(I started this post before I got internet so I could hopefully get all the blogging done that I wanted to, but I didn't get very far! Also bear with me because this is a LOOOONG post and it may get boring!?)
Though I don’t have internet yet, I figured I should get around to writing about our trip to NY anyway! We had known that we were going to NY for several months, but we didn’t know exactly when we would be leaving. We had picked May 23rd to be David’s start date and we wanted to leave Utah on May 16th. In order for us to do this, we needed to get the security clearance from the Department of Energy. Well, May 16th came and went and we hadn’t heard from KAPL about David’s security clearance. After that day passed, we figured if we got the call we’d leave the next day. Well as it turned out, we waited day after day after day for the clearance to come and just when we wanted to give up hope and move back to Provo and have things the way they were, we got the call from KAPL!!
On May 24th, David and I were sitting at my mom’s house and decided we’d go to Rocky’s Place (local Roosevelt burger/chicken/shake place) for lunch. While sitting at lunch we were discussing what to do and if we thought KAPL would ever call. Much to our amazement, David’s phone started ringing and it was none other than an HR guy from KAPL telling David that his clearance had FINALLY gone through! (WHAT A RELIEF!!!!)
Because it was nearly 1 in the afternoon, we decided leaving the next day would be near impossible, so we had our minds set on leaving Thursday, May 26th. We did LOTS of laundry, lots of packing and late Wednesday night we were pretty much ready to go, minus the last minute things to pack. Backing up a bit, before we ever left Provo, we had mapped out how far we would go each day, and what cities/towns we would stop in on the way. Because KAPL is reimbursing us, we had to drive at least 350 miles a day, which meant that we would make it to NY on our 6th day of travel!
The day we got the call from KAPL, I booked all our hotels, since we knew where we’d be stopping, which saved us a ton of money. We had our trip planned as follows:
Day 1: Roosevelt to Cheyenne, WY
Day 2: Cheyenne, WY to Lincoln, NE
Day 3: Lincoln, NE to Nauvoo, IL
Day 4: Nauvoo, IL to Elkhart, IN
Day 5: Elkhart, IN to Findley Lake, NY
Day 6: Findley Lake, NY to Waterford, NY a.k.a. HOME
Day 1: Destination, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The day we left was a bittersweet morning. As my parents were leaving for work, we said our goodbyes and of course many tears were shed. My dad tried to make a joke to lighten the somber mood by saying, "At least you weren't here very long so we didn't get used to having you around." Hah. Exactly! 1 Month of living there really did get us used to being around SO much family and it was hard for me to leave.
After they left, we loaded up the final things, took this picture:
and said Tchau to Roosevelt for the next 10-ish weeks.
We drove to Vernal and made a stop to get snack foods and stuff to make sandwiches on the way. After that, we made our way to good ole Flaming Gorge and stopped to take a picture.
Ellie was sleeping and it was SUPER cold, so we decided to leave her in the car while we quickly snapped the picture.
We had decided we wanted to take pictures of every "Welcome to blah blah blah state" so we had to stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to get this picture:
It was super windy and cold still, and Ellie was STILL asleep :)
Because Ellie’s still nursing, we had to stop about every 2-3 hours for nursing/changing/stretching/playing all that jazz. On the first day, we were able to just make ONE big stop in Rocks Springs (I think? haha!) and eat lunch, feed & change Ellie, stretch and rest for a bit.
Letting Ellie play and drive the car for a bit ;) :
Proof that we were in Wyoming:
We got back on the road and about 3 ish hours later, we make it to Cheyenne. We found the local target, bought some essentials (Swimsuit for Ellie, pool floaty, and swim diapers) then headed to find a place to eat! We wanted Texas Roadhouse, but the line was wrapping around the building (On a Thursday???) so we hit up Chipotle instead. Super tasty!
