Days Four and Five!

Well, after Wentzville, MO, we drove through the southern tip of Illinois for a bit, and then we drove through the southern tip of Indiana for a bit more, and then onto Lexington, KY where we stopped for the night.  While we were driving into St Louis, I managed to get some pictures of the Gateway Arch!  It's really impressive; well to me at least, I'm sure locals are unimpressed with it.  I don't know what bridge we're on though, but driving through, you can see that there's a TON of bridges on the river(s).  The picture was taken on a bridge, and you can see at least two or three in the picture!  It was amazing.  I discovered later that you can actually go into the arch, but we didn't know that at the time, and honestly I'm not sure we would have stopped and gone in even if we did know.

When we got into Kentucky, we actually crossed the state line via bridge going over the Ohio River.  Of course, because Kentucky is famous for the Kentucky Derby, we saw a ton of horses.  Our stay in Lexington was quite uneventful; for me and the girls that is.  Jeff said at around 3:00 in the morning, he heard yelling and screaming coming out of the office -our room was right above it- and heard what could only be described a drunk lady calling the lady in the office racial slurs, and got called some names back in return.  I guess there was something going on in the city, because if it weren't for online reservations, we would  not have been able to get a room.  Jeff said when he checked in, the guy behind him got turned away because there weren't any more vacancies!

Our drive out of Kentucky was uneventful leaving Sunday morning.  It wasn't until we got into West Virginia that it started to get... interesting.  It was okay until we got around Charleston -the capital city for those of you who are geography flunkies- and for some nutty reason, our GPS decided to tell us to get OFF of I-64 and onto I-79 to US 19, and then had us ride onto these state roads.  Not too sure what they are really called, but it was the worst/scariest 30 miles of our life.  They were these two lane roads; meaning it had one lane going one way and one lane going the other way.  The speed limit was 55, and the roads were crazy... uphill, downhill, aroundhill...  Jeff said it was very nerve wracking and he was strongly reminded of his days of driving in Honduras.  The only thing that was different was the fact that the roads in West VA were paved, whereas in Honduras they aren't.  When we finally got back onto the interestate, we stopped off at a rest stop and took a potty break, because I know we ALL needed it!  During our stop, we made arrangements to stay with my aunt and uncle in Waynesboro.  We were planning to stay the night in Lexington, VA.. but we were fortunate enough to be able to cancel our reservation, save 70 bucks!  We crossed the state line into Virginia, and we stopped in Covington to eat dinner before we rolled into my aunt and uncles' driveway around 8 pm.  Then we stayed up until 1:30 in the morning yapping like my family likes to do::wink::

We left Waynesboro after Uncle Pablo was kind enough to make us a quick pancake breakfast and we finally rolled into Virginia Beach around 3:30 pm on Monday afternoon.  I was planning on blogging about our first week here, but it's taken so long to write this blog, I'll have to save it for another time.

We're having fun though, I promise!

We Made It!

 Just letting my readers know that we made it safely to Virginia Beach!  We're staying with my dad and we've managed to get lost a few times in the city already, saw some family and friends!  I won't blog the rest of the drive here, since the laptop is currently teathered to my cellular phone to get an internet connection, and it's slow as beans, but we're going back over to my mom's house to hang out all day, and they have a computer connected to the internet the real way, so I'll probably do a blog or two with picutres from her house.

But we're here and safe!

Days Two & Three

Well, we stayed in Laramie, WY our first day, as you may have read previously.  Anyway, we did make it a point to go over and drive to see Hayford Avenue.  However, we discovered based on the enormous size of all the houses on Hayford Ave, you have to have a ton of money to live on it.  Some of the houses had to be more than 4,000 square feet and upwards of 6,000 square feet.  It was amazing.  We wanted to go and poke around at the history center, but we discovered it was inside of the meetinghouse, and no one was there to let us in, so we skipped out on that.

Anyway, the ride from Laramie, WY to Lincoln, NE was quite uneventful.  We didn't run into any horrible traffic like we did on Wednesday.... thank goodness.  We stopped off in Kearney, NE to get gas, and then as we headed east out of the city, we saw the Great Platte River Archway monument.  Unfortunately I didn't get a super impressive picture, but it's still pretty awesome looking.

We left Lincoln this morning, and our ride was uneventful.  I managed to convince Jeff to stop off at a craft type store on the outskirts of Kansas City, since I fell in love with some awesome fabric, and one of 18 stores in the US that carries this line of fabric happened to be in Kansas City, at a store called Urban Arts + Crafts.  I already had 10 fat quarters of the line and was happily able to buy 4 more quarter of yards.  SCORE!  We continued on until we stopped for the night here in Wentzville, MO. It's a decent sized city from what we can tell.

We also decided to stretch our drive to an extra day.  Jeff's been getting burned out with driving, and the girls are getting crankier and crankier.  I'm not sure where we'll be stopping tomorrow; Jeff thinks somewhere around Lexington, KY.  We're roughly 16.5 hours away from Virginia Beach -around 960 miles or so- and instead of driving for two 8 hour stretches, we'll be able to drive for three 5 hour stretches, and actually enjoy ourselves and the drive.  And maybe I'll be able to convince Jeff we'll be able to stop at some of the antique malls that seem to be so abundant in this part of the country.

Like Jeff said, it's supposed to be a vacation; not a stressful drive.

Day One of Road Trip

Well, after having to wait two extra days to do bad weather and closure of the interstate, we're finally at our motel here in Laramie, WY.  We were going to stay in Cheyene, but sometime after we left Rock Springs, we got locked in bad traffic due to a lane closure for ONE HOUR.  It was bad enough that the eighteen wheeler truck drivers were actually getting out of their trucks, walking around and chatting with each other.  Eventually we were on our way and got here safe and sound.

We decided since tomorrow we're only going to have to drive for about 6 hours, we're gonna spend an hour or two here in Laramie to see if we can learn some information for family history.  Apparently, there's a street here called Hayford Avenue, and so of course, we'll have to visit.  Apparently, Jeff's great-great-great grandfather was a judge here back in the day when Laramie was a town of out-laws, and he cracked down on the crime.  In addition, he was also the first postmaster, and was the editor of a newspaper among other things; we'll hopefully find out more tomorrow.

Anyways, here's some pictures of things we saw today.

Welcome to Wyoming sign!  We also saw a TON of semi trucks; I guess when you cross state lines you have to check your cargo in at a way point.  The line of semis was LONG.

This is a picture of Rawlins.  It looked so quaint and awesome from the interstate.  Especially since there was a HUGE church that was clearly visible from the interstate.

And of course windmills.  Lots and lots of windmills.  It was amazing!

Anyway,  time for  me to tuck in!