The Grand Finale

This will be our last blog post (or, at least until we decide to become homeless and have a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel for a month across the country). First things first - the good news. Robbie was offered a job today! He will be teaching 4th grade right here in town. He starts work in about three weeks, and Jenny doesn't start until late September so I suppose the vacation will continue.

Our house is shaping up to be fantastic. You can actually see the floor in the living room now, and the laundry pile is shrinking. Our desks are set up (which is where I am comfortably blogging right now), and we were even able to hook up Mr. Tivo to watch some shows with dinner that he had stored for us from June (we are getting cable tomorrow). Basically..the blog would be boring if it were to continue because it would involve things like, "Robbie did some laundry today. Jenny made some lasagna." I guess it's kind of cool to be boring again. Anyway, We had fun moving in the rest of our furniture (the dresser had a slight mishap yesterday, and it had to spend the night in our landlords' garage after he was kind enough to glue and nail the leg back on), and Robbie really did do some laundry and Jenny really did make a lasagna to celebrate the new job.

On a sidenote, isn't it scary to move to a new place with no knowledge of the shower situation? I mean, you can see the shower, and even turn on the shower, but you never know if it will be a GOOD shower until you can actually take a shower in it. Our shower is tiny, a 2'x 2' little box. It's a little claustrophobic because the door reaches up to about one inch from the ceiling, and you kind of bump your elbows when you reach up to wash your hair..but the water pressure is so amazing that it's almost painful. Trust me, that's a good thing.

We have a little list of things we need to get, so maybe we will emerge from the apartment tomorrow to go to the store. Otherwise, we are pretty content spending time getting settled.

We spent some time looking back through the blog, and it's amazing to think of all of the things we have seen over the past month. We left Tampa on July 1st, excited and not knowing what to expect. We were kind of "winging it", but it just goes to show you that even when "winging it" things such as jobs and homes tend to work out. We had so much fun, and it's really inspired us to travel more...although, not for a little while. Our cars and our backs need some time to recover.

We would like to take this opportunity to send a little thank you to our cars, Kirby and Kit, to our friend Ashley for taking care of Kirby and Mr. Plant, to Eureka for making our amazing tent (the Eureka Sunrise 8x8..we totally recommend it), to our sleeping bags for keeping us warm, to everyone who let us stay with them/mooch off of them, and to everybody for following our blog. We had lots of fun with it, and we can always look back to remember everything we saw and to remember the funny things that happened.

Time for a little recap!
Day #1 (7/1): 443 Miles driven. Tampa, FL to Milton, FL near Pensacola. We said our final farewell to Tampa, we had our last Publix sandwich, Jenny napped in the car, and we stayed the night with Austin and Rachel. They made us an amazing homemade pizza which we craved pretty much for the rest of the trip.


Day #2 (7/2): 717 Miles driven (1160 total miles on the trip). Milton, FL to Austin, TX passing through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. We arrived in Austin pretty late, staying with Ben, Stephanie, and their son Jackson. We spent days #2-4 (7/2-7/4) staying and exploring in Austin, going to see the capitol, having tacos (that are now legendary in our minds..we have discussed/craved these tacos at least 712 times on the trip), and watching the 4th of July fireworks downtown.


Day #5 (7/5): 368 Miles driven (1528 total miles on the trip). Austin, TX to Odessa, TX. We drove through Texas hill country, and arrived in West Texas for a surprise visit to stay with Ben's mom and dad. They made us an awesome dinner, and she even baked us cookies for the road.


Day #6 (7/6): 210 Miles driven. Odessa, TX to Brantley Lake State Park near Carlsbad, NM (1738 total miles on the trip). This was mostly a driving day. We hung out, ate Ben's mom's cookies, and were lazy most of this day. We saw our first roadrunner and our first tarantula. We camped at the state park, and our campsite overlooked Brantley Lake.


Day #7 (7/7): 181 Miles driven (1919 total miles on the trip). We visited our first two national parks on this day - Guadalupe Mountains National Park in western Texas, and Carlsbad Caverns National Park near Carlsbad, NM. We went on a pretty long hike in Guadalupe Mountains, and we each drank about a gallon of water because it was over 100 degrees. Carlsbad was amazing, and ended up ranking very high on our "favorite national parks" list. We camped at Brantley Lake again this night, but ended up sleeping in our car for most of the night because of a lightning storm. Our tent almost flew away, and we almost died. Our cooler started leaking, and our electrical outlet in the car stopped working.



Day #8 (7/8): 79 Miles driven (1998 total miles on the trip). We drove from our campground to Roswell, NM where we visited the UFO museum and had a luxurious night of pizza and terrible Adam Sandler movies in a hotel. We fixed our cooler with bathroom Caulk, fixed Kit's outlet at the Honda dealer, and relaxed for the evening.


Day #9 (7/9): 508 Miles driven (2506 total miles on the trip). Roswell, NM to Gallup, NM. This was a pretty serious driving day. We took a weird route so we could go down to White Sands National Monument. We went sand-sledding, then gorged ourselves on a buffet dinner before driving really far. Robbie saw a tarantula in the rest stop bathroom along the way. This was another hotel night.


Day #10 (7/10): 388 Miles driven (2894 total miles on the trip). Gallup, NM to Page, AZ. This was mostly a driving day as well. We stopped at our third national park, the Petrified Forest, although we felt kind of rushed. We drove through Flagstaff, drove on Route 66 for a bit, then headed to Page where we set up camp for the night on Lake Powell near the Glen Canyon dam.


Day #11 (7/11): 308 Miles driven (3202 total miles on the trip). Page, AZ to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. This was our fourth national park, and of course it was one of our favorites. We camped at Lake Powell again this night.


