We Made It!

Hard to believe we've been in town a couple days already! We started our house hunting project today. Will post a recap of that tomorrow or Saturday, once we've had day two of looking at things.

But first, some pictures from our last day of driving and arriving in Boulder!

One of the sights we knew would be on our drive was a huge easel with a giant Van Gogh painting on it. Kansas is the sunflower state, so of course it's a painting of sunflowers. The easel is conveniently located next to Bill's Shootin' Shop and Bubba's Meat Block... So first thing on Tuesday we took our portrait by the easel.

And then continued our drive. It was pretty exciting to finally enter Colorful Colorado. OK I know I'd told people KS wasn't so bad, but man western KS is hard to get through! Probably aided by anticipation about getting into CO. Sorry KS people, but dude.. (I will say that eastern CO isn't much better :P )

All of a sudden, at mile marker 371, we were able to clearly see the mountains! These pictures are from a little later, since the faraway mountains weren't too photogenic.

It has yet to sink in that we actually live in this place; it's gorgeous and SO different than Miami. It kind-of feels like a big vacation. Aided, surely, by staying in a hotel suite. I suppose at some point we will get used to it, but we were saying today that it might not feel real until we move into someplace and have all our 'stuff' back. And so the house-hunting adventure continues!

Kansas

Greetings from Kansas!
We've made it to the Mountain time zone, at 3,700 feet. Observations from today: Kansas is not nearly as flat as people would have you believe, a field full of dead sunflowers is one of the saddest things I've ever seen, and giant objects are totally worthy roadside attractions. Chris points out that we saw dust devils twirling through fields and were in Topeka for the tornado siren tests, which was quite eery as 6 or 7 sirens echoed off the hills.

It's picture time!
While driving through IL we heard about a statue of a giant shuttlecock in Kansas City, which is where we stayed last night. So of course we had to go see it!


Entering Kansas..

Partway through our drive we came up on some windmills, which we had some fun with.

Tomorrow we complete our trip! We have been enjoying the time on the road. A much needed vacation, it's been great to spend time together with little to do but chat and watch the scenery, and we've had a lot of fun hanging out with friends at each stop. We're ready to start the next part of the adventure though, so it will be good to get in to CO and see what happens next!

ILL

After a couple months of marveling at how neither of us have gotten sick despite of how crazy-busy we have been, my body finally gave in and I've got a cold. :( I thought it was just a sore throat from all the dust kicked up by packing our belongings, but alas it seems to actually be a cold.

Thankfully we didn't drive yesterday. We spent the day in IL, visiting friends at the U. of Illinois. It was a good day. Chris went for a bike ride/walk (the bike tire popped - sad!) and I went to a tailor, only to find out my next bridesmaid dress didn't need alterations at all. I think that's the first time EVER that I have not needed alterations! Yay. We were also joined at dinner by a friend from summer camp whom I had not seen since 1998 - it was great to see her. Old friends that show up and are still awesome are so.. reassuring. Exciting. Refreshing. Fun :)

Today we continue on our trip. We'll be crossing Missouri and getting into Kansas. Hoping this is more interesting than people have warned us it won't be. Sick + boring driving = inevitable drowsiness..