Moving Across the Country Completed

Road Trip Phase Four: The End of the Road
The last leg of our trip took us across the Mississippi. Our first stop in the "East" (at least, what seems like the east to a girl from California) was Memphis. The best part about Memphis was the food. No joke. We made a pledge not to eat any fast-food McDonald's type junk the entire trip so that we could appreciate all the local fare, and Memphis was the best pay-off. We stopped off at Leonard's for BBQ the night we came in, and then went over to Uncle Lou's Fried Chicken after visiting Graceland the next day, and both were awesome. I think I could have eaten about a million of the biscuits at Uncle Lou's. I am salivating right now just thinking about it.

Mmmmmm....ribs

Can you tell that I'm in love with that biscuit?

Graceland was an....interesting place. Before I went I imagined lots of pink and aqua and Formica and other 50ish things, but apparently it was all redecorated in the 1970s. Kitschy, but not my kind of kitschy. The best part was the free car show going on in the parking lot.

Paisley Carpet in the Kitchen? Honestly Elvis, what were you thinking?

I bet this monkey gave Lisa Marie nightmares.

One of my life goals is to buy an awesome Corvette when Dave and I are retired (or maybe as soon as my last child moves out). I figure it will be a very practical purchase, since it's a two-seater.

After Memphis we went up to Nashville and visited my Uncle Cleve. He took us to the Country Music Hall of Fame and to Andrew Jackson's house. I, of course, loved the latter and was super mad that I forgot the camera and couldn't take lots of pictures that I could potentially use in a class power point (yes, these are the types of things I think about on vacation). After spending a few days relaxing and taking at much-needed break from driving at Cleve's, we drove down to Gainesville in one day!

Here's us at our new place!

Our road trip really wasn't complete until we went from the Pacific to the Atlantic, so as soon as we could we drove out to beach and stuck our feet in the ocean, just to make it official. We have arrived!

So that's basically our road trip, and now that I'm actually caught up I can hopefully start writing about all of our Floridian adventures. In fact, if I'm to be honest, one of the reasons I've been motivated to catch-up is so I can write all about the fireworks I'm going to shoot off tomorrow! I love the fourth of July, and to paraphrase a favorite TV show my favorite way to celebrate my love of my country  is to blow up a very small piece of it. I am very excited, the ones they have here would be so illegal back home!

Moving Across the Country Continued

Road Trip Phase 2: Deserts, Caves, More Deserts, and More Caves
The next part of our road trip took us across what I can confidently called some of the ugliest parts of the US: South-Eastern California, Southern Arizona, New Mexico and West Texas. Out of all of them, West Texas was the worst. Everything there--the landscape, the buildings, the sky--was the same dusty brown color. I was not impressed. There were some pretty parts, like the saguaros and the botanical gardens in Tucson.

We also visited several caverns, which were all gorgeous. Karchner Caverns was just outside of Tucson, and was really neat since it was discovered relatively recently so it has been preserved and is still living. They had a whole series of hatches and lights on timers to make sure to preserve everything and keep the cave from drying out or growing mold. The other cave we went to was Carlsbad Caverns, which was simply huge! It had a great natural entrance, just the type of thing you'd imagine in an Indiana Jones movie, and came with a 'bottomless' pit.

Dave and I at the natural entrance--during the ranger show they made us participate in an educational choose-your-own-adventure about bats. My bat died right off the bat because it was too lazy to practice flying and fell to the earth and died when it finally tried.

My Dad in front of the natural entrance

Later on in the trip we went to Blanchard Caverns in Arkansas, but I'll just throw in a couple of pictures from there too so you can get your fill of pretty holes in the ground.

Out of all of the caves we went to, this was the one where I had to try the hardest to resist the urge to touch the formations.

Moving Across the Country

So! Here is my very first post on my blog, or my very first attempt at trying to stay in touch now that we have graduated and moved from Utah. It's been awhile now since we've actually arrived in Florida, but a lot has happened in between that and leaving Utah so I'll have to do just a little bit of catching up. Driving all the way out here was quite the adventure, but I'll try and condense everything so that I can actually write about what's going on right now.
Road Trip Phase 1: Beautiful, Beautiful California
Of course we couldn't actually move away from Utah without saying goodbye to our home state! So our move started out by driving roughly nine hours in the wrong direction and taking a two-week pit stop at Dave's parents' house. It was a really fun visit that went by way too fast. While we were there we tried to cram in as many of the things we were going to miss--which involved spending lots of time with our family, multiple trips to the beach, and eating more Thrifty's ice cream than was probably wise. I also celebrated our move back to a coastal state early by buying a new swimsuit. The trip ended like all of our trips to California end--with us reluctant to leave and second-guessing what lengths we would be willing to go to in order to move back there.