2 Days in Iowa / And We're Off!

We made it home on Monday afternoon, September 7. Curtis and Charlotte were reunited, and we were finally together as a family of 3 again! 

We had 2 full days of being in Iowa before we planned to hit the road again. In those 2 days, we really just focused on spending time with our families, because we know it won't always be so easy to get away and come for a visit!

We spent one whole day with Curtis' family, helping prepare the house to sell and saying goodbye to Curtis' childhood home. The next day we spent with my family - my grandparents came for a quick visit, and we met with our dear friends and mentors, Ken and Marsha. Besides all this, we worked on consolidating and packing what "few" things we had brought with us and preparing for our trip.

We left on Thursday morning, September 10. Here we are, trying to get some last pictures, but the puppies would have none of it. ;)

And off we went! The first day was our longest drive - 12 hours to Cheyenne, WY. It probably could have been shorter, but we decided to take highway 30 through Iowa and all the way to Grand Island, NE, for the sake of new roads! No matter how you go about it though, Nebraska is a big state, and it will always take forever to drive across it!

Happy to be traveling together again! Charlotte quickly decided that the front row was the place to be. It didn't matter that she had all the space she could want in the back, because we had my mom's fresh, homemade cookies in the front...

We stopped around Ogden, IA for a letterbox, and were not disappointed - the carve was fantastic! Charlotte also enjoyed wandering freely down the quiet gravel road.

I think it's impossible for us to drive through Nebraska without a severe thunderstorm going on. I won't complain, at least the clouds gave us something interesting to look at. ;)

We enjoyed watching the sun set just before we made it to Wyoming. Usually, when we do our Iowa to Arizona/Arizona to Iowa drive, our goal is to get it over with as fast as possible - which typically means either drive straight through, or maybe pull over to get a couple hours of rest before continuing on. However, we had some extra time for this trip, so we decided to take advantage of it and take our time getting back. 

Last May, we set a record time of driving straight to Iowa in 27 hours, stopping only for gas and letterboxes. This time, we now have a record for the longest time to make the journey: 10 days. 10 wonderfully peaceful, relaxing, adventurous days making our way across Colorado and the gorgeous Rocky Mountains.

The only reservations we made were for the first night in Cheyenne. After that, we wanted the trip to be as flexible as possible, just doing whatever we felt like each day and going between camping or hotels every night. We hadn't ever done a trip like this, so we tried to keep an open mind. Of course we also had Charlotte with us, which limited what we could do wherever we went. But between advice from friends, letterboxes, and Pinterest finds, we thought we could find enough to do to take up a week. It was a new adventure, and we were more than ready!

But first, a good night's sleep in a hotel. They gave us a room with 2 beds. Charlotte approved.

Door County Anniversary Trip, Day 8

Day 8 (last day!): Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Today was a drive-all-day-long kind of day. Being letterboxers, we didn't exactly take the most direct way home. But that's okay...it was Curtis' last chance to letterbox for a while. Thankfully, we were able to find both and make the most of the day.

One box took us through a marshy area in Eastern Wisconsin...thankfully, it was on a boardwalk! Still, think hot, humid, and buggy. While Curtis searched for the box, I paced back and forth just to keep them off me.

Here I am, laughing at Curtis wandering through the swamp in the background. If only he had read to the end of the clue, where it said something along the lines of "This is where the box used to be, now it's under the steps of the boardwalk"...right where I was standing. Whoops. :)

We took one more stop around Lake Geneva, then had lunch at Culvers before continuing the rest of the way home. It was bittersweet, knowing we were coming back to reality, and only had a few days together left.

Last few miles of Southwestern Wisconsin.

Crossing the Mississippi again.

Almost to Iowa!

We made it home around dinner time, which we enjoyed with Curtis' family.

It was altogether a great vacation of experiencing new things and making lots of memories that will make up for the rest of the summer. I'm so thankful we had this opportunity to take an entire week to celebrate our 2nd anniversary a little early. Now it's time to start hoping for another week to celebrate our 2nd anniversary late... ;)

Day 8 Wrap Up: Drove 450 miles, found 2 letterboxes.

Door County Anniversary Trip, Day 1

Our Second Wedding Anniversary Getaway!

Day 1: Wednesday, June 3, 2015

What? Anniversary trip? Is it the end of July already? Summer always goes by so fast!

Nope, it's still June, this was just our only chance to get to celebrate our anniversary this summer. We are very thankful that we were allowed a week away, and especially grateful to my family who watched over Charlotte while we were gone! 

