Day 5: Driving Break in Denver

Friday morning we woke up to a light snow covering the ground in Denver. Nevertheless, we decided to brave the unseasonably cool weather and go to downtown Denver and check out 16th street. After that, we headed over to Golden, Colorado to tour the Coors factory. We took an audio tour, followed by meeting up in the tasting room with two of Tyler's high school friends, Mike and Al.

Day 4: Never Ending Nebraska

We thought Iowa was boring, but Nebraska somehow seemed even less exciting, maybe because it was generally flatter. It was raining the majority of the trip, so we had to take our stretching breaks indoors. This led to a snack shopping spree and discovery that Target in Nebraska sells liquor (not that we had space to fit any in our cars) We were very excited to cross into Colorado, but it continued to seem like the middle of nowhere.
We finally arrived in Aurora, Colorado where we stayed with family friends Dan and Sandra...and got to enjoy a home-cooked meal of chili complete with a chocolatey dessert drink.

Day 3: Quest for an Ohama Steak

After 2 really long days of driving, we allowed ourselves to sleep in and get a later start. Day 3's drive was mostly through Iowa, and the landscape didn't have a whole lot of variation. There were lots of random attractions on road signs, and Tyler "accidentally" led us to the National Motorcyle Museum on one of our stops. (http://www.nationalmcmuseum.org) We eventually made it to Omaha to Johnny's Cafe for a genuine Omaha steak. Tyler claims it was in the top two steaks he's ever had. After dinner, we drove just a little further into Nebraska and stayed the night in Lincoln.

Day 2: DETOUR

We decided a few days before leaving to change up our original plan and detour to Madison, Wisconsin. We got to walk around and see a little of the city (including a bike shop in an old train station shown in the photo above) before meeting up with Aunt Sally and Uncle Dave for dinner. They also drove us around and showed us more of the city and the campus. We had a delicious meal at one of their favorite restaurants, Bluephies. And since we were in Wisconsin, we had to start off the meal with some bacon-wrapped cheese curds. The meal ended with selecting the dessert by looking thru that red View-Master (that's the name of that binocular toy according to our Wikipedia search.)

Packing + Day 1

We decided to each drive our own car to Oregon caravan-style, but that decision left us with really limited space. We brought virtually no furniture and went through the trouble of having a "trial pack" a week before the big move. While it was a big help, it still took all day Sunday to pack up our stuff. (Special thanks to Elena for "helping" us, too)

Day one of driving was the longest we had planned, going to Royal Oaks, Michigan (near Detroit). Including stops, it took a total of about 11 hours. Our longest stop was to go to a restaurant featured on Diners, Drive Ins, and Dives near Pittsburgh. It was called Starlite Lounge, and would probably most appropriately fall under the "dives" category. Megan chose it because it was known for one of her all-time favorite foods, pierogies. They did not disappoint.

 

When we finally made it to Megan's cousin Paul's house in Royal Oaks, we unpacked what we needed for the night and headed to a nearby restaurant, Vinsetta Garage (www.vinsettagarage.com). We each tried out some local beers and feasted on pizza and pasta bowls. We wish we could have had more time to spend in Detroit, but we had to get up early to start day 2's journey. Thank you, Paul for being such a great host to us!