Day 5 - Tuesday - Badlands and Rushmore

We woke up bright and early to a yummy breakfast and set off for Badlands, SD.

The pictures do a much better job of explaining this place so you will have to wait for those, but even the pictures don't completely do it justice.

After Badlands, we headed down to Mt. Rushmore. I was a little worried that our truck wouldn't make it up the mountain, but it did! Mt. Rushmore was awesome. We had a great tour guide who told us the history and made you think some about the significance of each of the presidents in Mt. Rushmore.

After Rushmore, we stopped in Wall, SD to visit the infamous Wall drug store where we got "Ridin' the West" t-shirts then crossed into Wyoming and stopped in Sheridan for the night.

Day 4 - Monday - South Dakota

We left Kansas City and headed up towards South Dakota. We snuck over into Kansas just to say we had.

Welcome to Kansas!

Kansas Countryside

Welcome back to Missouri ;)

Derrick was bored while riding :)

Welcome to Iowa!

Some kind of production plant I assume? It was neat looking so I took a picture :)

Nebraska.. the good life!

Nebraska Countryside- reminds me of the Windows XP desktop.

Welcome to South Dakota!

We stopped for gas in South Dakota where they had 10% ethanol blend gas which was very exciting for me :)

Lots of Sunflowers!

Snakes!? Where!?

South Dakota Countryside!

South Dakota Sunset

We stopped at the visitors center on our way into SD and found info for a Bed and Breakfast right on the way. It was only about 8 miles off the highway, but it took about 30 minutes to go those eight miles since the road was gravel and through the middle of nowhere. I was amazed at how much nothing there is up there. It is beautiful though. The b&b owners turn out to be Christians which was cool. I was sad that we didn't have more time to spend there.

Day 3 - Sunday - St. Louis

We resumed our journey around 8:30 am. We drove through Nashville, TN and up to St. Louis.

We were going to try to visit the arch but never found a parking place for our monstrous vehicle. I got some good pictures as we were driving by, but we got lost and ended up in what looked like a kinda sketchy part of town. We were also low on gas so that made it even more fun ;)

We found our way out of town eventually and to a gas station. From there we continued to Kansas City where we stayed the night.

Day 2 - Saturday - Pack the Truck, again

We woke up at the insanely early time of 5am and started our journey. It is at this time that Derrick (and eventually I) decided that this truck is way to big and we are not comfortable driving it. We also had about 6 ft of extra space in the back. We met Derrick's parents in Greensboro for breakfast as planned and we called to see if the Penske place in Gboro had a smaller truck- they did!

Sooo we drove over there with Derrick's wonderful family to take all of our stuff out of one truck and put it in another. It didn't take as long as I thought it would and it turned out to be the best thing- especially when driving through the mountains out west!

We made it to Knoxville, TN and stayed in a way overpriced hotel room. Apparently the University of TN had a football game and everyone and there brother was in town to see it. The room we got was about the last thing available in town. We did find time to buzz Derrick's hair :) no more flat top- Yay!!

Day 1 - Friday - Pack Up the Truck

Derrick worked and I finished packing until around noon. Then I went and picked him up and we went to pick up our Penske truck and trailer. We got it home, but it was really big.. perhaps too big- more on that later. We start loading as the rain was stopping, but noticed that there was water leaking from the top. Derrick went to exchange the truck which took another hour or so. I went to run some last minute errands. On my way home I noticed that my car was running really hot so I pull over and it just so happens that my dad (who came to help us move) had some anti-freeze. He brought it and we poured almost all of it into my car. Apparently I have a very slow anti-freeze leak.

Aaanyway, everyone got back to the apartment and loaded all big stuff into the truck. Derrick and I finished the smaller stuff and by that time it was around midnight so we slept on the floor of our empty apartment.

We made it!!

We arrive Saturday afternoon in Roseville, CA! We had some pretty interesting adventures so I am going to go through day by day and tell you all about them I will post pictures whenever we get internet in our apartment (now I am in the ‘business center’) since all my pics are on my laptop.

Less than 48 Hours

Wow, I can’t believe that we leave in 2 days! We’re pretty much done packing.. just a few odds and ends things left. Hopefully Ernesto will be gone by Friday afternoon so that we don’t have to load the truck in the rain. I wouldn’t mind the rain except that our stuff would get all wet and then sit closed up for a week. Well, thats about all the news.. let us know if you want to help us Friday