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and went for a swim. Check out Ellie's new swimsuit:
She kinda doesn't know what's going on, but she had fun playing on the bed and being out of her car seat!! She didn't really know what to think of swimming. She had a blank face the entire time and wouldn't crack a smile for ANYTHING! Maybe she'll decide she likes swimming better when she's older?
That's more or less day 1!
Day 2: Destination, Lincoln, Nebraska.
The next day, we got on the road earlier than day 1, which was what we wanted! We got up and met a couple going on a mission back east and found out that they have a daughter who lives in Ballston Spa, which isn't too far from Waterford! Crazy small world!
Just before we left Cheyenne:
Anyway, the second day was our longest day of travel, totaling 7-ish hours of drive time. It was also the most boring, I'm afraid. Wyoming is ugly, and frankly Nebraska is boring!
See?
(Wyoming right before it turns into Nebraska)
I kept myself entertained by taking pictures of things as we were driving and luckily we got a picture of getting to Nebraska:
Ellie did really well through all the boring Nebraska Wyoming nonsense!
We made more stops this day than the first day because it was longer, but Ellie decided that she wanted to stretch more...so we stopped at this random little thing (??) and stretched, changed Ellie and took pictures!
We stopped at a Veteran's memorial park for lunch in Nebraska (I don't remember the town) and it had a few fun things to see. Ellie liked laying out on her blanket while David and I ate lunch.
This is some random train car turned into an information booth:
And here is a cute little picture of Ellie (She hadn't learned to sit up yet, so we had to snap the picture at just the right time haha!)
Here's Ellie visiting the memorial:
After our lunch break, we got back on the road and got to our destination a little over 2 1/2 hours later (after having another break about 50 minutes from Lincoln).
We went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday and Ellie did NOT cooperate. She didn't like sitting in her seat ANY longer than she had to, so we got dessert to go and headed back to the hotel.
Here's the special little crib Ellie got to sleep in that night! The front desk lady insisted that we put towels over the hinges that might pinch Ellie (ya know since Ellie can stand up and even get close to them hah!)
End of Day 2.
Day 3: Destination, Nauvoo, Illinois --Please look for a separate post about Nauvoo. LOTS to read about and see :)
The next day we got off to an earlier start, leaving at around 7 a.m. We made our first stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and found an awesome park with a way neat playground. We ate lunch, fed Ellie and played on the playground.
This is David being artistic with the camera:
Ellie LOVES to swing and had such a fun time with Daddy on the playground!
Daddy had a fun time on the playground, too :)
We weren't far from Nauvoo at our lunchtime stop, so it only took us about 2 hours to get to Illinois, and we were VERY happy to be in Nauvoo! What a beautiful place!! As I said before, there will be a whole new post all about Nauvoo!
End of Day 3.
Day 4: Destination, Elkhart, Indiana.
It was Sunday, and we had planned to go to church in Keokuk, Iowa, where we stayed and we slept through our alarms!! Also, Ellie Slept through the night! Woot Woot! Since we had already missed church, we decided to just go back to Nauvoo to see more things, since the tourism stuff closed before we could see it all on Saturday night. We left Nauvoo around 1 p.m. and headed to Elkhart. We had a pretty good trip, but it was much later than we wanted to be out on the road and we didn't have much energy by the time we finally got to Elkhart. I don't really remember the stops we took, other than this one, where we had a picnic, watched some birds play, and stretched.
We rolled into Elkhart at I think 8:30 p.m. and we were all beat. I ordered some dinner from Olive Garden To Go and we ate dinner in the hotel. The first room we were given had some gross curtains that smelled mildewey so I had David call down to get us a new room. Little did we know, in the new room, our air conditioning didn't work. We didn't figure this one out until about midnight, and Ellie was sleeping so we didn't want to have to change rooms and wake her up. Around 1 a.m. I got up and noticed that there was a thick smell of fresh cigarette smoke, and nearly puked right then and there. Seriously that's one of my LEAST favorite smells, and it was billowing into our room at a compeltely NON-SMOKING HOTEL! I was pretty irate at this point, but I didn't feel like calling the front desk and complaining to move rooms for the second time!! I figured out that it was coming in from the bathroom so I shut the door and it was a little better. David found some odor eliminating spray from the little housekeeping cart left in the hallway and he sprayed it, but it just made it smell worse! I got Ellie to go back to sleep, but she was up not very long after, like maybe an hour. She screamed and screamed and screamed until finally she threw up! It was so sad and so gross! She felt warm and sticky and gross so we went outside. And what does she do? Scream some more and throw up some more! NO GOOD!