For our trip, we decided to go to an area we had heard great things about but never visited: Door County, Wisconsin. We found a great house off of airbnb.com that was very reasonably priced, so we decided to stay there for a whole week. For our honeymoon, we did a road trip tour of the Great Lakes. However, we didn't go into Wisconsin at all, so it was both a new and exciting experience, but also something familiar to what we had done before. 

We started out by driving through beautiful Stone City, IA. This place is close to my heart because I went to Carlson College of Massage Therapy here! It was fun reliving the drive there through the wide open country. It's no wonder that Grant Wood chose to live out here and paint scenes of the area - the rolling hills, fields, and patches of trees are gorgeous. One thing that makes Stone City so beautiful is all the old stone buildings. We loved driving through, and added it to our list of "potential places to settle down someday." 

But let's be real...how are we ever going to "settle down." We have way too many plans. ;)

Does this building look familiar? Does the "American Gothic" ring a bell? Well, it's okay if you didn't guess that. This is a model of that farmhouse, and the real one is located 2 hours South of here!

After that, we drove to Dubuque, IA, another gorgeous city where I almost went to college, and which we also added to our ever-growing list. We stopped at the Mines of Spain Recreation Area for a short hike and gorgeous views of the Mississippi River. From here, you can also see both Wisconsin and Illinois!

This tower is the Julien Dubuque Monument. Julien Dubuque was the first English man to settle in Iowa, and he lived and mined in this area. 

We took a short walk on the trail. We were amazed by how green everything was! I am also thankful that there is less of a chance that we'll run into any mountain lions while hiking here. ;)

It's also not often we run into water while hiking. Too bad it isn't Havasu Blue or Colorado Green. ;)

After that, we took a trip across the bridge and ended up in Wisconsin!

Mississippi River!

Wisconsin welcomes us!

M Mountain?

When in "Swiss-consin"....

Without letterboxing stops, this drive was about 7 hours. We made it an all day trip and finally arrived in the Door County peninsula around 4:30. However, we still had the whole drive up, as our home for the week was in Ellison Bay!

We stopped for a box and learned about the great fire that took place here. The same time that the Chicago fire was going on, there were also fires in Wisconsin. Because of the fire and the weather patterns of that day, there ended up being tornados of fire. The town that was here at that point is now wiped out.

In Sturgeon Bay, WI, we watched the drawbridge go up for a tall sailboat passing through. 

Our adorable rental house! If anyone needs a recommendation for where to stay, ask me! This place had just what we needed for the week. (We'd say it's best for couples to stay here though, it's pretty small!)

We grabbed a pizza for dinner, then came out and watched the sun set over Ellison Bay.

I am so glad we were here for lilac season! We learned later that week that lilacs aren't native to North America, the Norwegian settlers brought them over to remind them of home. So if you see a big lilac bush in Door County, there's a chance that that area was once occupied by a Norwegian settler.

Our first sunset over Green Bay. (Ok, the sun isn't down all the way...we don't always have a lot of patience for these things!)

Day 1 Wrap Up: Drove 400 miles, found 2 letterboxes. 

Moving Back to the Midwest

After our last minute packing and cleaning, it was finally time to say goodbye to our first home. We loved living here - it was the perfect place for us as a young married couple. If you're ever looking for apartments in Tucson, we highly recommend the Kachina Springs Apartments. :)

We were out the door and in the car by 7:40 last Wednesday morning (5/27)! Charlotte had been a little uneasy about all that was going on, but once she found that she had a place set up for her in the back, I think she became a little more comfortable. She also happened to be sitting right next to the cooler with all our snacks, so that could have provided some reassurance as well. :)

Charlotte says goodbye to Limberlost Drive.

Another thing to miss about living 100 miles from the border...all the pickup trucks towing other vehicles filled with things and going 50 on the interstate.

Charlotte says "Are we there yet?"

The day before we left, we bought a couple new bones for Charlotte to entertain herself with. Hopefully that made up for 27 straight hours in the car? 

I also made cookies for Curtis and I, and we would try and sneak them whenever Charlotte was distracted or asleep. But no matter how quick and quiet we were, her little nose would always pick up on it and she would pop up between us and beg for some. 

There was a good cloud cover from Tucson to somewhere in New Mexico. It made the mountains look beautiful and the ground actually looked very green. The highest the temperature got for us was in the 90's. Just a few days later, Tucson had its first 100 degree day. I guess AZ just wanted us to remember it not for how hot it could be!

