Letters from the Road

Hello everyone! Colleen, Elphie and I have had QUITE the adventure in just the last 2 days, so get ready for a lot of reading!

The adventure began Thursday night after I picked up Colleen from the SeaTac Airport. We made our way up to the big city to meet her friend Ryan at the 74th Street Ale House in the Queen Anne part of Seattle. Dinner was delish and I had the prettiest, most fancy burger I've had in my life. We had a wonderful time and even got a beautiful veiw of the night skyline. Day One: Complete.

After a good night's sleep, Colleen and I got up early to beat the traffic that all the men in our lives convinced us we'd get stuck in. Turns out that we didn't see more that 5 cars around at a time until we drove into Spokane, WA because we were leaving the city, like us ladies had predicted. It doesn't matter whose right when you have mountain views like this escorting you through the state of Washington...

After much morning driving through the mountains, which Colleen and I thoroughly enjoyed, we stopped in Ceour D'Alene for lunch. We parked by the resort Aaron and I stayed in back in February, walked around the docks for a while, and finally decided to grab some sandwiches from a local sandwich shop to picnic by the water. It was about 91 degrees in CDA and the we couldn't have asked for better weather for the first leg of our trip.

Unfortunately, we didn't haven't felt 91 degree weather since then or seen the sun. We left CDA and drove through crazy mountain passes that I have no idea how Aaron and I got through in the winter time when it was icy. Turn after turn, we wound up and down the mountains and when we finally got a break in Butte, MT, we stopped for gasoline and it started to rain. It was drizzling a little before that, but it started POURING. We crossed the continental divide around 8pm, we're over 6,000 feet high and we winding around mountains in the kind of rain where it's impossible to see because the rain is so intense and water is splashing on your windshield from the other cars pass by. This continued the last 200 miles and they were the most intense 200 miles Colleen and I have ever experienced in our lives. Insanity. And to add to the insanity, Collen leaned on the arm rest and the window rolled down. She screamed, I screamed, Elphie tilted her head and we all got splashed with water. I laughed, Colleen (the driver for these crazy 200 miles) laughed and then shed a tear, and Elphie just went back to sleep. It a long, crazy, and intense day and we couldn't have been more happy to take hot baths, flop into our beds, and pass out. By the way, it was 40 degrees by the time we got to Billings. Day Two: complete. Miles driven: 813.

It was a bit more difficult to get out of bed this morning, but the Quality Inn where we stayed had a cook-to-order breakfast and lots of coffee for our enjoyment this morning. We got on the road and out of Montana as quickly as possible. Montana is not friends with us anymore. Wyoming, on the other hand was much kinder to us. Only a few sprinkles of rain and a few thickets of fog, like the only below, beautiful plateaus, and we had a wonderful drive.

Had the sun been out, we might have been able to see more than the above picture, but we still had a good time. Apparently the roads are red in Wyoming as well, which is awesome, and more fun to drive through. And we saw antelope as well! We quickly passed through Wyoming began to drive through South Dakota, which was flatter than Wyoming and too foggy to stop for Mount Rushmore. We kept trucking through and quickly made our way through this state as well. We saw an old fashioned town from the 1800s, and saw teepees at every rest stop, like the one below.

Luckily, we got to our hotel in Sioux Falls by 8pm central time and had Ruby Tuesdays delivered to our hotel room and have been relaxing ever since. Day Three: Complete. Miles driven: 727

Tomorrow, we'll be driving all the way back to St. Louis-HOOORAAY!!! Making our total milage 2,142. We won't need to get up nearly as early tomorrow, but we still have a full day of driving ahead of us that will thankfully bring us home. For an even more detailed account of our trip so-far, check out Colleen's blog and for pictures, check out Facebook or my Photobucket page. There will be more updates in the next few days about tomorrow's adventure. Until next time...