So it's nearly 5 by this point and David and I being first time parents and dealing with Ellie being sick and throwing up for the first time freak out and I call my mom at 3 a.m. Utah time (sorry again mom!!!) And we decide that she's not doing well with teething, she hasn't had enough sleep and she's too warm.
So here is travel day #5!!
Day 5: Destination, Findley Lake, NY.
So David and I load up, eat breakfast and head out at almost 6 a.m.!!! We bought some pedialyte at Walgreens before we left town, and I got Ellie to take some tylenol and drink some pedialyte. She was so sad and miserable that it made me cry. We stopped about 1 1/2 hours into our trip at a little gas station and I finally got Ellie to eat from what I had pumped earlier. She cried and cried for another 30 minutes, and we were getting pretty tired and sick of it! I got her to fall asleep while holding her and let her sleep for a little bit before we decided we'd better just get back on the road. Luckily, Ellie slept some more, and we felt better about her condition. We gave her tylenol faithfully to keep her from screaming and she was able to get enough sleep to feel better.
Our stop was in Ohio, and here's the "welcome to..." sign:
The poor little baby was so tired and sad she was trying to suck on her binky and her fingers at the same time. :(
We took a lunch break at a random gas station in PA and MAN it was HOT that day!!! Seriously a scorcher in like a gazillion percent humidity. I thought I might die! Ellie was doing much better by this point which gave us hope for the rest of our trip...even though it was almost over!
We made it to NY, and not long after, we made it to Findley Lake, a town with well, not much of anything! The hotel we stayed at was super nice, and we enjoyed getting there at 1 pm!!
We looked at the Welcome to New York sign, and we knew that we were in a state where people aren't as nice as other states...their sign was just not very welcoming! HAH!
Though, Findley Lake is a beautiful place and it's only about 10 minutes away from Erie, PA.
Because we got there so early, we took the time to go swimming and shower and what not before dinner, which was nice. After going to dinner at this place in the middle of the woods (SUPER tasty burgers, by the way. It was called something about the Pines...I'll have to try to remember what the name was. I just know it had the word Pines in it!) we checked out Findley Lake. Beautiful lake and very fun to look at!
It reminded us a lot of a town we stopped at while on our honeymoon in Colorado. It's called Grand Lake, Colorado, and it's beautiful and fun there, too!
We headed back to the hotel and got us some good rest! We were SO ready to be finished with this cross-country trip!!
End of Day 5.
Day 6: Destination, HOME! (Waterford, NY)
We were SO excited for day 6 to come, and guess what? I didn't take ANY pictures of it! We made I think 2 stops, and we rolled into our new home at about 2 ish p.m.?? We went to the housing office to sign our contract and pay our dues so we could move in! We got that all squared away, then went to meet David's mentor, Justin, and his family at Chili's. After dinner, we went to a member of the ward's house to get a couch bed and a chair for our little apartment. Then, we decided to get a hotel for the night since we didn't have the crib for Ellie yet, and we'd still get reimbursed from KAPL for the night since it was the night we made it to NY.
WHOA! Longest post ever! I am glad we had the experience of traveling across the country, but I am more excited to be DONE with the traveling until August! We're probably going to cut out a day of travel on the way back, but we'll just have to see how Ellie's doing and how it goes! We love it here so far and can't wait to get out and do and see all there is to see in the area!
