OREGON

A little slice of heaven where people pump your gas for you, shopping carts have cup holders, you can purchase beer and wine in grocery stores and the displays are cute, and something that costs $5 is only $5 because there is no sales tax!!

Bend welcomed us with a 60 degree bluebird day yesterday! It seriously felt like summer! We have been busy running around trying to get everything situated in our place but so far we love Bend and our house is awesome! The only room that is set up is Ed's office as he is back to work as of today!

We were a little nervous moving into a house we'd never seen before but it turned out great!! We have never had a garage before and are loving it! Same goes for the 2 guest bedrooms and guest bathroom. Come visit please!! 

The highlight for us and definitely the doggies has to be our fenced backyard complete with a horseshoe pit and 2 fire pits! We also have a front porch, back porch and backyard patio. The dogs are enjoying chasing each other in the backyard and Brody has seriously been doing laps for hours. 

Check out the link of Bro:

http://youtu.be/yZXiXM1nbxc

They also think the entire house is a dog bed and love it!

 (I guess we have never had carpet before, ha)

Blue and Red lights

Made it 3360 miles before getting pulled over! Luckily it was the nicest Oregon cop possible!! We didn't replace the light in Jackson afterall and it came back to haunt us, ha! Good news is we didn't get a ticket.

40 miles to Bend!!

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Home stretch

Crawling across Eastern/Central Oregon, into the sunset. Beautiful country. Almost to Burns. Some pictures from the last couple of hours

Bull sale

High desert hillside

A nice selection of "Urban DVD"s available in the Ontario gas station.

Reegen OD-ing on the fresh, Oregon air

Driving into the sunset

Crossed into the last timezone. 130 miles to go

Welcome to Oregon

Isn't it beautiful?!

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Rollin along on the Oregon trail

After a slow drive out of Jackson in the snow, down the Snake River canyon and along Palisades Res., we hit dry roads at Idaho Falls and have been making great time across Idaho. Were just outside Twin Falls now, temps in the 40s and partly sunny. Hopefully in Boise by 330 or so.
Saw some cool wildlife rolling out of WY. An eagle flying over the river, a herd of elk at the feed ground, another small group of elk sitting in the snow on a hillside, a moose by Palisades and a coyote walking across a big field by Swan Valley. Also saw a phantom-tele-skier guy walking along the road way down in the canyon, apparently going to ski somewhere down there.

  Cluster of elk in the middle to the left

 Moose somewhere in there

The wagon defrosting

Oregon Trail

We are just leaving Jackson and plan on arriving in Bend tonight! Can't believe it!

Gnar gnar

Great day at our favorite mountain and enjoying our favorite sweet potato fries!!

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Cowboy Powder

11 inches of new snow in the last 24 hours, heyo!

Had a blast at breakfast this morning with the GVOG ladies and then a walk with the dogs to the Elk Refuge!! Great to be back!!

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Good to be back!

Beautiful sunset as we rolled into town. Unhooked the trailer then went and enjoyed a couple cold ones with great friends at the brew pub! Feels so great to be back in Jackson. Looking forward to some powpow and apres tomorrow!!

Excited to sleep and love our awesome set up- thanks Pete and Barb!! Can't wait for breakfast tomorrow with Hanna, Callie, Brantley and Madeline!

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JACKSON!!!!!!

We made it!

Heading to the pub to catch up with Pete, Barb, Chappy and Emily & Luis!!!

Happy Leap Day!

5 miles to Jackson. Slow going from Pinedale as we hit a bunch of snow.

Winter never arrived in Mass but it's definitely here in WY!

Today is Wednesday and I’m sad I’m not heading to Coogan’s for karaoke night with the American Personnel crew. Luckily I have the memories to look back on: Rob walking in, taking a shot of Dr. Mc Gillicuddy’s  and jumping on stage to sing Johnny Cash, Greta getting numbers from the twin bartenders, creepy guys hitting on Veronica and handing out their business cards as she heads to the stage to sing Janice Joplin, and Manny KILLIN it with the most amazing rendition of I Want it That Way by the Backstreet Boys I have ever seen! Good times and great memories!

I am equally sad I will not be playing soccer tonight with Green Death, the best group of random people I have ever had the pleasure to play with. Who would have thought a group of 4 couples randomly assigned to a team could come together, bonded and been so dominate? I think out of the 6 seasons we played together we were the champions 4 times, could have been more seasons and more championships too, hard to keep track of all those wins. That time was extra special to me too because even though Ed hadn’t played soccer since he was 8, he offered to play with me and it as so much fun. It was amazing seeing how much he improved in such a short time and was handy having a “meathead” football player to take out players on the other team, male or female it didn’t matter.

Pinedale

Shout out to Jordo as we stroll through his hometown!

 We have 66 miles to go! Fingers crossed for clear roads!

Eat our dust Laramie!

This was our visibility for parts of the drive this morning!!

What we were trying to avoid. 

Everyone looked ok in the truck!

Windy!

This is the only time during our trip the dogs didn't sleep! 

They could tell something was up! Smart little doggies!

Good news is that is behind us and the roads and conditions are looking better ahead of us! 

On a positive note, we were able to fill up for $2.99 this morning which was great! 

On a not so positive note, our 4WD light will not go off now even though we believe we turned it off.

 Hard tellin not knowin! 

Shout out to the hubster!

