Our 10 State Summer

As many of you know, the crazy Hansen's have up and gone on one hoopla of a summer adventure. John is working for Vivint, installing security systems. Originally we were supposed to go to Colorado, then it got changed right before we left and we were sent to Cedar Rapids Iowa....NOW, we're in Odessa Texas. I know, i'm WAY behind on updates for the kids, but let me get all of this posted, then i'll go back and post on the kiddies! So far we've visited/driven through 10 states in the last 3 weeks,and have racked up almost 2,500 miles; by the end of summer we're expecting to hit 2 or 3 more states and another 1,000 miles to get home, here's a little map showing our route to our supposed final destination of Odessa TX for the summer!!!

Most of our journeying has been steady and pleasant, with a two year old and newborn, we thought life could get a little crazy on the open road, but they've done MAGNIFICENT!!! We really have no justification in complaining about our kids...HOWEVER we have a definite right to complain about the weather we've had on the second leg of our journey from Iowa to Texas....pretty much the picture below best depicts our drive!!!


Thankfully we didn't see any of these along the road (well, there was a dark cloud that was low and reaching to the ground, but we're not storm chasers, so we didn't hang around to find out if it was a sml tornado or not!)BUT we did drive through those horrific storms you all have probably heard about that produced tornadoes throughout Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Texas...BUT wait you say...weren't you traveling through three of those states in the last two days....why yes, my friend we did, and the whole time we were watching the sky expecting to see a tornado drop down on us at any moment!!! (more on our actual storm driving experience to come!)

But let's back up a bit and start at the beginning....ahh, here's our peaceful non-tornado Rupert Idaho....we'll be back for visits!!!

From Idaho we traveled down through Utah...

And then drove across the great state of Wyoming...we stayed that first night in Cheyenne. An Antelope should be the state's official mascot, we spotted literally HUNDREDS of them as we drove through the southern part of the state on I-80, we had a nifty system using our blinkers to point out to each other our finds that our nature eyes spotted. (oh yes, we were driving in separate cars, Carter rode with John and Owen with me)

I love this silhouette...it's plastered on EVERYTHING in Wyoming...it seems Texas isn't the only state that likes to claim that they're where real cowboys come from!

Straight across Wyoming and then into Nebraska...it's just one of those states that you know exists, but you never in your life have a reason to go to!!! What a boring drive-the highlight of our journeying through the empty lands of Nebraska were seeing TONS of wild turkeys...they should make a turkey their state bird...for the record, the state bird of Nebraska is the Western Meadowlark.

We spent night two of traveling in Lincoln Nebraska in honor of our good friends son who was born the day before (they named him Lincoln!)Ok, well the turkey's weren't the highlight of our trip, it was actually when we went through Omaha and stopped at the Winter Quarter's Temple and visitors center. What a beautiful and somber place. The Winter Quarter's cemetery is actually gated in as part of the temple grounds.Carter loves "fwowers" so we stopped to smell them on the temple grounds.

From Nebraska we wandered into Iowa, but i'll fastforward and mention our quick side trip into Illinois (as it's not a part of our actual route to TX) We wanted to go to Nauvoo, but got moved to TX before we had the chance, so we took a quick trip over to Moline Illinois to visit the John Deere Pavilion, we had a lot of fun getting in the big tractors, Carter especially liked it...SO many buttons and levers to push and move!!!Here, we find ourselves in Iowa, the highlight of my trip...at the birth place of John Wayne!!! I don't know why, but I just love John Wayne-so we took a little side trip to see where he was born. Winterset Iowa, is also the little town where much of the film "Bridges of Madison County" was filmed...although many of the bridges are still in existence, we didn't have time to visit them.We spent two weeks in Cedar Rapids Iowa. What a beautiful place, it reminded me SO much of Oregon, the only difference is that Iowa is flat, and you can see the tree tops into he horizon, where at home you have mountains and hills in the background. Sales weren't as good as they hoped, so corporate decided to send us to Texas...that threw us for a loop, were expecting to get moved into Illinois. So we left Tuesday morning, May 24th. We enjoyed our quick stop at the historic Liberty Jail.

From Missouri we traveled into Kansas, and had an annoying new experience....who knew that Kansas had a turnpike...it's quite odd driving 75 mph on the freeway, only to come to a complete stop to pay a ridiculous fee to drive on a road that's not even well maintained, to then also have to pay a fee every time you exit or get back on the freeway.....how ANNOYING!!! I do believe the total cost of driving on the turnpikes in Kansas and Oklahoma totaled $26 for our vehicles combined...RIDICULOUS!!!

Well, goodbye then Kansas and hello Oklahoma "....where the winds come sweeping down the plains...." I couldn't get the songs from the musical "Oklahoma" out of my head the whole time we were driving through!!! Well, this state's pretty boring, like unto Nebraska, but I had another first.....I saw my first armadillo!!! Now, it was dead along the road and I know to most people this isn't very exciting, but when you're driving through OK, ANYTHING is more exciting than the butt of the semi in front of you! It was also interesting that towards south OK, the dirt is red, and continues to be that way here in Texas....isn't dirt supposed to be brown??? J/K!

We paid our last toll in OK, right before we crossed the border into Texas. Unfortunately instead of being able to turn East, and drive a few hours to all of the big cities full of tourism, and excitement....we had to head west towards...well, quite frankly NOTHING!!! I kept re-setting the GPS, because I couldn't believe the route we were taking was right! Pretty much no-mans land Texas consists of dirt, cactus, dirt devils,short shrub like trees, cotton fields, oil pumps, cemeteries and a few really cordial old men, who give your two year old suckers from their barber shop down the street!

For a few days we're staying in Odessa, then it sounds like we're getting moved to Midland-apparently they're trying to work out housing accommodations that we can settle into for at least two months....hahahaha, but that's just rumor I heard from another wife of a salesman. It's quite interesting living in a place where "y'all" is a common and acceptable speech quirk, where in other places it contains a hick-like essence. Their roads make no sense, their water is undrinkable (oh, yea we drink bottled water only, they have water jug filling stations all over town, usually in the parking lot of a gas station) and it's hot as heck...BUT at least it's a dry heat and not a suffocating humid heat like in Iowa. It's flat, dry, dusty and ugly...we're in the heartland of the oil fields, and industry, so there's not much beauty unless it's at night and you can look out over the factories and plants and see all of the lights on twinkling at night. THANKFULLY Midland is a little greener, more developed, and a seemingly slightly safer place to be....having three locks on my hotel door only makes me feel slightly safer.

Seeing the red dirt in OK, and also in TX, made me think of this song...NOW it finally makes sense....I always thought "Red Dirt Road" was an odd name for a street! Hahah, I just had to laugh at myself!!! Well, anyways, we're here safe and somewhat sound, John jumped right into work-things are really hoppin down here, so he's been busy, the kids and I are trying to find a routine again, it was nice to arrive and see a few familiar faces, it's nice to have friends in the same boat with us this summer! My bet is that we stay in TX for the rest of the summer, with a few short distance moves in store...BUT who knows they might up and move us to Alaska tomorrow!!! Hahaha just kidding!!!