Arriving to Albuquerque a Day Early!

We drove for almost 10 hours to get to Albuquerque! We left at 7 after Nick made us breakfast! It was such a great trip to Oklahoma! We passed through Amarillo, Texas and we were driving ourselves crazy trying to figure out the song with Amarillo in it (George Strait). 

We got to Albuquerque a little after 3! Our best timing, even if it was one of our longest drives! We celebrated by finding a great place called Bosque Brewery! We had some great beer and an awesome tortilla soup and dip.

We headed back to our hotel and I accidentally fell asleep for an hour. After Michael got me to wake up, we went to Carls Jr. to get ice cream! However, they closed early and after calling them from outside, we found out their managers left the workers all alone! So they just locked the doors haha. We ended up walking to the gas station next door and buying 4 ice cream bars... Then we fell asleep :)

Oklahoma for the Day!

Michael woke up early and went to PT with Nick. He was trying to keep below the radar for their 5k run, but ended up being a road guard for a small portion of the run! Afterwards, we ate breakfast/lunch at Taco Bueno! 

We explored the base together for a bit, checking our family housing that we'd be eligible for, and checking out the shopping options. Michael then went and helped Nick with a few errands and I got to wander the base for a while! I found this great spot to just relax!

After, we went to explore Enid by starting at the visitor center. The woman who helped us was seriously so sweet and gave us a ton of coupons and even wrote out on a map where we could find the best off base housing!

We used free bowling passes to have a little fun that night! Michael and Nick grubbed out on frito pie, burgers, and wings and I was proud to get over 100!

That night, we sat and talked for a while and took a little drink of Jeremiah Weed! Haha we got ready to drive in the morning at 7!

Iowa to Missouri to Kansas to Oklahoma!

IMichael and I crossed through 4 states yesterday to finally get to Enid, Oklahoma, which is where we are planning to call home within a year! 

Our drive took 8 and a half hours and as of now, we have travelled 3,600 miles! The drive here was a little nuts. We left our campsite at 8:30 that morning, and hit the road until we were just outside of Kansas City and decided to eat at Taco Bell. Kansas was very welcoming, we crossed the border and it began to rain for about a half hour :(

But no problem! We kept driving while Michael studied for his private pilots license test, and I entertained myself with random road games and singing along to the radio.

Finally we had arrived! We met our good friend Nick and took a tour of his (and our soon-to-be) new home! It's a great community and the town of Enid is actually pretty big! Michael and I both enjoyed high school in the small town of Snowdlake, and Enid is definitely multiple times bigger with more stores, activities, restaurants, and beautiful fields than we had imagined!

Of course, we took a tour and afterwards, Nick took us on a drive on some back roads through fields of grass, cows, and oil drills, which was beautiful at sunset!

We all went out to dinner at RibCrib and we had delicious burgers, fries, and BBQ brisquet! Afterwards, we hung out with Nick at his new home until Michael and I left to enjoy our first night in a hotel room! 

Now today, we are enjoying Enid and leaving tomorrow morning!

Driving to Iowa!

Yesterday was not very eventful, but we made it just past Des Moines, Iowa at a little before 11 pm. We spent most of our morning and early afternoon in Oshkosh getting some memorabilia and visiting the museum! We learned a lot about Dick and Burt Rutan, and the picture below is of their racer!

I got a really cool vintage poster and Michael got a poster of his favorite aircraft at the show, the Gee Bee Super Sportster (which was just as cool as it was massive), and two patches for AirVenture 2014 :)

And then we drove, on and on and on for 7 hours to get to Iowa! We passed a lot of corn fields, and we learned that gas is very inexpensive in places with corn! (The picture shows it was $3.28 per gallon)

We ate a great dinner at Legends Bar and Grill in downtown Des Moines. We were originally going to Fongs Pizza, which was featured on the Travel Channel, but we arrived around 8 and it had an hour and a half wait for a table :( Legends was great though! Wings and a chicken wrap, and some more fried cheese and salad :) however, some stuff on their menu didn't make sense, like Chicken Fried Chicken haha

We camped in a small town half an hour outside of Des Moines, where we were able to freshen up a little bit and go to sleep at midnight. Now we're on our way to Enid, Oklahoma!

Wonderful Week at AirVenture!

Oshkosh was amazing!!! This is literally the largest international aviation convention/festival/air show! We were in Oshkosh for 5 days and it still wasn't enough time to see and experience everything, which is why we haven't blogged since we arrived. 

