30 November 2008

Whirlwind US Tour

Its been a long month. As most of you know, I got married to Joel Stizlein (hurray!) and we are now moving across the country to Portland, OR so I can go to school. We are almost to Portland, but have stayed in Teton Village for the last two days. This has been like an extension of our honeymoon, our hotel was reasonably priced because it's the off-season but its *very* nice. Pictures to come. :0) Today we visited Grand Teton National Park and went a little way into Yellowstone but neither had any through-roads because of the snow and, again, the off-season. They were both free for that reason ($25 each!) but we would have gotten in free because we got a National Parks Pass for a wedding gift (totally awesome!). There will be photos of both parks to come too.

Thus far we've driven through PA, WV, and OH, stopping in the latter for Joel's grandmother's funeral and our second reception for local friends and family. Then went on to IN where we visited Joel's old roommate who is now currently residing in Bloomington, IN which was a great town. Then we ventured through MO, stopped at the Arch in St. Louis and went through KS. Neither of the Kansas Cities (MO and KS) were cool cities, I've never been more disappointed in a city before. That part was kind of sad. Then we drove to CO to visit my (extended) family for Thanksgiving. It was good, we relaxed a bit after spending many days driving all day and into the night. Then from there we drove to Teton Village in WY. I've got to say, desolation never looked so pretty! Ha, we've honestly driven many miles through WY without another car in site and only plains and flats full of dry grass and cattle. Tomorrow we are embarking for our final leg of the trip on to OR. We'll be driviing through a little more of WY then on to ID and finally to OR. It should take about a day and a half and we should be there on tuesday.

We've got an apartment pretty secure. We're filling out applications and the studio we're applying for has no other applicants, so it looks pretty solid. Joel has an interview to be an MRI center secretary in a couple days too. Things seem like they're looking up and I will most assuredly update what happens to us next and will include pictures of our trip.

Thanks to everyone who made this all possible!!