Though I don’t have internet yet, I figured I should get around to writing about our trip to NY anyway! We had known that we were going to NY for several months, but we didn’t know exactly when we would be leaving. We had picked May 23rd to be David’s start date and we wanted to leave Utah on May 16th. In order for us to do this, we needed to get the security clearance from the Department of Energy. Well, May 16th came and went and we hadn’t heard from KAPL about David’s security clearance. After that day passed, we figured if we got the call we’d leave the next day. Well as it turned out, we waited day after day after day for the clearance to come and just when we wanted to give up hope and move back to Provo and have things the way they were, we got the call from KAPL!!
On May 24th, David and I were sitting at my mom’s house and decided we’d go to Rocky’s Place (local Roosevelt burger/chicken/shake place) for lunch. While sitting at lunch we were discussing what to do and if we thought KAPL would ever call. Much to our amazement, David’s phone started ringing and it was none other than an HR guy from KAPL telling David that his clearance had FINALLY gone through! (WHAT A RELIEF!!!!)
Because it was nearly 1 in the afternoon, we decided leaving the next day would be near impossible, so we had our minds set on leaving Thursday, May 26th. We did LOTS of laundry, lots of packing and late Wednesday night we were pretty much ready to go, minus the last minute things to pack. Backing up a bit, before we ever left Provo, we had mapped out how far we would go each day, and what cities/towns we would stop in on the way. Because KAPL is reimbursing us, we had to drive at least 350 miles a day, which meant that we would make it to NY on our 6th day of travel!
The day we got the call from KAPL, I booked all our hotels, since we knew where we’d be stopping, which saved us a ton of money. We had our trip planned as follows:
Day 1: Roosevelt to Cheyenne, WY
Day 2: Cheyenne, WY to Lincoln, NE
Day 3: Lincoln, NE to Nauvoo, IL
Day 4: Nauvoo, IL to Elkhart, IN
Day 5: Elkhart, IN to Findley Lake, NY
Day 6: Findley Lake, NY to Waterford, NY a.k.a. HOME
Day 1: Destination, Cheyenne, Wyoming.
The day we left was a bittersweet morning. As my parents were leaving for work, we said our goodbyes and of course many tears were shed. My dad tried to make a joke to lighten the somber mood by saying, "At least you weren't here very long so we didn't get used to having you around." Hah. Exactly! 1 Month of living there really did get us used to being around SO much family and it was hard for me to leave.
After they left, we loaded up the final things, took this picture:
and said Tchau to Roosevelt for the next 10-ish weeks.
We drove to Vernal and made a stop to get snack foods and stuff to make sandwiches on the way. After that, we made our way to good ole Flaming Gorge and stopped to take a picture.
Ellie was sleeping and it was SUPER cold, so we decided to leave her in the car while we quickly snapped the picture.We had decided we wanted to take pictures of every "Welcome to blah blah blah state" so we had to stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to get this picture:
It was super windy and cold still, and Ellie was STILL asleep :)Because Ellie’s still nursing, we had to stop about every 2-3 hours for nursing/changing/stretching/playing all that jazz. On the first day, we were able to just make ONE big stop in Rocks Springs (I think? haha!) and eat lunch, feed & change Ellie, stretch and rest for a bit.
Letting Ellie play and drive the car for a bit ;) :
Proof that we were in Wyoming:
We got back on the road and about 3 ish hours later, we make it to Cheyenne. We found the local target, bought some essentials (Swimsuit for Ellie, pool floaty, and swim diapers) then headed to find a place to eat! We wanted Texas Roadhouse, but the line was wrapping around the building (On a Thursday???) so we hit up Chipotle instead. Super tasty!
After dinner we headed back to the hotel and went for a swim. Check out Ellie's new swimsuit:
She kinda doesn't know what's going on, but she had fun playing on the bed and being out of her car seat!! She didn't really know what to think of swimming. She had a blank face the entire time and wouldn't crack a smile for ANYTHING! Maybe she'll decide she likes swimming better when she's older?
