road trip {part 1}

This is a post that has been a long time coming. I had always planned on sharing some of our cross country road trip pics. But not having internet for a month after we moved & then having a baby (and having that baby early) kind of put that on the back burner.


So while I'm still going through my Seattle pics & working on some other projects I thought I'd take a couple posts & share my road trip pics:)

Day 1 - Georgia & Tennessee
221 miles

We left GA late afternoon on Tuesday, April 26th after the movers had finally finished packing up all of our stuff. We didn't want to drive too far, but at least get a few hours under our belt. So we made it to Chattanooga, TN. 

Day 2 - Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri
473 miles

The next morning we woke up to this:

Tornado warnings, thunder, power flickering in and out, sitting in the hotel lobby with wet hair (I had just showered), 2 kids & 2 dogs, waiting for the storm to pass. When we left we realized just how bad it was outside.

A tornado hit just a few blocks down the road. We instantly realized how lucky we were.

Tennessee is always so pretty. But unfortunately most of the day driving through TN, KY & IL was dark & rainy.

Not sure if this bridge was TN or KY, KY I think.

See...dark & gloomy. By the time we had made it into IL we had passed through 2 more tornado warning areas. Crazy weather we were driving through. When we were driving into St. Louis, MO we saw the prettiest sunset. It looked like the sky was on fire.

Day 3 - Missouri, Iowa
515 miles

My kids love bridges :)

Driving through Iowa was, ummm, booooring. Not saying that the whole state is boring (cause I can't speak to that) but the highway we were on was 4 hours of nuh-thing. 

I mean - field, field, field, field, casino, field, field, field, field, casino...etc. There were no rest stops, nowhere to eat, nowhere to stop and take a potty break. 


Like I said - nothing. Pretty sunset though.

Day 4 - South Dakota
435 miles

The next morning - civilization!!!! We were just into the SD border.

Oh I miss Panera. Moving on...

The entire day would be spent driving through South Dakota on our way to Mr. Rushmore to take a much needed day off from driving.


Not sure what this was supposed to be...

About halfway through SD we came upon this.

So pretty. Too bad I had so many dang bug guts on my windshield!!

And then we came to this little town & decided it would be a cute place to stop for lunch & stretch our legs.

Cute huh?? 

And no road trip would be complete without some silly antics :)

It was a really nice place to stop. This was also where our dogs decided to start having intestinal issues. We came out from lunch to a very stinky car. Thank God we had put some industrial carpet tiles in the back of the van. Needless to say, those got thrown out pronto!

Just past this point (which was about halfway through SD) the landscape started looking more like this:

Next post - Mt. Rushmore :)