WE MADE IT!!!!
We weren’t sure it could be done, but sure enough, 21 states in 25 days and we find ourselves back in good ol’
First and foremost though, we want to say thank you for all the well wishes, gifts, and prayers said while we embarked on this trip of a lifetime, it is certainly appreciated and made us feel as if we were on this trip with all of you!
I first thought to take this trip to see a large portion of the country that I had not seen yet. Obviously, the most important thing we both needed was the time to do it. I have recently decided to put the golf clubs away, and Brandi was not exactly enjoying her place of employment. And while we knew the expenses were going to be high, it might be decades before we could actually make this journey a reality. So we made a very rough outline of states, monuments, and points of interest that we would like to see without setting exact dates and times to get there. One of the most important things I wanted to be able to do was stay in a city or state an extra day or two if we hadn’t accomplished all we wanted to do in the given time. And given our lack of an itinerary, the best guess I could give was anywhere from
I have a goal to see all 50 states at some point in my life, and have been very fortunate to have seen 38 before this trip started. So among the many goals of this trip were to wipe out 8 of the states in the middle of the country that I hadn’t visited yet, and secondly, to get my navigator Brandi to successfully be able to read maps and point us in the right direction. Both goals……success!!
Brandi has worked so hard at keeping up with our blog and making slideshows, I thought it only fair to write a final summary in case you didn’t have 12 hours to read everything and see all the pictures.
Animals…..we wanted to see all of them!!! Despite the numerous signs/warnings, and even visiting 2
As for adventure…..if you can believe it, we hiked, rode horseback, played kickball, inner-tubed down a river, rode a bobsled, a luge, and lassoed fake cows. And that was in a matter of 6 days!!!
But activities were not all we did……..we saw 4 NFL stadiums and 3 MLB stadiums, but these still weren’t as big as the worlds largest ball of twine, the worlds largest cow, and the world’s largest mall!! We saw
Some things were just down right confusing though. I mean, the
rapids than the
As for geographical landmarks…..we crossed the 45th parallel multiple times, meaning at some points of this trip, we were closer to Santa Claus than the equator. We drove along the Continental Divide, and we even saw the geographical center of the northern half of the western hemisphere.
We played cornhole (bean bag game) in 3 states. We hiked in 3 National Parks, we played 3 rounds of disc golf, and you guessed it, I lost 3 discs.
We camped in our tent 7 nights, stayed in a hotel 6 nights, we spent 5 days in both Wyoming and Colorado, we saw 4 of our favorite little guys (Dylan, Mason, Craig, and Quin), enough with the 3’s, we rode 2 zip lines in Utah and saw 1 Great Salt Lake. Although, both Brandi and I are re-naming it,
When we first reached the
All in all it was a great trip, one that neither of us will ever forget. We drove over 6,000 miles all over God’s country, but watch out, we did run into
And finally we leave you with our best and worst lists:
Best Meal: Jack Stack’s BBQ in
Worst: Doc Holidays in Glenwood Springs….no refills on Diet Coke, and bad food, big thumbs down
Best Campground: Chris’s Campground (Spearfish, SD) for internet in the tent and cleanest site
Worst:
Best Hotel: Residence Inn in
Worst: Extended Stay in
Worst:
Best Disc Course:
Worst:
Worst:
Best Surprise: Comfort Inn;
Worst: No electrical hook-ups in National Parks. Makes it hard to blow up an air mattress!!
Scariest Drive:
Easiest Drive:
Shortest Trip:
Longest Trip: Keystone, SD (
2 comments:
Dylan and Mason were both very glad to see their Krazy (so crazy it begins with a K) Uncle Mike and Sandi Brandi! Come back soon!!!!
Sounds like you had a great time! I laughed at your encouter with the unofficial "Minnesota state bird"!Didn't you know it is the land of 10,000 mosquitos?? Somehow you missed the Spam capital of the world on your way thru.. maybe next time. Brandi did a great job with the Blog! You two will have to come down this winter and hang out w Jes and me! Take care! Laurie
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