St. Louis, MO to Brookings, SD 4/12-4/14

After leaving Nashville, we made our way to St. Louis, which is a spot we would love to come back to as well.  Spent the night in the Cracker Barrel parking lot and woke up the next morning and enjoyed our free breakfast before we check off the Six Flags from the list of parks we have left to visit.  We weren't impressed at all with the rides but it was fun to visit and check it off our list of parks we have visited.  They really didn't have any extreme rides expect for the swings, which made Chris extremely nervous, we both hate swing rides.  After six flags, we headed into the city and took pictures at the arch and walked the river front.  It brought back memorizes for me.  When I was 14, my mom, my gymnastics coach and I traveled to St. Louis for me to compete in the first ever State Games of America competition.  It was fun to remember the good memorizes I had that summer.  The arch is just amazing to see.  Its so big.  After exploring we made our way to my aunt and uncles house for the night.  I had been in contact with my cousin letting her know we might be in the area but wasn't sure if we would be spending the night or not.  So we surprised my aunt and uncle, who I haven't seen in a too many years.  It was nice to see family again and catch up on everything.  The next morning we had breakfast with them and my cousins and left to start our journey north to Canada.  We intended to only spend the day in St. Louis but we spent the night because of the major blizzard that was hitting Fargo would not have been fun driving in it.  When we left on Sunday, the weather was not pretty but we told ourselves to only go as far as it was safe, which was Brookings, SD, just north of Sioux Falls.  We woke up today (Monday) and started our drive to Canada but only made it an hour up the road and had to pull over because of bad road conditions and bad wind.  After multiple times of ice skating on the highway and watching a trucker almost jackknife in front of us at 25mph, we pulled into a gas station put the chains on, got gas and looked at each other and said "maybe we should wait a little longer".  After an hour and half, we watched the snow plows leave the gas station and figured we should test the roads out.  The highway was clear so we took off the chains and started north.  Wouldn't have figured they just got hit by a blizzard. 

  family

  Go Alex Smith in his new home in KC  after the roads were plowed to scared to take pics while driving with the roads iced over

Nashville, TN 4/10-4/12

Alright so I am not up to date like I had hoped to be.  Traveling has been so much fun that its been hard to take my eyes off the country side and look at my phone to type down what we have been up to.  We left Florida and realized that we were on our way back home.  We made a small stop on our way to Nashville and visited Birmingham to explore the Civil Rights museum.  After that we continued our way up to Nashville. 

NASHVILLE - We got into Nashville on Wednesday night and tried to get into the Bluebird café, but it was full for the night :( if you don't know what the bluebird café is, the ABC Show Nashville has featured it many of times and is a base for the show.  I was a little upset but I got over it and took pictures and went on our way to downtown.  Chris out of nowhere said "we are spoiling ourselves, give me directions to the Gaylord Hotel" (its the hotel that's right by the Opry House).  Mark, Chris's brother told us to visit it because its an amazing hotel and we needed to check it out.  He was right, it was amazing.  When we pulled into the main check-in area we had 4 valet guys rushing up to see if we need to valet the bus and if they could drive it.  It was the funniest sight ever.  After the 10 minutes of talking to the valet guys we finally went inside to see if they had rooms available.  We were able to get a room with a view of the atrium, unpacked and then went exploring the hotel.  We went to the Jack Daniel's restaurant and had dinner and listened to the live music for the rest of the night.  The next morning we got our bearing straight and caught a bus into downtown for the day/night.  It was raining the whole day but we made the best out of it and put on ponchos and explored.  We did the typical Nashville night and went Honky Tonkin.  Basically we went into random bars, ordered beers and listened to the performers until we were ready to go to the next bar.  We went to 7 bars that night :)  it was a fun night enjoying the Nashville atmosphere.  The best part about that night was we didn't have to drive home.  Friday we drove into Nashville with bus and visited the history channels show "American Pickers" store Antique Archeology.  We wanted to see what Mike would give us for the bus ( just kidding Terry).  After that we did some more roaming around downtown before we headed back up to the hotel to our night at the Grand ole Opry.  It was such a fun experience to be at the Opry.  Their were 12 performers, Riders in the Sky, The Isaacs,  Lonestar and Chuck Wicks just to name a few.  During the show, a promotion was announced for Cracker Barrel about winning tickets/flight to California to a Brad Paisley show (online entry).  They ALSO gave away 2 free dinner tickets to Cracker Barrel to an audience member sitting in section 12, row s, set 4. I look over at Chris and I see him with his hands folded and praying "please let me win, please let me win".  Needless to say he WON.  After the show I stood in line to get Chuck Wicks autograph while Chris went to claim his prize.  What a fun way to end our time in Nashville. Defiantly a place we want to come back to and do more exploring.
 