Day #12 (7/12): 276 Miles driven (3478 total miles on the trip). Page, AZ to Moab, Utah. This was mostly a driving day. We wanted to drive through monument valley in eastern Arizona, so we headed up to Moab next rather than heading straight north to Zion. We got an oil change and tried to solve the age old question of "how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop" after purchasing tootsie pops at Walmart. Robbie's visor annoyed us. Jenny napped a bit. We set up camp in Moab for the night at a cute locally owned campground with tons of rabbits running around.


Day #13 (7/13): 63 Miles driven (3541 total miles on the trip). Moab, UT to Arches national park, our 5th national park. It was super, super, super hot and we almost died. We camped again in Moab this evening.


Day #14 (7/14): 111 Miles driven (3652 total miles on the trip). Moab, UT to Canyonlands national park, our 6th national park. It was super hot again, but we toured most of the (gigantic) park from our car with a couple of short hikes. We camped one more night in Moab.


Day #15 (7/15): 293 Miles driven (3945 total miles on the trip). Moab, UT to Red Canyon, UT. Another longer driving day. We passed through Capitol Reef National Park, our 7th national park. We had a picnic, picked some apricots from the plentiful fruit trees, and headed to Red Canyon where we set up camp for the night. This was our favorite campsite of the trip...the scenery was cool (the rocks were very, very RED..even redder than Moab) and we were nestled in between some trees.



Day #16 (7/16): 170 Miles driven (4115 total miles on the trip). Red Canyon, UT to Zion National Park, our 8th national park. We camped back in Red Canyon for the night and went to a little astronomy program where we got to see some cool things. This area of the country has some of the "cleanest" air in the US, with the greatest visibility and the darkest skies at night.


Day #17 (7/17): 78 Miles driven (4193 total miles on the trip). Red Canyon, UT to Bryce Canyon National Park, our 9th national park. Bryce was amazing, and luckily we did not undertake any really long hikes because it kept intermittently storming. We spent one more night at Red Canyon campground.


Day #18 (7/18): 239 Miles driven (4432 total miles on the trip). Red Canyon, UT to Lehi, UT. Driving day, and hotel night! Our first hotel night in over a week. We really, really needed some electricity and some laundry-time by this point.


Day #19 (7/19): 291 Miles driven (4723 total miles on the trip). Lehi, UT to Idaho Falls, ID. Another longer driving day. We did laundry first thing in the morning because our hotel laundry room failed to dry our clothes. Great. We drove up to Idaho and had one more hotel night. This was definitely our shadiest hotel choice..it was apparently an old apartment building, it kind of smelled weird, and everything was sort of orange-y colored. It came with free "breakfast", though, which was terrible danish-type things. Oh well, it was cheap.


Day #20 (7/20): 252 Miles driven (4975 total miles on the trip). Idaho Falls, ID to West Yellowstone (by way of the Grand Tetons National Park, our 10th national park). We toured around a bit in the Grand Tetons, hiked around Jenny Lake, and headed up through Yellowstone (trying to avert our eyes because we wanted to wait until the next day to REALLY visit Yellowstone). We camped in West Yellowstone in a cheesy, terrible campground where where we were sandwiched in like sardines. We camped next to people who cooked delicious food, making our tent smell like delicious food and making us prime bear targets. We survived.


Day #21 (7/21): 135 Miles driven (5110 total miles on the trip). West Yellowstone, MT to Yellowstone National park, our 11th national park. We spent most of our day on the southern loop of the park (the section containig Old Faithful). It was amazing, creepy, and fantastic. We camped in West Yellowstone again.



Day #22 (7/22): 145 Miles driven (5255 total miles on the trip). West Yellowstone, MT to Yellowstone National Park again. We spent most of our day on the northern loop of the park (the section containing Tower Falls and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone). We camped again in West Yellowstone.


Day #23 (7/23): 359 Miles driven (5614 total miles on the trip). West Yellowstone, MT to Missoula, MT by way of Yellowstone National Park. This was a loooong day. We were pretty sick of the car, but we needed to cover a lot of ground so we could make it to Glacier-area the next day. We visited Mammoth Hot springs, saw the Roosevelt Arch at the north entrance, and headed to Missoula where we had a hotel night.


Day #24 (7/24): 163 Miles driven (5777 total miles on the trip). Missoula, MT to West Glacier, MT. We had lots of delicious food in Missoula, stocked up on some new snacks, then headed up to West Glacier to camp and relax for the night.


Day #25: (7/25): 115 Miles driven (5892 total miles on the trip). West Glacier, MT to Glacier National Park, our 12th and final national park of the trip. It also turned out to be our favorite. Several trails were closed due to "bear activity" or "mountain lion activity". What?? We camped back at West Glacier for the night, and prepared for our final leg of the trip. We bought an audio book online after much debate, and we ended up hating it. Oh well.


Day #26 (7/26): 420 Miles driven 6312 total miles on the trip). West Glacier, MT to Kennewick, WA. We stayed in a hotel this evening en route to Corvallis.


Day #27 (7/27): 325 Miles driven (6637 total miles on the trip). Kennewick, WA to Corvallis, Oregon. Our new home! We camped at the Corvallis KOA which was our temporary home for about the next week.



Day #28-Day #33 (7/28-8/2): We experienced bored homelessness in the form of living in a tent at the KOA. We spent most of our time getting lost and scouring rental ads until we found our new home! We did spend one day hiking through Silver Falls State Park where we saw some awesome waterfalls.


So, here we are, 33 days and 6,637 miles later. We hope you've enjoyed the journey with us. We only hope that we can do something like this again in the future.