That's more or less day 1!
Day 2: Destination, Lincoln, Nebraska.
The next day, we got on the road earlier than day 1, which was what we wanted! We got up and met a couple going on a mission back east and found out that they have a daughter who lives in Ballston Spa, which isn't too far from Waterford! Crazy small world!
Just before we left Cheyenne:
Anyway, the second day was our longest day of travel, totaling 7-ish hours of drive time. It was also the most boring, I'm afraid. Wyoming is ugly, and frankly Nebraska is boring!
See?
(Wyoming right before it turns into Nebraska)I kept myself entertained by taking pictures of things as we were driving and luckily we got a picture of getting to Nebraska:
Ellie did really well through all the boring Nebraska Wyoming nonsense!
We made more stops this day than the first day because it was longer, but Ellie decided that she wanted to stretch more...so we stopped at this random little thing (??) and stretched, changed Ellie and took pictures!
We stopped at a Veteran's memorial park for lunch in Nebraska (I don't remember the town) and it had a few fun things to see. Ellie liked laying out on her blanket while David and I ate lunch.
This is some random train car turned into an information booth:
And here is a cute little picture of Ellie (She hadn't learned to sit up yet, so we had to snap the picture at just the right time haha!)
Here's Ellie visiting the memorial:
After our lunch break, we got back on the road and got to our destination a little over 2 1/2 hours later (after having another break about 50 minutes from Lincoln).
We went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday and Ellie did NOT cooperate. She didn't like sitting in her seat ANY longer than she had to, so we got dessert to go and headed back to the hotel.
Here's the special little crib Ellie got to sleep in that night! The front desk lady insisted that we put towels over the hinges that might pinch Ellie (ya know since Ellie can stand up and even get close to them hah!)
End of Day 2.Day 3: Destination, Nauvoo, Illinois --Please look for a separate post about Nauvoo. LOTS to read about and see :)
The next day we got off to an earlier start, leaving at around 7 a.m. We made our first stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and found an awesome park with a way neat playground. We ate lunch, fed Ellie and played on the playground.
This is David being artistic with the camera:
Ellie LOVES to swing and had such a fun time with Daddy on the playground!
Daddy had a fun time on the playground, too :)
We weren't far from Nauvoo at our lunchtime stop, so it only took us about 2 hours to get to Illinois, and we were VERY happy to be in Nauvoo! What a beautiful place!! As I said before, there will be a whole new post all about Nauvoo!
End of Day 3.
Day 4: Destination, Elkhart, Indiana.
It was Sunday, and we had planned to go to church in Keokuk, Iowa, where we stayed and we slept through our alarms!! Also, Ellie Slept through the night! Woot Woot! Since we had already missed church, we decided to just go back to Nauvoo to see more things, since the tourism stuff closed before we could see it all on Saturday night. We left Nauvoo around 1 p.m. and headed to Elkhart. We had a pretty good trip, but it was much later than we wanted to be out on the road and we didn't have much energy by the time we finally got to Elkhart. I don't really remember the stops we took, other than this one, where we had a picnic, watched some birds play, and stretched.
We rolled into Elkhart at I think 8:30 p.m. and we were all beat. I ordered some dinner from Olive Garden To Go and we ate dinner in the hotel. The first room we were given had some gross curtains that smelled mildewey so I had David call down to get us a new room. Little did we know, in the new room, our air conditioning didn't work. We didn't figure this one out until about midnight, and Ellie was sleeping so we didn't want to have to change rooms and wake her up. Around 1 a.m. I got up and noticed that there was a thick smell of fresh cigarette smoke, and nearly puked right then and there. Seriously that's one of my LEAST favorite smells, and it was billowing into our room at a compeltely NON-SMOKING HOTEL! I was pretty irate at this point, but I didn't feel like calling the front desk and complaining to move rooms for the second time!! I figured out that it was coming in from the bathroom so I shut the door and it was a little better. David found some odor eliminating spray from the little housekeeping cart left in the hallway and he sprayed it, but it just made it smell worse! I got Ellie to go back to sleep, but she was up not very long after, like maybe an hour. She screamed and screamed and screamed until finally she threw up! It was so sad and so gross! She felt warm and sticky and gross so we went outside. And what does she do? Scream some more and throw up some more! NO GOOD!So it's nearly 5 by this point and David and I being first time parents and dealing with Ellie being sick and throwing up for the first time freak out and I call my mom at 3 a.m. Utah time (sorry again mom!!!) And we decide that she's not doing well with teething, she hasn't had enough sleep and she's too warm.