Our first few days, we tried to take in as much as possible! Michael and I went to numerous workshops while there. The first one was a composite workshop where we learned how to work with fiberglass and carbon fiber, then we attended a woodworking workshop where we learned how to construct a wing rib! We also went to a fabric workshop and covered a vertical stabilizer, which was awesome and one of my favorite parts! It took 3 hours to learn and follow through with the steps. 

We also attended a few forums, which were large talks and discussions about plane stuff.

Obviously, there were too many different models of aircraft to be counted! There were warbirds, home builds, helicopters, antiques, and sea planes! Now Michael has a wish list of 4 planes, which he is slowly convincing me about each one :)

We spent a few hours each day strolling through the fields that had hundreds and hundreds of planes that flew to Oshkosh! It was amazing!

We also enjoyed quite a bit of yummy Wisconsin food! We had cheddar cheese curds and ice cream while enjoying all the festivities! We also checked out a place called Friar Tucks when it was raining too hard to cook dinner! Which was delicious and only a few minutes away, where we enjoyed burgers, fries, and some jalapeño poppers!

It rained everyday!!!! As you know, we have been camping in a tent for our whole trip, so we slept on slightly soggy sleeping bags one night, and also discovered a large puddle of water underneath our tent. Luckily, our friends and Michael's flight instructors, who met up with us at Oshkosh, let us sleep in their reserved dorm room at the University of Wisconsin - Oshkosh for two nights! We're so grateful to haves stayed dry for those days! 

We enjoyed going to the EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) Museum and exploring tons of donated airplanes and different feats and influential people of aviation! 

We also got to hang out with our friends Dom and Heather while we were there!! We explored AirVenture and just enjoyed hanging out together for a couple days! 

While everyone was in Wisconsin, we were invited to a 'gathering of the minds' dinner event with a bunch of test pilots, where we met Norm. He is a test pilot for Boeing, and an ex-navigator for the Air Force. He had an endless amount of information and advice on how to get on the right path to be influential in aviation.

We enjoyed air shows everyday for at least 4 hours, which had tons of aerobatics and formation flying, and we even got to see the Thunderbirds! 

Overall, our time at Oshkosh was filled with learning new things everyday, checking out different planes, enjoying daily air shows and events, and meeting new people, all while enjoying camping!

Sadly, we aren't able to post too many pictures. We used Michaels iPhone for everything for our trip, but we decided to go out one night by the U of W, and it dropped...

... And the touch screen was unresponsive (most likely an LCD issue), so we upgraded my phone and I finally have a smart phone! :) and Michael gets to enjoy my dumb phone for a month. So yay, we got to spend most of our lovely Friday at a Verizon store. 

Driving to Mount Rushmore... And More Driving

We woke up today in beautiful Montana and after a breakfast of diced potatoes and bananas, we started our longest drive of our trip. 

Of course, Montana had gorgeous scenery on our way out. We then headed into Wyoming and would ultimately end up driving through South Dakota. We made the most of our drive by eating delicious cheddar and sour cream potato chips and Michael studied pilot stuff while I drove!

After 7.5 hours of driving, we made it to Mount Rushmore at 4:30 pm! Mount Rushmore was cool, it was very large and it was interesting seeing the monument in person as opposed to pictures, in movies, etc.

But in all honesty, the best part of our day was cookies & cream ice cream after we viewed Mount Rushmore! 

We found a place to grill dinner and are now still driving (it's 9:45 pm) to Byre Lake to set up our tent and fall asleep. 

Tomorrow we will be in Oshkosh! We're waking up at 5 am tomorrow to make it to AirVenture before the first air show at 2:30!

When we reach Byre Lake, we will be at 1,952 miles and about 38.5 mpg.

Biking in Bozeman

We knew immediately when we were in Bozeman. It was awesome. Like Montana's own version of flagstaff. It was lively, had lots of great places to eat and an inviting college mountain town atmosphere. Ready to eat, like we always are, we stopped at the Pour House for their happy hour special and "famous burgers and nachos." 

The blue cheese burger was excellent but the "bozeman's best nachos" were no Arizona  or California nachos. 

