of corn fields we saw after leaving Wyoming - Haha, that's a joke that the Midwestern folks get.  You can't count that high.
15. Boringest state - by far Nebraska.
16.  Most interesting state - Nevada, but I'm biased.  Next would be Utah.  Salt flats to mountains.

Made it to Indiana

So there are some of the highlights.  Hopefully I can update you on the more meaningful parts of the trip in the near future.  But now I'm off to watch the barges slowly push their way up the Ohio River, onto the next lock.  It's oddly relaxing.

Farewell Reno

6-3-12 Reno, NV and places East

Goodbye Reno

Sunday morning at 8:00AM; we finally bid farewell to Reno and headed East.  It was the typical warm blue sky day we seem to have an endless supply of in Reno; reminding us of just why we loved living there for so long.  Everything we will need for the next year is either already on the boat or packed into the one additional bag of clothes we each took for the trip East and then back West.  Everything else we own from the last 12 years of living in Reno is packed away into our storage unit patiently awaiting our return.

Oddly enough, the finality of all of this does not seem to be sinking in quite yet.  We simply got on I80 and started driving East.  My brain is still waiting for me to tell it to think about work, as if we are just taking a little trip to go camping and we’ll be back in a day or two.  But with ½ of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada behind us, it doesn’t look like we’ll be turning around anytime soon.  1^st stop: Philips in Northern Wisconsin, then Evansville in Southern Indiana (some call it Kentuckyana is so close to Kentucky) then on to Cleveland, Ohio.  It seems this adventure we have been planning for so long is actually going to happen. 

1 state down a bunch more to go