So here is travel day #5!!
Day 5: Destination, Findley Lake, NY.
So David and I load up, eat breakfast and head out at almost 6 a.m.!!! We bought some pedialyte at Walgreens before we left town, and I got Ellie to take some tylenol and drink some pedialyte. She was so sad and miserable that it made me cry. We stopped about 1 1/2 hours into our trip at a little gas station and I finally got Ellie to eat from what I had pumped earlier. She cried and cried for another 30 minutes, and we were getting pretty tired and sick of it! I got her to fall asleep while holding her and let her sleep for a little bit before we decided we'd better just get back on the road. Luckily, Ellie slept some more, and we felt better about her condition. We gave her tylenol faithfully to keep her from screaming and she was able to get enough sleep to feel better.
Our stop was in Ohio, and here's the "welcome to..." sign:
The poor little baby was so tired and sad she was trying to suck on her binky and her fingers at the same time. :(
We took a lunch break at a random gas station in PA and MAN it was HOT that day!!! Seriously a scorcher in like a gazillion percent humidity. I thought I might die! Ellie was doing much better by this point which gave us hope for the rest of our trip...even though it was almost over!
We made it to NY, and not long after, we made it to Findley Lake, a town with well, not much of anything! The hotel we stayed at was super nice, and we enjoyed getting there at 1 pm!!
We looked at the Welcome to New York sign, and we knew that we were in a state where people aren't as nice as other states...their sign was just not very welcoming! HAH!Though, Findley Lake is a beautiful place and it's only about 10 minutes away from Erie, PA.
Because we got there so early, we took the time to go swimming and shower and what not before dinner, which was nice. After going to dinner at this place in the middle of the woods (SUPER tasty burgers, by the way. It was called something about the Pines...I'll have to try to remember what the name was. I just know it had the word Pines in it!) we checked out Findley Lake. Beautiful lake and very fun to look at!
It reminded us a lot of a town we stopped at while on our honeymoon in Colorado. It's called Grand Lake, Colorado, and it's beautiful and fun there, too!
We headed back to the hotel and got us some good rest! We were SO ready to be finished with this cross-country trip!!
End of Day 5.
Day 6: Destination, HOME! (Waterford, NY)
We were SO excited for day 6 to come, and guess what? I didn't take ANY pictures of it! We made I think 2 stops, and we rolled into our new home at about 2 ish p.m.?? We went to the housing office to sign our contract and pay our dues so we could move in! We got that all squared away, then went to meet David's mentor, Justin, and his family at Chili's. After dinner, we went to a member of the ward's house to get a couch bed and a chair for our little apartment. Then, we decided to get a hotel for the night since we didn't have the crib for Ellie yet, and we'd still get reimbursed from KAPL for the night since it was the night we made it to NY.
WHOA! Longest post ever! I am glad we had the experience of traveling across the country, but I am more excited to be DONE with the traveling until August! We're probably going to cut out a day of travel on the way back, but we'll just have to see how Ellie's doing and how it goes! We love it here so far and can't wait to get out and do and see all there is to see in the area!
2 comments:
Shari your hair is getting so long! I love all your pictures! Hoping to actually READ everything soon... maybe after finals :o)
Sounds like a fun trip! So glad you all made it safe! Can't wait to read about Nauvoo--beautiful place!
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