Charlotte spent most of her time either sleeping, chewing bones, or stealing cookies in the back seat. Every once in a while she would pop her head up and stand on the center console between Curtis and I, just to see where we were. She always has a sense for when it's especially pretty out there. 

I'm not sure if there was a certain point when Charlotte knew that we were driving back to our parent's houses in Iowa, or that she would be in the car for a while. Part of our route was similar to when we drove up last Christmas, so we stopped at some of the same rest areas to let her smell around to see if anything smelled familiar.

Goodbye Arizona, until next time!

This may have been my favorite route out of all the trips we've taken between Iowa and Arizona. To start off, we took I-10 to Las Cruces, then highway 70 to Alamogordo, through the Lincoln National Forest, and Roswell, all the way to Clovis. The Lincoln National Forest was gorgeous and easy to drive through. 

At this point, I took over the driving and Curtis took a nap until we reached Clovis. After making it through the forest, the road was mostly flat as we reached the plains, but I rather like driving where I can see for miles in front of me. I'm thankful that I am able to drive so that Curtis gets a break and we're still making lots of progress! This was also a great day to be driving this stretch, because there were hardly any other vehicles around. I'm certain that there was an entire hour that I didn't come across any other cars headed our way.

We stopped in Clovis to switch places, fuel up, and get Sonic for dinner. In the above picture, you can see Charlotte ordering food for us, as well as a hotdog for herself. ;)

I'm getting a hotdog!!

After that, we took highway 60 in Texas, through Amarillo to Pampa, then took State Route 70 straight up, through Oklahoma's panhandle, to Liberal, Kansas. We got to see a lovely sunset, and colorful clouds in the distance. Those colorful clouds grew closer and closer as we headed further Northeast, and soon a great lightening show began. For the longest time, all we saw was lightening, but once we reached SR 83, the rain began! It poured heavily for a while and we had to slow down quite a bit, but it was over by the time we reached Oklahoma. We had heard about all the flooding in Texas, and were very thankful that we didn't run into any of that!

Before all that though, we did happen to stop for a letterbox in the town of Hereford, and we enjoyed seeing the lovely courthouse.

Charlotte loved being out of the car and in the grass. Of course, this is still in Texas, so we haven't even reached the "good grass" yet that's in the Midwest!

Curtis continued driving through Liberal, KS and through another thunderstorm along highway 54. I was thankful for the big lightening strikes that lit up the horizon and showed there were no tornadoes anywhere! I took over driving again in Meade, and drove us to Kingman, KS through the night. We had done an overnight drive last summer when we came up for a week, and decided that we wanted to do it again to get the drive over with faster. It helps that we have a working vehicle that I can drive! ;)

Curtis took over before Wichita, which we drove through at around 5 in the morning. We then took the tollway to Topeka. We did this last winter and really liked how fast and direct it was. It started raining on us in Wichita, and there was no end in sight. The above picture is exactly what we saw through the rest of Kansas...and through most of Missouri. We actually saw more flooding or overfilled lakes and rivers in Kansas and Missouri than we did in Texas. 

We took the tollroad to Topeka, then avoided Kansas City by taking highway 4/59 to St. Joseph, MO. This time, instead of taking I-35, we decided to take new roads and drive across Missouri. We took Highway 36 almost to Hannibal, and then North from there. We actually loved this road - it was especially beautiful this time of year, and not too busy. The only thing was it continued to rain on us almost the entire way across. We wondered if we'd see the sun at all today!

Finally, we saw a break in the clouds on the horizon. It wasn't until we started heading North that we were actually out of the rain though.

We stopped for one last letterbox, and since it was in a nice and quiet space we decided to let Charlotte out to stretch her legs. The second her feet hit the grass, she was in love with this land, and she took off running everywhere. Not just running - I would have to say that this was the literal definition of "frolicking"! She would stop and roll around, and she was literally grinning from ear to ear. It's safe to say the Charlotte is going to love her summer in the Midwest. :)

Finally, our last stretch of the drive! Charlotte joined us for a bit in the front and did her share of "driving". We are very thankful for a puppy who puts up with our long drives and does so well! 

We're home!

Even though I lived in Arizona for 2 years, I have never stopped referring to Iowa as home. I am so thankful that I am able to spend the summer here with our families. It's so good to be back. :)