CT!

We made it! We have arrived in CT. It is great to finally be in a stable location. We arrived on Tuesday the 12th. We managed to unload most of the truck that day. What a mess that was. The stairs leading to our floor are very scary. The wind up and are very narrow. I was a bit scared to carry heavy things up them for fear of falling through. Yikes. But nobody fell. All was unloaded safely. The next day we got the final pieces of furniture up. We are still in the process of unloading everything.
Today I am with my grandma in RI. Sorry I haven't been able to do an update till now. We should be getting internet service this Thursday. Erik is going a bit crazy with no internet.
Anyways, I just wanted to do a quick update while I was able to use the internet.

Miss you all a lot.

Love
Jenifer

Lotta space

So we finished Indiana this morning. That was pretty uneventful.
We then drove through Ohio. That was pretty much all that happened in Ohio. We drove through it. Yay. (I say that with much sarcasm.) Let's see what else can I say about Ohio. The drivers were better. That was good. There was a lot of corn, and we do like corn. We drove south of Cleveland and sang the Cleavland Rocks song. It was also in Ohio that we saw a semi-truck from Battle Ground WA. Oh, and we were driving through a bunch of trees and saw a HUGE sign of the Golden Arches for McDonalds. It happened to be in McDonald, OH. Yup, that was about it for Ohio.
We then made it into Pennsylvania. There sure is a whole lotta space in Northern PA. Just a bunch of trees. It is very beautiful, but I think Rachon was expecting to see people when we got here. There are no people, just trees. Erik and I think it is very unpatriotic of PA to have so many trees. Why hasn't this all been logged? And where are the millions of McDonalds, the Starbucks, the houses all cramed together on the side of the freeway? What's with all this open space?!?!

U-Hauls seen: 17
Penskes seen: 6
P.O.D.S. seen: 0
Budgets seen: 2
Best road sign of the day: Buckle up next million miles
Different state license plates seen: 37 (And 3 Provinces)
Plates seen: connecticut, florida, georgia, illinois, indiana, iowa, kansas, kentucky, maine, maryland, massachusetts, michigan, minnesota, missouri, montana, nebraska, nevada, new jersey, new york, north dakota, ohio, oklahoma, pennsylvania, rhode island, south carolina, tennessee, texas, vermont, virginia, washington, west virginia, wisconsin. And:
alberta, manitoba, ontario
Which of these places have you been to?

Last time change

We are now in Elkhart, Indiana. We made it through 4 states today, which makes a total of 8 states for us. Go us. Our route took us through the rest of Minnesota, a big bit of Wisconsin, some of Illinois (mainly Chicago), and about 100 miles into Indiana.
We missed out on our bumper sticker in Minnesota, due to lack of gas stations.
Wisconsin, known for its cheese, surprisingly had a lot of corn. We were very baffled by their highways, seeing as they were called things like Highway HH or Highway Q. What's that all about? We enjoyed our lunch in Deforest, Wisconsin. Our elephant was very happy to see its distant relative there -a GIANT pink elephant with glasses!
Illinois... what a pain. Let me just say, I never want to go to Chicago again. Oye vey! The bugs in North Dakota were bad, but the drivers in Chicago are much more annoying!! There must be a ban on turn signals there that I don't know about. All the traffic there made us a bit loopy. A few bad jokes were made, and laughter followed. Oh well, we made it through there alive. Illinois was also where we encountered our first toll roads. Those are sure fun, or something.
Indiana has been surprisingly pretty. It was nice to see some green again. I don't know what else to really say about it other than it has gone pretty fast.

Toll stations passed: 6
Toll money paid: $12 (for my car) $35 (for the truck)
P.O.D.S seen: 0
U-Hauls seen: 17
Penskes seen: 4

Also, to see the pictures of the trip at the bottom of the page better and to read captions for them, click the pictures and it will take you to another screen.

Over half way there!

