Road Trip: Day 3

Ok, I am soooooooooo tired tonight. We were going to try and just make it home tonight, but after another 15 hours in the car, we just ran out of energy/desire/will-to-live and had to stop. It is after midnight, technically Saturday, but I wanted to get this posted since I know all of you are just dying to watch more videos of Dad and me in the car.

We started in St. Louis this morning at about 7:45am...we were not feeling to well (we really overate for dinner). We drove through the rest of Missouri, Kansas (the most boring place on earth), and 99% of Colorado. We stopped 3.5 hours from home, but we just couldn't do it...we had planned on trying, but just couldn't push ourselves... Click on the map below for a larger version.

Check out the videos for the details...

Here we are getting our day started...notice we aren't quite as excited as we were the previous day.

Some thoughts while driving through Missouri...

Thoughts as we begin driving in Kansas...little did we know what we were starting...

More Kansas...wow...how long is this freaking state!?!?!

We finally make it to Colorado...

Dragging ourselves into Grand Junction, Colorado at a quarter to 11pm...serious doubt creeping in regarding going all the way home tonight, but we are both still talking tough at this point.

Yeah...we are done...we don't care about being macho anymore...Holiday Inn, here we come.

Ok, it has taken an hour to do this post (videos take a while to upload)...and I am BEYOND wasted....good night!

-Cim

Road Trip: Day 2

Well, my goal with today's post is to TRY and make it interesting (to quote Lauren's comment). I don't know how to make a 2,000 mile road trip in 2.5 days interesting, but we are doing the best we can. :)

We decided yesterday to put in as much time as we could today and we almost made it half way. We traveled 962 miles today in just over 15 hours (including a 30 minute lunch) and made our stop tonight in St. Louis, Missouri. Here is the progress on the map.

We started off in Paramus, NJ, after a restful night at the luxurious Holiday Inn Express. Here is dad in the car..if you look closely, he is actually wearing a seat belt! Sure, it only lasted a few hours, but hey, it was a small victory for those of us who worry about him never wearing one.

Here is a picture of what the first half of our drive looked like through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and most of Ohio. Trees and hills.

Here is a picture of what the second half of the drive looked like. Few trees and flat.



We made a quick video after about 10 hours...because we were bored and worried that we wouldn't be able to keep Lauren entertained with our post tonight.

Here we are on our arrival in St. Louis.

Another full day on the road tomorrow! We still have about 19 hours left, I am not sure how much we will get in tomorrow, at least 10 hours, maybe more... Time to go to bed!!


-Cim

Road Trip: Day 1

Well, as many of you know, as part our relocation to Utah we needed to drive one of our cars from New York to Utah. Always looking for an excuse for a road trip, Dad was more than willing to make the trip with me. I thought it would be fun to keep a daily log of our trip on our blog.

So, today we flew from Salt Lake to Newark to pick up the car. We left Mom and Dad's house at about 8pm. We actually passed the moving truck carrying our stuff from NY on the way to the airport! Anyway, I was sure we would hit traffic (used to New York driving I guess), but we made it to the Salt Lake airport in less than 30 minutes. We arrived, parked, checked in, and were through security in no time. We had a little breakfast at the Dick Clark cafe in the airport...nothing like powdered eggs before a flight...yuck!!

The flight was good, very bumpy, but no real problems. Dad and I sat on aisle seats opposite each other so we could sit "next" to each other but still have aisle seats. Dad read an entire 200+ page book and didn't move once during the flight. I read several chapters of my Clive Cussler book and then finished watching movies on my video iPod.

Once we arrived in Newark, we didn't check any bags so we went right to the car and headed over to Yankee Stadium. Dad wanted to see the old stadium before it is demolished in a few months. Dad isn't a big fan of the Yankees, but loves baseball and its history. We walked around the stadium, took some pictures, and grabbed Dad a piece of the wall of the stadium.

We then met up with Ammon in the city for dinner at a great little Mexican restaurant called Salsa y Salsa. Dad had enchiladas and tried mole for the first time and I had a Chile Relleno which was excellent. Now, I am a little nervous that we both had Mexican food before our first day on the road...

From there, we headed to our hotel in Paramus, New Jersey. This will be the starting point of our trip.

We will be getting up tomorrow morning and heading out! Look for another update tomorrow!

Moving Fun! (ok, not really)

I just wanted to take a quick second to make a post giving everyone an update on our move.

We just got back to the hotel from the house. Everything was packed up on Thursday and almost everything was loaded on Friday. Turns out they determine the amount of space allocated you on a truck based on estimated weight. Problem is we have a lot of big stuff that doesn't weigh a lot (can you say HUGE beanbags anyone?!) so...well, they ran out of space and another truck had to come this morning. They sure tried hard to get everything on, they even pulled out the ramps, set a piece of plywood across the back and strapped down a bunch of our stuff in an effort to get more on! It was the craziest thing I have seen in a while. I had Katie snap a picture with her phone (for insurance as well as story purposes), check it out.

Of course, I thought this was all kind of funny until I took a closer look at the picture and noticed that my Triathlon bike is one of the things strapped to the back! ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!

So, now my poor bike is strapped to the back of some freaking semi driving across the country with all the weather, road grime, and other things that could do damage! I was not a happy camper!

Anyway, we finished doing all the touch-up painting last night and cleaning the house. The carpet cleaner came this afternoon and I cleaned some windows. Finally, the house is ready to turn back over to our awesome landlord and we are ready to go.

We have been in a hotel with the kids since Thursday, the Comfort Inn and Suites (trying to be budget conscious, plus I don't like my kids destroying other people's nice property) and it isn't that bad.

They have been very hyper (as usual), but nothing that I didn't expect. They are a little out of their routine with all of the changes, but we are hoping to get everything settled down before the end of the month.

We have church tomorrow followed up by dinner at a friend's house. We leave for Utah on Monday morning at 7am. From there, things keep up the hectic pace. We expected to have our stuff not arrive until the 27th, but the driver told us Thursday that it will be there on the 22nd...which may not sound bad, except that I won't be there. I fly back to NY on Wednesday with Dad to get my other car and drive it back to Utah (about a 3-day drive) so Katie will have to oversee the unpacking and unloading by herself! Yeah, we aren't too excited about that.

I get back to Utah on the 25th or 26th with Dad and am there until the 31st when I have to go to San Francisco for work. I fly back to Utah from San Francisco on November 2nd and then leave back for New York on November 3rd (yes, the very next day) and am here until November 10th to finish up things here.

I also just got word that I will probably have to make one more trip out before Thanksgiving...oh boy, it just gets better and better! Can't wait for Christmas!

We want to thank all our family and friends for all their support. We will sorely miss living in NY but are excited to get back to our family and friends in Utah. I am going to do posts of my trip with dad across the U.S., so stay tuned!!

-Cim

Our New Home!

After many hours driving around Utah County this past weekend, we have finally found our new home. We are just going to rent for a little while until things settle down with the economy, but we are really happy with the new home. We will be moving on October 20th and we will stay with Cim's parents in Orem until our stuff arrives. Then we will move to Springville, Utah. The home has 3900 sq ft and is very roomy which will be nice with our 4 crazy kids! It also already has a playground in the backyard and a built-in drinking fountain. I haven't decided if the drinking fountain is a good or bad thing yet considering how much my kids like to play in the water. Anyway, we are happy to be done searching and we are excited now to get packed up and go. Although we are not looking forward to another 5 hour flight with the kids to go back to Utah, it beats 4 days in the car!