Road Trip

Are you ready for a road trip?It will be slow going, but I've decided to post our first few days and hopefully that will help hold me accountable to keep on trucking with the photo organizing. Our first couple of days were simply a lot of driving; we didn't stop to explore, but just tried to get a lot of miles under our belts. We did get the chance to see some familiar faces along the way though, which was lots of fun! These shots from the car are in New Mexico as we got closer to Gallup where we spent the night. The first leg was about 670 miles.
Kari and Steve (along with Ray and Willa) graciously allowed us to sleep at their house our first night on the road. I grew up with Kari on the island and it's always fun to get together with her and her wonderful family.
The next day we drove another 700 miles and arrived in Guthrie, OK where April and Ben welcomed us!
Neither of the boys had ever been to Guthrie, so we enjoyed seeing the town together. We took the trolley tour . . .
Would you have stopped to pick up this bunch??
We got some yummy snow cones/slushes at the little hut near the trolley. April decided to try a SOUR one. Do you see that devilish grin??
I think Ben liked it.
April definitely did!
Andy and Erik also dragged us to several stores to do some browsing/shopping. Well, at least they were good sports about it. ;-D
April saw the perfect dress at one second hand store. Unfortunately, it was on a mannequin. Noelle helped her . . . retrieve it so she could try it on.
Oops. Her arm came off!
April held the arm so that Noelle could re-attach the torso . . .
Eventually they got her back together. Then April looked at the tag inside the dress and said, "This is way too big for me!" We made her try it on anyway.
This fit her better.
We also took the Masonic temple tour.
It's quite a place!
We spent an evening at Don and Shirley's and got the chance to see much of Ben's family. For some reason I didn't take any pictures once we got inside. :-( It was great to see the Coffin's and fun to hear stories of all the naughty things Ben and his siblings did in their younger days!
Don's garden is producing mega-melons!
Mercy welcomed us back at April and Ben's.
Josie and GB were glad to see us too. :-) I didn't get a picture of Wellington, but he purred a lot so I think he liked us.
We, of course, ate well!
And we learned a new game that Erik got for his birthday but hadn't had the chance to play yet: Munchkin.
We're a lot of people to descend upon a one bedroom apartment, but Ben's sister Anna loaned Erik and I the guest apartment above her veterinary clinic (where I also failed to take pictures). It was within easy walking distance of April and Ben's, and very comfortable. It was great to have two full days in Guthrie before we headed north!

Our last leg was the longest, over 1000 miles, and we ended up going through Milwaukee where traffic on the interstate was stopped due to the incredible flooding they got!

We'd had great weather all day, but as soon as we crossed the border into Wisconsin around Beloit it got very dark and stormy looking. We started to see big lightening in the distance and I was excited--I miss thunderstorms! In fact, I texted Ben, who was still in Cali, and he was jealous. Little did we know . . . (he was no longer jealous when his flight into Milwaukee the next day was canceled). As we drove on we started hearing thunder, and then it started to rain a little. Suddenly we were driving in torrential downpour! It finally started to lighten up and was pretty much done by the time we reached Milwaukee, but we had no idea just how much rain they had gotten until we tuned in on the radio as we sat in stopped traffic on the freeway. We did eventually get off the highway and navigated through the city until we could get back on (which wasn't until the far north side of town!)

Needless to say it was a looooong day/night, but we were glad to arrive safely in Sturgeon Bay albeit the middle of the night! The odometer read 2731.5 miles when we got there. :-)

More sometime in the future!
Good night, world.