Florida 4/5 - 4/9

We had a great time in Florida the last 4 days. We got to meet our new nephew Lincoln, who was born in march. He is such a cutie. While we were there, chris's dad and step mom were also out visiting from California. It was a lot of fun! It was mostly down time but we really enjoyed it. We all went out miniature golfing one night. Florida has some amazing golf courses to play at. Noah had a blast having his uncle Chris around. They had sword fights and played video games for a day. Chris and I gave mark and Keri the night off last night (Monday) and took care of the baby for the night. We had a fun time with that :) We work well as a team, and Chris does a good job at changing diapers, just gotta work on his swaddling skills :) we still aren't sure if we are really to have sleepless night though. It was really hard to leave them all today. Wish we didn't have to.

Monday we got some bad news after taking the bus in for a valve adjustment. Long story short, they mechanic said we are driving a ticking time bomb. He didn't know what really was wrong with it but she isn't running at 100%. We had to make a hard decision and take out the trip to key west,fl. :( we were both really upset but couldn't risk putting an extra 900 miles on the bus. So we decided to to start heading back north and starting our trip home. We are still keeping the same route home and going up to Canada but we just aren't pushing her and doing long drives. Say a little pray for us that she finishes the trip as planed and she gets us back to Idaho.

We are heading to Birmingham, AL for the night. We made a stop in wildwood, FL and did an airboat tour. We had so much fun!!!! We got to see some pretty birds, turtles, and alligators too. We were on one of there smaller boats which was was louder and faster and came with the warning of "you might get wet". It was pretty cool to see the gators. Once we get into Birmingham we will be exploring the civil rights museums and MLK memorial site. After that we have a short drive into Nashville where we will have 2 days to explore :)

Hopefully the post from here on out will about the places we see and not about how we have to find a way to tow the bus home

Memphis, 3/4/13

Graceland ...... What a fun place to explore for the day. We explored Elvis Presley's mansion, his cars, his planes and even his clothes. What a life he had. We both didn't realize that he and his parents and grandmother are buried on the property. His father got permission from the city to move his body for security reasons. His house was displayed how it was when he died, shaggy carpets and everything. What were people thinking back then. His cars were even cooler. After Graceland we drove into downtown Memphis where we took a tour of the Memphis Fire museum. We got to be kids for an hour. They had pretty much every toy fire truck possible on display.

We finally got on the road and ran into windshield wiper problems. Wouldn't had been an issue but it was raining. Every time we tied to use high speed we blew a fuse. We fixed the problem temperarly and got on our way to Florida to see family and finally get a shower (it's been 5 days) .... It's time to do laundry too :)

Dodge city, ks 4/3/13

We had a fun time in dodge city learning about Wyatt Earp. We had a great dinner at an original hotel/restaurant in Dodge City. We found ourselves sleeping at the Casino in Dodge. The next morning we did the boot hill museum which was pretty informational about living in Dodge City and the life of a cowboy. They had a replica of the town with real stores and had items to purchase from the era.
We left Dodge City and headed to Memphis, Tn. What a long drive we had in front of us. Chris started the drive in snow, I took over in Oklahoma city to a bad rain storm and Arkansas was a big blur. The bus did great in both and we pulled into Memphis Thursday early morning.

Breckenridge - US Olympic training center

It's been a fun 3 days - we haven't had a lot of down time besides sleeping, and Internet is spotty. I was able to download an app to make blogging easier from my phone. Where was this 3 years ago :)

Right now we are on our way to Memphis, TN with a stop in Oklahoma City, OK for dinner. It's gonna be a long day/night.

After vail we checked into our hotel for the which had a spa and was so needed after a day of skiing.

Breckenridge ski resort was amazing - we had a blast skiing the mountain from one side to the other .... I stopped during the day to take breaks while Chris played on the black diamond run's. Driving thru the Colorado Rocky Mountains are amazing the views are so pretty and I can't believe we were so high in elevation. We drove through the Eisenhower/Johnson tunnel which took us about 1 1/2 minutes to drive it.
We stopped in Denver for dinner and continued our way to Colorado Springs. Sleeping in the bus this trip has been different - it's been COLD ..... Driving the middle states in April, I didn't realize how much colder it would be than the boarder states 3 years ago.

Walmart parking lot was our home for the night in Colorado Springs. I didn't realize how big the city was. The US Olympic training center was fun to see where hopeful and current Olympians train. After the training center we went to the IAFF firefighter memorial. Last fall, Chris lost a friend from butte county and in September his name will be honored on the wall and we wanted to see where his name would go. It's a pretty emotional site to see so many firefighter names up on the wall.

During the drive to dodge city, ks we realized we lost another hour and are now in central time zone. We just got into Memphis and am calling it a night ... Hopefully tomorrow il get to write about dodge city :)

Vail, co - Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone!!! Chris and I had a great day on the mountain in vail, co. We skied the whole mountain (well the front side). It's huge !!! We checked into our hotel for the night and went straight to the hot tub... It was needed. Was able to do some laundry during dinner and now were enjoying the rest of the night ... Making it an early night because we are skiing Breckenridge in the morning ... It's gonna be a very long day with sore muscles and dealing with our sunburns, but it's all worth it ....