The 30 hours between MA and CO ended up totaling out to 56 hours with our pit stops every 2 1/2 hours, overnight hotel stays in Cleveland, OH & Coralville, IA, and our dinner date in Chicago with our cousin Mackie. We initially planned to have a few hours to be 'tourists' in the towns we spent the night in, however, leaving MA later than expected had us changing plans. We were determined to make it to Fort Collins by Sunday. With the awful ride Stu was experiencing driving the shaky, loud, and slow 26' Penske rental truck, we needed to be sure to get a decent amount of sleep every time we spent the night.
On our way to the second of the two hotel stays we found the World's Largest Truck Stop and we couldn't pass up the chance to stop and check it out.
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| (Stu was obviously stoked!) |
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| (We had no idea what awaited us inside.) |
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| (Chrome...so much chrome!) |
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| (A Trucker's version of Pimp my Ride.) |
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| (Of course there was some Jesus!) |
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| (Lamp Chop relocated to Sesame St.) |
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| (Found a Swamp Thing costume idea.) |
Here's a link if you feel the need to see more of what it had to offer:
http://iowa80truckstop.com/.
During the long haul we had the opportunity to drive through a TON of rain (good luck?). It rained throughout the remainder of OH from Cleveland, through all of Indiana, and from our hotel in IA to Omaha, NE. We were glad we purchased walkie-talkies (thanks for the suggestion Jess), we were able to communicate easily, tell jokes, make funny noises, and play random road games to pass the time away and keep each other alert.
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| (Somewhere in Ohio.) |
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| (Somewhere in Illinois when the rain let up after Indiana.) |
When it wasn't raining, it was in the 90s and the sun shone so strong through the windows of the car...I spent some of the time like this:
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(It's a good look for me..really.)
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Sunday was our longest haul of the trip, we left our IA hotel at 8 am and arrived in Fort Collins at 7 pm. We were greeted by this at the CO border:
(Love it's simplicity.)
We were incredibly relieved to arrive at our townhouse and unpack. It's absolutely bonkers how it can take hours and hours to pack a 26 ft. truck, but less than an hour to unpack it. We were so grateful to see the majority of our stuff made it in one piece. It's hard to be so far from family and friends in MA, having things here that remind us of them (you) make it a little sweeter. We're excited to share our lives here with all of you :).