The drive from Cheyenne to Laramie last night was the scariest stretch of the trip so far. The temp dropped to 12, it was windy, icy and the pass was steep. Ed did such a great job driving slow and keeping all of us safe! We took a vote and Brody and I voted Ed the MVP of the trip for his excellent driving last night. Reegen of course voted for himself and feels he’s done the best job barking at cows, horses, protecting us from the Papa John’s delivery man and anyone else who walked by our hotel room! Either way Ed got 2 votes so he is officially the MVP of the trip and we are so appreciative of his patience and attention to safety. Even though he did set the alarm an hour early this morning because our phones are not changing with the time zones, I will let him keep his title! THANKS BABE FOR ALL YOU DO! I LOVE YOU!!

We are learning so much on this trip! While I was able to teach Ed the perfect scoop of a peanut buster parfait (a little more vanilla than fudge but a good amount of both, you don’t want one to overpower the other, and at least one peanut) he taught me the art of drafting behind trucks, the “3 second rule” (I shouldn’t pass an object the truck in front of me passed for at least 3 seconds) and let me know it’s actually not a race- what dude? Playing leap frog with the semis- I would get them on the straight-aways but they would always pass me on the hills. Drives me crazy!

Mom's not crazy after all!

Monday night mom called to let me know there was a tornado warning in Nebraska on Tuesday. Of course I didn’t think that would really happen but we looked into the weather and our route and figured we’d be fine. Considering all the tornadoes that touched down yesterday in the states we drove through, we are feeling very fortunate and watched over. Apparently yesterday was the first time a tornado has touched down in NE in February since they started tracking weather- that is so crazy and of course it happened on the day we drove through the state! We haven’t heard any details of the tornadoes yet but our thoughts and prayers are with those who were affected. 

Laramie, where the wind always blows

We are on our final leg to Jackson today. It is another very windy day so we are taking it slow. 

We just passed this truck, looks like the wind got it!

WYOMING!!!

We just made it! No cars in sight and gas is $2.99, paradise!

We missed the sign but wanted to make sure everyone could see its beauty so I found this one online!

Home is where the heart is!!

448 miles driven across the state of Nebraska today, man it's a sneaky large state! While there were tornado warnings in NE today we seemed to time the drive up perfectly and avoided the really bad weather. We were hit with some crazy strong wind and periods of heavy rain but overall it was just fine. 

Our high temp today was in NE at 54 and since then it has been dropping pretty fast the further west we get. We are currently at 20 degrees with a total drop of 34 degrees today. 

We are currently 6 miles from the WY border! Wyoming is such a special place for us, we can't wait to get there!! There are currently only 3 other cars in sight on I-80 right now (and we can see about 3 miles), gotta love it!

 

One of the many reasons we love WY so much is because its where we met! 

This picture was taken the first night we met- and its dated, love it!

Just like Boston its not the location but the people who make it special. While some of our friends are no longer in Jackson we are so excited to see those who still are. 

We are so fortunate to have great friends like Pete and Barb who offered their place for us to stay. Can't wait to celebrate their wedding with them!

 I also have plans for breakfast on Thursday morning with my GVOG ladies!!! And Emily and I are firming up details for a ladies lunch- so excited!!

The plan is to ski on Thursday and it looks like we should get some fresh powder so the timing is perfect!! Hopefully the powder pig can hold off until we get there or else it'll be an interesting drive tomorrow.

 

  We are currently trying to figure out how we can eat at all of our favorite Jackson restaurants in just a couple days! 

We have been craving this stuff for 2 years!!!

If anyone can do it, its definitely us!

First stop... toss up between Pica's and Bon Appe Thai I think, but that could change!

 So much to eat and so little time!

Big Western Sky

Check out this beautiful Nebraskan sunset!!

We officially completed half of our 3200 mile journey! 

Looks about right, AO!

 

Scene's from Nebraska

Prove it

Rainbow after the storm

It feels like you're running at an incredible rate, Harry!

Literally seeing thousands of the birds in big, migratory flocks, mostly snow geese it looks like. Pretty cool

Ridin dirty

Some rain outside Lincoln but not too bad. The fast, reckless driver has taken over for the slow, careful driver so we are making better, white-knuckled time. Makin it to Laramie lookin pretty doable.

Tornado Free

Just got a weather update from Spencer and we are feeling lucky that we seemed to just miss some pretty big storms. We did have a few moments of heavy rain however we just jumped on I-80 W in Lincoln, NE and seem to be west of the weather. Looks like snow ahead of us in WY but coast is clear for now.

Hostess with the Mostess

I hate that I haven't seen Kelsey since my wedding 2.5 years ago! She did such a great job with the Irish wedding blessing reading and although she did not attempt the Irish brogue she promised the night before, it was a hilarious moment once she started as I didn't know what was going to come out of her mouth!

She was an amazing host and prepared a delicious homemade meal for us consisting of baked ziti, veggies and garlic bread. Even though we had only been on the road for 2 days at the time, it seemed like such a treat to have a house to stay in and a warm meal to eat.

She also left me some pretty awesome notes and even had the Bachelor all queued up for me- how did she know?!         

Luckily Ruby was the sweetest little lady and Brody had no reason to display his dominance. By the morning they were best buddies!

Thanks Kelsey for your hospitality! Glad I get to see you in 2 months and we don't have to wait another 2 years! If only I could shove all of my friends into my u-haul trailer... why am I just now thinking of this?