Over the last 5 days we’ve covered another 2000 miles going from Richmond, KY to Rapid City, SD. Our trip has taken us through 7 different states as we’ve crossed through the Midwest. We’ve seen some awesome sights, met some wonderful new friends, and enjoyed all the lush colors of Fall.
We left the hotel this morning and headed out for Sedona, AZ. Kenin was very excited because we were going to drive to the Grand Canyon. Neither of us have ever seen it, and it’s on both of our bucket lists, so this was going to be a real adventure. We had been to Scottsdale earlier this year, and already missed one chance to see it. Who knew our road trip would end up being from Los Angeles to Las Vegas instead?
We decided to do another 2-day “car only” segment when we left on our road trip from Seattle to Oregon. We were on or way down to Oakland, CA and eventually LA. We made it a point to drive down the Pacific Coast as much as possible. We went without a hotel this time to avoid paying for a Saturday night stay and to make up for some of the high spending we did in Seattle. Plus, it’s fun to rough it a bit and we’ve been pretty comfortable this trip. We logged 937 miles in two days and saw some of the most amazing coastline we’ve ever seen (and we’ve seen a lot of beaches!). If we did it again, we could probably spend a week driving here and still not get enough of it! Continue reading
Today began day one of a two day stretch with no stopping in a hotel. Since we decided to stay in Keystone an extra day we killed our other reservations and we (Lauren) decided that the trip had been too “structured” to date. I was happy to give it a whirl and see what came up. I jotted down a of couple notes on paper, regarding our route, and headed out. We were to be electronics free for this drive (with the exception of our camera of course). We ended up driving 626 miles from Salt Lake City to Montana, and ended up cutting through Idaho. We also saw some of the coolest terrain ever at The Craters of the Moon, drove through a town of 28 called Atomic City, got hit by a dust storm, learned what a scarp is, and drove through a canyon.
After quitting your 10-year retail career with no real plan for your family’s future and knowing that you have limited funds to survive on, the only sane decision is to stuff your entire family into a 2-door hatchback and drive for 30 days right? Well somehow that’s what Lauren and I came up with. It seemed like the only sensible thing to do after being driven crazy by 60-hour work weeks and the insanity that our life had become. In the past 2 years alone, we lived in 4 different cities in 2 states with all the relocation I had done for work. We were at wits end, and frankly our marriage was suffering right along with us. With all that going on I quit my job and we packed ourselves and our two dogs, Zoe and Punkin, into a VW GTI and proceeded to drive for 35 days and 9,063 miles. The drive took us across 24 different states and countless highways and byways. Needless to say we were on a journey to find ourselves, each other, and hopefully a new direction for our lives. Continue reading