We are finally out of Montana!!! Whooo-hoo!!! On our way out of Montana, it rained a bit. I believe Montana was crying for us. Whether it was tears of joy or sadness, I do not know. One of the first towns we came to was Home on the Range, and no, there were no deer or antelope playing. As Erik said, these are hard times. This Grasslands area was Rachon's favorite part of North Dakota. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we crossed our second time change. It sucks losing time like this. We also crossed the Missouri River today. It was a lot smaller than I would have thought. The cool part of North Dakota is all the random statues. We got to see Salem Sue, the world's largest Holstein cow in New Salem, North Dakota. We also got a nice picture of the largest bison. They also had a very cool sculpture of... eye geese. (See pictures later.) We pulled off in Steele, North Dakota, for lunch. It was here that we received our favorite quote of the day: "Do you want soup or salad? We're out of soup." If I could sum up North Dakota in three words, it would be Too Many Bugs!!! It was gross. But we are now past North Dakota. We have now made it to St. Paul, Minnesota. Our drive through Minnesota proved to be less exciting than expected. That's okay, it had the prettiest rest stop that we've seen so far. It had a beautiful lake with a picnic table in it.
U-Hauls seen today: 8
Penskes seen: 1
P.O.D.S. seen: 0
Roadkill: 38.... ewwww....

More Montana

Day two, check.

I will admit that Montana is a beautiful state, but really, does it ever end?!?! We are now in Glendive, MT. We were on the road for 15 hours today! Granted that includes stopping for two meals, breaks, and a good deed in Lame Deer, but still.
Today's adventures including seeing signs for the World Famous Testicle Festival in Clinton, MT. (no we didn't stop). We also passed through Jens City. Nobody told me I had my own city.
We later pulled off at Warm Springs, which happens to also be the exit for the State Hospital. I think Rachon and Erik had plans to leave me there, but I wouldn't have it. Not after being eaten alive by the malaria infested mosquitos.
Today we also crossed over the continental divide, making our highest point for the day at 6,393ft. That is a fun drive with a Penske truck (not really of course).
Part of what made our day so long was detouring off of I-90 to go to Lame Deer, MT. We took 3 boxes of childrens books to the Boys and Girls Club there. They will be be put to good use there, so we were very glad to do it.
Other random facts for the day:
U-Hauls seen: 15
Penskes seen: 11
P.O.D.S. seen: 0
Tractors seen in our first 100 miles of driving today: 71
Times passing the Clark Fork river again: 3 for a total of 16 times
Vehicals we passed: 9
Life lesson learned today from road signs: "Don't stick that elbow out to far, it might go home in a different car."

Take care all!
Love
Jen

Day One

Well, we have finished day one. Yay for us!! Only one near death experience. That's gotta be pretty good.

We ended up on the road at about 7am. Only an hour off. Our first great find was the nation's leading potato producing county in the nation. This was in Grant County, WA. We were able to overcome the temptation to stop and forged on. We were quite amused driving through the town of George, WA. Haha.
We drove along until we came to Tokio. (I think Erik made a wrong turn somewhere.) From Tokio we continued on through Idaho. I thought that Coeur d'Alene was gorgeous! What was not as gorgeous was the World's Largest Dodge Dealership in Kellog, ID.
We then came to exit 0 on the border of Montana. We had to get out and get a picture of the elephant here of course! Once we continued on we came to the Clark Fork River. We passed over that dang river 13 times today!!! Oye. I suppose it was pretty though.
Our "near death experience" came when we were close to out final destination. Erik had just changed lanes with the truck and car in tow when the pick-up in front of him lost two bales of hay! Had Erik been right behind him it could have been rather messy. Luckily we all came out just fine.
Other random things we noticed today...
We passed 3 "P.O.D.S.", at least 3 Penske moving trucks, and 9 U-Hauls.
In the 11.5 hours we took to get to Missoula we passed 6 vehicles. (With the car in tow we can only go 55. Yes, it sucks)
And finally, the walkie-talkies are much much fun!

The eve of the trip

Well this will be a short post.
We got the truck all loaded up. Only took about 7 hours!!! At least it is all secure. We had lots of help from the elephant.
Tonight we will be staying at Erik's parents house (Thanks Rob and Jeannie!) and will be leaving at 0600 tomorrow morning.
PS
I would love to send a shout out to Jeannie. Happy Birthday!! And thanks or all your help.
PSS
Pictures of the day to come...

Love
Jeni