Road Trip Deja Vu

Back in July....Our glorious summer ended with saying goodbye to Arizona. If you recall, we had packed everything up into a garage unit in May and spent two months crashing at a friend's house while we figured out where we were headed. (Julie- thank you, thank you friend!!) All too soon, it was time to move. At the end of July, we packed all of our possessions onto a moving truck. Side note: I would definitely recommend this for anyone moving long distance. It was great - we loaded the truck, they drove it. No hassle.

       Shout out to Dave and Dave for both volunteering to sweat buckets loading up a moving truck in the disgusting heat that is Arizona in July! Lucky it was fairly easy to just unload the garage where everything was stored and pack it onto the truck. With this moving company, you pay for the footage you use on the truck, so it became a big game for the guys to fit it in as little space as possible.

   That left just us with a few bags and the car. With our odometer set to zero, we began our trek across the country. One car, 2 people, 2 dogs, and 7 states to cover. Road trip!

 

The miles passed relatively quickly without much to report on. Just imagine us dancing and singing and you get the idea of how we spent our time. Since we had recently done a road trip to Iowa, the dogs were used to spending long hours in the car and slept almost exclusively. There were however, few times when both dogs were in the back seat. Cleo spent the trip attempting to get up with us to sleep.

                 

Something interesting we learned - my car's trip odometer only goes up to 1000 before resetting itself. So that was actually 1,153.7 miles into the trip when we entered Arkansas. And yes, Cleo continued her sneaky assaults on the front seat. On one particular construction-slowed drive, I managed to document what this sneaking looked like.

 

 Three days after we began, we crossed into our new state - surrounded by fog-capped mountains. The most fascinating part of this whole drive had been watching the landscape slowly turn from brown desert brush to brilliant green trees as we drove further east. We were definitely east now!


Let's make that officially 2,195.9 miles later - and we arrived at our new home in Durham. Can you tell we were just a wee bit excited to be out of the car?

June Road Trip!

Remember back when we didn't know where we going to live or I was going to work? It's crazy to think that was just a few short months ago. Three months ago about this time, I was packing up my classroom and apartment, with no clue what was next in our lives. But in the middle of that, Brad and I planned a trip to visit family and friends in Iowa for June.

As the trip drew closer and we still didn't know what our future held, we decided the best option was to drive back to Iowa. Oh yeah and we decided to take the dogs with us since we would be gone for 10 days. Google maps said it should only be a 22 hour drive but we knew the dogs might slow us down (they did). Oh yeah and call us crazy, but we decided to drive it straight through to maximize our time actually IN Iowa as opposed to driving to/from the state.

Two people, two dogs, 25 hours, one car. Let the fun begin! Oh yeah and of course we documented every hour of this giant nonstop road trip to mark our progress...what else are you going to do to keep yourself entertained?

Two things you might notice in our hourly photos:
1. It's obvious when I fell asleep and Brad was taking selfies (and he doesn't keep track well)
2. If you know me at all, you are impressed by the amount of time I was in the driver's seat

Once we FINALLY got out of the car nearly 25 hours later, we kind of forgot to document our trip very well as we made our way across the state of Iowa to visit family and friends. So I give you the few pictures we have:

Our first stop was a family wedding in Cedar Rapids (Congrats again Lenae & Jaron!!). We got to see most of Brad's immediate family and all of the "Damn Family" - what the extended family on his mom's side all affectionately call one another. It was wonderful to be able to help welcome a new member into our clan - living so far away, it's not often Brad and I get to join in these family celebrations.

Next up, I surprised Brad with a  birthday party. Many thanks to my mom, fake mom Diane, and Holly for helping me pull off the surprise! They actually did all the work, I just thought of it. Brad honestly had no idea what was going on until we walked around the corner of the Landrus house! Definitely should have documented more of the party and our guests, but at least I got a few good ones of Brad cheesing it up.

 

With the big weekend behind us, we spent the next few days seeing as many good friends and family as we could. We criss-crossed Iowa to do it and while it meant more time in the car, it was so amazing to see everyone! It was also great to be back in the Midwest and enjoy the green summer there (remember, we still didn't know where/what we were doing next). High on our priority list was to spend some quality time with all our grandparents.

Brad with his Grandma Bev

Liz with her Grandma Fisher

We ended the week with a camping trip in Fort Dodge - again, getting to spend quality time with the Damn Family. This is an annual camping trip they do and we'd missed the past 3 years. Man, it felt good to be back. Imagine, an entire extended family singing the national anthem in the middle of a campground to kick off a bean bag tournament - awesomeness! It doesn't get much better than that in terms of family gatherings! The dogs definitely enjoyed all the attention they received too since Brad's nephew, Hayden, was essentially inseparable from Athena.

It was while we were camping that I got a call offering me a job. It was not necessarily a grade I expected but the school was exactly what I was searching for. I would be gainfully employed again! Strange - we drove to Iowa not having an inkling of where we would land next, but when we drove away from Iowa eight days later, we had a plan. No longer were we wondering where we would live, where we would work - we were moving to North Carolina! I think finally having a plan made it a lot easier for Brad to sleep on our 25 hour drive back to Arizona.