How we got here, part 5

Man, this backstory is getting long!

I just realized that this past Saturday marked six months from when we left Florida. So now six months ago from today, we left Atlanta for the next leg of our trip. We spent 3 days in Georgia with Grandmommy Edi, got to visit with Natalie, Ellie, Enoch and Mitch, and we had a lot of fun playing with girls and preparing for future parts of our roadtrip.

  

There, that's better.

I realized that we really, really needed to get a hard-sided top carrier for our SUV as opposed to the soft-sided bag, as repeatedly loading it and unloading it and tying it down was just going to be way too time consuming and annoying. We also had to get crossbars for the roof rack to put the car topper on, so we spent a decent chunk of time dealing with car things, but in the end it was definitely worth it. We took the girls to a splash pad and playground, and they had a blast running around. Lily worked on her climbing skills and Amelia discovered her love for slides. We did a little bit of shopping, and we had some great southern dinners during our time in Georgia as well.

Eventually it was time to repack the car and start the next part of our adventure. This was the shortest leg of our trip, from Roswell, GA to a town a little north of Nashville.

In Tennessee (or Twentysee, as Lily called it), we stayed with Greg (P-Pa) and Merrie. We had a nice dinner with them the evening we got there, and the next day we all went to the Nashville Zoo.

It was so incredibly hot, even worse than Florida, I think. It really made us yearn for the weather we knew Oregon would have in store for us! After the zoo, we went back to Almost-Kentucky, TN and went to a nice Memorial Day party at Merrie's sister's house. The girls got to go swimming and they had a great time playing with Merrie's grand-niece.

The next day, once again it was time to repack the car, because now our road trip was really starting. The family visits were wonderful, especially since we didn't know when we would be seeing everyone again, but finally we were actually hitting the road and going places we had never been before, and setting out for our new home in Oregon.

So we set out from Basically-Kentucky, TN, bound for Kansas City, MO. This was the start of us staying at 4 hotels in 4 days - somewhat a challenging feat with 2 small children and a dog! Anyway, we realized during this trip that Missouri pretty much sucks. Looking back, it was our least favorite part of the trip.  We had a difficult merging situation in St. Louis, and then got stuck in some crappy traffic. It ended up being the least scenic portion of our 3100 mile drive, though we did get to see the Gateway Arch.

 

While Mark was driving, I got us a hotel room in Kansas City, MO (or "Zity, Zourri", according to Lily). We were staying in a tower-type hotel, so we got a little worried about how Stanlee would behave going through the lobby and on the elevator, but he was a champion and didn't bark at anyone, not even people wearing hats.

 

We ended up having to get room service that night for lack of options, and as will become a theme for the rest of our journey, we got up decently early, repacked the car, and got back on the road. This day took us through Kansas City, and
then through the entire state of Kansas.

 We were actually pleasantly surprised that the Kansas scenery was very pretty, as we had heard this stretch of road was just going to be boring as hell. There were some nice rolling green hills though, and the weather was beautiful (but hot!). By the time we were almost to the state border, I was just kind of done. I've seen lots and lots of flat in my life, and I was ready to finally get my first glimpse of the Rockies. Once we crossed into Colorado, the scenery began changing significantly, and while I know it's the motto of Montana, I finally got the saying, "Big Sky Country".

It was gorgeous outside, and the sky was just so big and blue. And then finally, we began to get glimpses of the mountains in the distance.

That evening, we ended up in the suburbs of Denver to have a quick visit with Mark's cousin Nicole and her daughter Shyla, who is just a little older than Lily.
 The girls got to play for a while at a playground, and then at their apartment. Shyla ended up kicking Lily out so she could go to bed, so we left to find some food, and then our hotel. It was around that time we realized that we were becoming very dehydrated from the dry air we were unaccustomed to, and the altitude was also starting to affect us. I ran into Safeway for some drinks and snacks, and we picked up some take-out Italian food that I had craved for some reason. After a few wrong turns, we were kind of pissy, but made it to our hotel, which turned out to be the crappiest of the hotels we stayed at on our trip. It seems like it took forever to get all of our stuff we would need into the hotel room, but I think we were just exhausted from the altitude change and dehydration. We went to bed as soon as we could, because we were excited to start feeling better and to see the mountains the next day! 

...

I think there would be one just one more chapter to this journey, so stay tuned!