Road Trip!

Last week, I was talking on the phone with my friend Melissa. She was about to drive from DC to Utah to start grad school at only the BEST SCHOOL ON THE PLANET!! (GO UTES!!!) Another friend of hers who was originally going to make the drive with her was suddenly unable to, so... I went. Because, why not? :)

Below, a few photos from our trip. (More details to come in subsequent posts!) These are some of the things we saw/did:

Leaving DC

Uhhhh... This was an interesting story. But I'll get to that later.

When we saw THIS black/tinted window'd bus and suburban with DC/MD license plates, we were pretty sure they belonged to someone important from DC. Turns out they might have been POTUS's! He did a bus tour in Iowa when WE were on our trip!

Who knew that most of America... is made entirely of CORN?? We sure saw a lot of it!

Also, we ate a lot of this:

The salad makes it better, right??

We made pit stops in Cleveland (Night 1), Carthage/Nauvoo (Day 2), Des Moines (Night 2), Winter Quarters/Omaha (Day 3), Denver (Night 3), and finally UTAH (Day 4).

We also took time for an important announcement:

Source

Statue of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. (Carthage Jail -- where they were both martyred -- in the back)

It felt odd to smile here, but we didn't know what else to do?

CORN!

Sunset on the Mississippi River

Our first sighting of the Nauvoo Temple!

Gorgeous Nauvoo sunset

Statue of Joseph and Hyrum, riding off to Carthage 

Looking to the temple

Did I mention... CORN?!

Finally a different landscape! (Thanks for that, Wyoming!)

ANNND finally:

UTAH!

Oh, and I got to meet this lil' guy in Iowa! His name is Asher, and he is the new baby son of my Oakland sister, Michelley. (Remember that baby shower I threw for her? Here be the babe!)

Proud mama!

I'll share more about each day later this week. :)