Road Trip part TWO

Continuing from last post....
Wednesday afternoon, after we left the Grand Canyon, we headed up to Las Vegas for the night!
We were able to catch the "BLUE MAN GROUP" perform, and it was very fun :)
Here we are in our ponchos, since we sat in the "You might get Wet" section...

















And here is Ben with one of the Blue Men! (haha)


We stayed at the Trump Hotel, (thank you priceline!!) and had a super fun time!

We left Thursday morning and headed up through Death Valley, Ca to get to our next destination. It was HOT HOT HOT (I think 120 degrees!) And at one point we were 200 feet below sea level! Crazy! But the view was great! :)







We passed through Hoover Dam on our way into Reno, NV to stay for the night at the Atlantis Hotel. Also very nice! (and cheap thanks to priceline) :) They told us when we checked in that they didn't have any queen rooms left, so they were going to upgrade us to a king hot tub room for free! Sweet! We ate dinner at a very swanky steak house in the hotel that night, and had a fun time hanging out and relaxing.

Friday morning we woke up and drove the rest of the way into Oregon, arriving at Ben's aunt and uncles house in time for dinner! :) They are super sweet and let us stay in their RV for a few days while we hung out with the family. Here we are on their front porch:



Saturday morning we woke up early and headed to Crater Lake, OR with Ben's dad. I must say I think it might be my favorite spot of the whole trip - the view is BREATHTAKING! It looks fake in pictures because it's just that amazing. Here, see for yourself :)





If you ever get the chance to go, DO IT! It's such a neat part of God's creation. :)

We also saw some neat waterfalls in Oregon, and got to go to Ben's dad's church and eat lunch celebrating his graduation! That was the main reason for this trip - to see Ben's dad graduate with his masters from the University of Oregon, which happened on Monday. We are so proud of him! Here's a few pictures from graduation day.





We stayed one more day in Oregon -- then got up EARLY EARLY Wednesday to start the journey back.... but that will have to wait until the next post :)

Road Trip 2010 Part ONE

Ben and I were blessed to able to take an AMAZING road trip earlier this month. :) We started in Georgia, and made it all the way out to Oregon and back!

To start it all out, we packed up all of our possessions (which were all being stored in Georgia at my parents house after being delivered from Japan, and some of which had been there before we even moved) onto a HUGE 24 foot moving truck, and drove it IN ONE DAY up to Iowa. (I know, we're crazy!) My wonderful parents drove our Honda Civic behind the truck so we could have our car and also all travel together, and we made the usually 14 hour trip in closer to 18 hours. (It was a LONG day).

After driving all day, we crashed and then woke up the next morning to unpack the entire truck into our new apartment in Iowa! We then unpacked as many boxes as we possibly could over the next 3 days (THANK YOU MOM AND DAD FOR ALL YOUR HELP!!!) :)

We took my parents to the airport on Saturday morning, and then left for our road trip from the airport (Did I mention we're CRAZY?!) haha :)
Here we are saying goodbye...


We headed off to Topeka, KS to see some friends and family and stay for the night.
Then we woke up Sunday morning, dropped our nephew off at camp for the week (KBC - where Ben went many summers) :) It was fun to see some old friends and meet some new ones! We also ate at a place Ben loves called "Bogey's". YUM. Then we headed on to our next stop in the journey - Denver, Colorado.

Here are some beautiful Colorado mountains we saw:




We stayed at a great hotel with mountain views and had a BEAUTIFUL (but long) drive on Monday down to Las Cruces, New Mexico. We stayed the night there (no pictures really because we were pooped out!) got up Tuesday morning, and headed to Tucson, Arizona to see Ben's grandparents whom he hadn't seen in a long time and I had never met! Here they are:


Then we headed that afternoon up to Chandler, AZ to see Jess and Jodie! Sadly I forgot to get a group shot of us girls before we left in the morning :( But I did get this cute picture of Jodie and Grant's little girl:


We had such a fun time visiting with all of them for the evening and being off the road for a bit. Thanks again for letting us crash friends! :)

Wednesday morning we headed up to Grand Canyon (which I had never seen before.) AMAZING! I know you've probably heard it, but pictures really don't do it justice. But for good measure, here are a few :)




That's all for now... catch the rest on my next post :)