Cross Country Move/Road Trip: Part 1

Well, here it is, the start of our epic road trip/move from Cincinnati, Ohio to Los Angeles. I finally was able to figure a way to load pictures onto Michael's computer because his IPhoto is not cooperating but here they are. I'll break this trip up into parts as to make it easier to view. Long blog posts make me antsy.

Michael and I left on a Tuesday morning at 1 am, after cleaning our house for the very last time. (It is still on the market so send good moocha our way). We packed my car full of everything we could fit and after getting rid of so much stuff we had a little room to spare, hence the spices and the bottle of Midol, thanks Dee Ann and Sheri

for pointing that out. Our two cats had plenty of room behind the front seats but their favorite place to sleep was on top of all of the boxes.

After driving about 18 hours through the night and the following day as well as through Indiana, Illinois and Iowa, we made our stop in Wall, South Dakota. There wasn't much to see there but we were able to get a good night's sleep and wake up early to see The Badlands National Park. It was absolutely amazing! I think it was one of Michael's favorite stops. The Badlands are located in the middle of nowhere and when you come upon them all you see are canyons and caverns and what look to be mountains. It was very cool to see. I was still pretty tired from our drive the day before so while Michael took a little hike up one of the "mountains" I decided to take a little nap.

Next, we drove to Mount Rushmore which was about 2 hours away from where the Badlands were. It was amazing how much the scenery changed from rolling prairies to green mountains in just a matter of hours. We decided to only stop and see Mount Rushmore rather than park the car and hike close to it, mainly because we didn't want to spend the $15 charge. It was really cool to see. Michael kept saying that it looked a lot smaller than he expected it to, which I agreed with, but I was happy to see it because it really is amazing.

The final place we visited in South Dakota was Devil's Tower, about an hour and half from Mount Rushmore. It is known as America's first National Monument and it was huge!! Apparently it is this gigantic mountainous rock in the middle of nowhere. We stopped and looked around and I had some ice cream while Michael sketched. It was pretty crazy to see, and Michael kept telling me about how it was in the movie "Close Encounter's of the Third Kind," which I've never seen.

Anyway, more of our journey next time in part 2!