On the Road Again

It's time for our trip across the country...again. This is my 4th time driving across country and Travis' 3rd. We decided to switch it up a little bit this time. Every night we stopped we've stayed with friends or family for a few days. It definitely breaks it up and makes it easier. I have to admit that driving 9-14 hours a day is not fun, but I have greatly come to appreciate how diverse our country is. I think everyone should experience the drive at least once-but not 4.

Our first night's stop was in Missouri. We stayed with Travis' friend, Brent and his family, who is currently attending medical school at University of Missouri. We had a fun time touring the university, watching the BYU game on T.V., enjoying some of Brent's famous Hawaiian Chicken, having the best pizza of my life at a local restaurant and to top it off some delicious frozen custard. We hope they can come visit us soon!

Our next stop was Highlands Ranch, Colorado to visit Travis' sister and her family. We stayed three days and had a blast! Our first day was filled with playing Rock Band, going through model homes, and searching for prairie dogs which weren't hard to find (they're everywhere).

The second day we went shopping and drove to Denver to tour the Mint. In order to take a tour you have to make a reservation in advance and apparently arrive 15 minutes before your tour starts. Both Michelle and I somehow missed that key point when we were reading over our reservation. To make a long story short we ended up missing our tour by 2 minutes!! To not waste a trip to Denver we walked over to see the Capitol building before heading back to H.R.

Travis being excited about staying in Colorado started becoming obsessed with seeing real, live buffalo. He would constantly repeat, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", which is a real sentence come to find out. Buffalo didn't seem to be as plentiful as the prairie dogs were. However, on our third day, while we were driving down to Colorado Springs, Travis noticed some buffalo! Being the nice sister that Michelle is (and the fact that we didn't have a reservation at our next destination) she got off the freeway and 4-wheeled it to get as close as we could. It was pretty cool and Travis was well pleased.

After the elation of seeing the buffalo we headed to Garden of the Gods. One of our favorite red rock formations were the "kissing camels". We decided to join in on the fun.

Here is "balancing rock". Looks like it could go at any minute.

Next up on the schedule was the Olympic Training Center. It was a lot of fun seeing the facilities and pretending to be medal winners.

To add even more to an already fun-filled day we had a party at Chick-Fil-A. It wasn't just any party. Michelle won an essay contest about why she loves Chick-Fil-A. Michelle is a devoted fan and has been eating there since she can remember. It wasn't just a party for her family, but an all-you-can-eat party for 30!!! I am so glad that we happened to be there the night of the party. They had a section set up for us with tablecloths and balloons. Michelle guesstimates that everyone ordered around $10 worth of food totalling around $300 for our party!

We have had a fun time so far and are looking forward to Utah.