Afterward, we walked the shops on Main Street and talked to a few people about their thoughts on Bozeman. This blonde chick said "there's only two seasons here, winter for 7 months and summer for 4 months." I think she forgot that there are 12 months in a year! haha 

Another guy at the bike shop was "imported" (as he said) from Brazil by his wife. He loved Bozeman and showed us a few bike trails to hit up. 

Before heading to the trail we drove around the university campus. Not a bad looking place to go to school. 

Then we headed out to ride grassy mountain trail. . . Little did I know (michael) what a ride It would be. I thought it was about a 7 mile loop. It ended up being a 17 mile loop with 11 miles of it climbing a steep fire road. Beautiful views though. 

I left for the ride alone (Kelsey stayed at the trailhead to do her own style of riding)  at 1800. Sunset was at 2100 so I had 3 hrs. 2 hrs in I was still climbing but figured it has to go down at some point. It finally started down but I wasn't sure it was the right trail as there were no signs. It was generally heading in the right direction so I kept mobbin the singletrack. 

30 min from sunset I still wasn't back yet so I checked the gps to find no signal so I kept riding. Then I got a flat tire.

I changed it out and got going again racing the sun. Those last 20 min of downhill was on the most exciting, scenic, and carvealicious track I've ever ridden. I popped out at to the car at 2058 just in time. Totally worth the work. I got the adventure I asked for. 

We quickly found our campsite, set up, ate brats and rice and went to bed. It was a long great day in Bozeman. 

Tomorrow, Mt Rushmore and Byre lake.

1238 miles and 39mpg. 

Beautiful Yellowstone!

We arrived on Thursday night and it was absolutely beautiful as soon as we arrived, and we even saw a few deer on our way in.

We decided to make some chili dogs and soup before we went to bed. We slept in 34 degree weather that night, which we were both a little unprepared for, and it got a little chilly, but we made it! 

We woke up to make breakfast, and then took a bike ride down to Yellowstone Lake! This lake is giant! It is literally 1/10 of the park size and is 410 FT at its deepest point.

Afterwards, we checked out the visitor center to find out where we could see buffalo, and pick up some bison bars and Yellowstone Roadblock beer from the general store.

We made our first stop of the day at Old Faithful! While we were waiting on a boardwalk, the fattest chipmunk we've ever seen came right up to me (Kelsey) and posed for a picture! It was adorable, but he was hanging out there because there were hundreds of people waiting to see the geyser go off. We decided to take a walkway to the less crowded side and got a great view! Old Faithful was a lot more impressive than we thought it would be! It shot up probably 100 FT for a few minutes!

We then took a trail and hiked to Overlook Point, passing some more geysers and hot springs on our way there! It's amazing to think all of these are natural formations. Some of the water was so clear and such a deep blue, they seemed unreal!

Our next stop was Gibbon Falls, which was a pretty cool waterfall, and then we moved onto the Artist Paintpots! These were awesome because they literally look like giant, bubbling pots of paint! This trail had some more hot springs that were green and blue, and small geysers that exploded every few minutes just a foot or two high.

Then we visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and it was amazing!!!!! It looks exactly like a miniature version of the Grand Canyon, but with tall waterfalls! 

We were able to hike 600 FT down to stand at the base of where the waterfall started! 

By this time, it was about 5 o'clock so we decided to head back to our campsite. As I said, I really wanted to see some buffalo and we finally saw one! It was probably 100 yards away, but we were so exited to see it! However, we didn't realize we were going to drive right by one (only like 30 FT away) about fifteen minutes later, and then get stuck in stop-and-go traffic for almost an hour because of a herd of buffalo! 

It was so fun and exciting seeing baby buffalo! And so many of them! There were at least 50 to 75 bison in the herd, and they were literally just crossing the street whenever they wanted, and one even came within a few feet of our car! I thought it was going to come right up to our window!

We also saw a huge bull elk, just standing right by the road and eating, on our way back to camp, which just topped off one of the best days of our trip so far!

That night, after some much-needed showers and doing some laundry, we ate Ramen and chicken pasta by the campfire slept in 31 degree weather in 50 degree sleeping bags... So I slept in a sweater, hoodie, light winter jacket, denim pants, and two pairs of socks, and Michael slept in something similar. We didn't even get cold :) 

We said goodbye to our Yellowstone home this morning after we slept in until 9:30. We packed up and are now heading to Bozeman, Montana! Of course, we didn't leave Yellowstone without seeing a herd of elk :)

We are leaving Yellowstone at 1,057 miles and a 38 mpg average.