Our Road Trip!

We had quite an adventure this month on our whirlwind tour of what totaled to be 10 states! We drove one of the clients of Jordan's company, Bill, to Kentucky to visit his family for a week. It was a long trip-12 days-but we had a great time! Bill was a pleasure to travel with, funny, and always a great navigator. It was fun for me to get to know him better. As always, one of the best parts of the trip was coming back to our own little home. We are glad to be back. Here is a little synopsis of our trip with pictures. Each picture is a link to a slideshow of the day. This is probably the Longest Post Ever, so feel free to not read all of it!

Day 1
The start of the trip! We left Provo in the morning and drove all the way to Nebraska, through Wyoming. Talk about a boring drive. There is nothing to look at in either Wyoming or Nebraska. What made the drive slightly interesting were the enormous thunderstorms that we drove through in Wyoming. I have never driven through such rain. It was kind of scary because we couldn't really see the road or any of the surrounding cars. But we made it though and spent the night near Lincoln after a 16 hour drive!

Day 2
From Nebraska to Louisville, Kentucky. It was a slightly shorter day, but not by much. We had breakfast at a local restaurant that is apparently really famous with the truckers (a lot of our trip revolved around food, since we ate out every day, so I will mention some of the more interesting places we ate at). It was pretty good, and we were waited upon by old ladies who you could tell had been working there with their relatives for years. To get to Kentucky we drove though Missouri (past the giant arch thing in St. Louis), the southern part of Illinois, and a bit of Indiana. The last part was a really pretty drive because of all the trees surrounding the highways. Everything is so much greener out there than it is here. We dropped Bill off at his house around midnight or so, then Jordan and I went to our own hotel and crashed.

Day 3
We slept in, almost missing the invaluable continental breakfast at the hotel. We went to church, which was about 15 minutes from the hotel, and, surprise, right next to the Louisville Temple, which we had no idea about. We had dinner that night with Bill's family at a restaurant right on the banks of the Ohio river. It was very pretty, and it was fun to meet his parents, sister, and nephews.

Day 4
Today we went to the Burnheim (I think) Forest, an arboretum pretty close to Louisville. We did about a 2 hour hike and walked around some gardens. It was gorgeous, and not that humid. In fact, the whole trip was fairly dry and not very hot. The locals told us that this was very unusual and that we were very lucky; apparently August in Kentucky is unbelievably hot and humid. We had lunch at this amazingly delicious and cheap Mediterranean grill place called Shiraz. It was so good we went back later in the week. Jordan especially liked the falafel. I wish there was something like that place out here. And for dinner we ate at an Italian place--pretty good, kind of like any other Italian place--but they gave us $20 off our next meal for being first timers. So of course we went back to this one too later in the week!

Louisville Arboretum

Day 5
We went to downtown Louisville and walked around a little bit. We ate at the Hard Rock Cafe on this street called 4th Live. I guess it's the street with all the restaurants and clubs. At night time they block it off from traffic and all these lights come on. In the evening we visited the Louisville Temple, and had dinner at Mojitos. This was a yummy and fancy place. They serve tapas, which are kind of like appetizers, but it's Spanish food (which is very unlike Mexican food). I remember a similar place in Illinois, so I was really excited about this one. The food came out looking like some Iron Chef had plated it, so Jordan took some pictures. One couple asked if he was doing a review of the restaurant, and he said yes! It was a lot easier of an explanation that saying no, we're really just two nerdy people who like to take pictures and are being served food that looks fancier than anything else we've had. So the food looked great, but it was also delicious! Another place we returned to later on.

Day 6
This was a really neat day. We went to a town near Lexington and visited Three Chimneys Farm, a very upscale horse farm that houses some of the best racing thoroughbred stallions in the country. Thanks to Bill's dad, we were able to arrange our very own personal tour with one of the heads of the farm. We saw Smarty Jones, who is one of the most famous horses in the country right now. We also saw 4 other stallions, including the father of Barbaro. It was interesting to see the differences in size and build of the stallions. We also saw some mares and the little colts who are getting ready to be sold this fall. I knew next to nothing about the horse racing business before this tour, and it was absolutely fascinating to learn about the ins and outs of breeding and raising champion runners. For instance, it costs someone $100,000 to breed their mare with Smarty Jones right now. However, if Smarty Jones's offspring don't run well next season, that price will drop to as low as $25,000. It was incredible to see the lengths everyone goes to for the comfort and well-being of these horses.

After our tour, we drove around the area for a while and took pictures of the countryside and the horses. We stopped by a tiny town called Midway on our way home, and had lunch at a cute little place called Darlin' Jean's. This was the cutest town. It was full of antique shops, little bookstores, and colorful stores that sold homemade crafts and treats.

Midway, KY

Day 7
This was the opening day of the Kentucky State Fair, so we went to that and wandered around for a couple of hours. After that we went to downtown Louisville again and visited this place called Glassworks. You can take tours there and watch people blowing glass. Unfortunately, we were too late to see a tour, but looked at a gallery of really neat glass creations. Then it was off to dinner at...Mojitos!

Louisville State Fair

Day 8
Our last day in Louisville. In the morning we went to this little historic museum called Locust Grove. It's a restored house where Roger Clark (brother of the Clark from Lewis & Clark) lived. I'm still not exactly sure of all the reasons this guy is famous, but he settled a lot of areas on the east, and I think he held some important military positions too. We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. I'd never been there before, and as a warning to anyone else who has never been: the portions are huge! We'd been told that too but didn't take it too seriously. It was great food...just way too much. And of course the cheesecake was delicious. Then we picked up Bill from his family's and said goodbye to Kentucky and hello to Indiana, where we drove for almost the rest of the day. We arrived in Chicago in the evening and went to our hotel, the Palmer House, which is one of the oldest buildings in the city. Apparently it survived the Chicago fire. It was supposed to be a pretty fancy-shmancy hotel, but I think the huge lobby was more impressive than our room. Oh well, we just needed a place to sleep at night.

Locust Grove

Day 9
A really fun and busy day! Today we went to the Brookfield Zoo, not too far from Chicago, and met up with one of my oldest friends, Rachel. I haven't seen her since my wedding, so it was great to be able to catch up with her, if only for a few hours. She surprised us with the cutest stuffed tiger for the baby--a blue tiger, which was amazing since no one knew yet that we were having a boy! After a morning at the zoo (one of my favorite places to visit as a child), we went back to Chicago and visited the Field Museum of Natural History (my other favorite place). We spent several hours there but probably saw only half of the displays. We got a lot of fun pictures, especially of Bill. After all this sightseeing, our feet were exhausted and our stomachs were empty, so we found Edwardo's, a delicious, authentic Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza place. For some reason Jordan thought he would not like deep-dish pizza, but he is now truly converted! Yum, yum!

Chicago

Day 10
We left Chicago early in the morning and drove a few hours to Nauvoo, right next to the Mississippi River. This was fun for Jordan, who had never been to Nauvoo before. Bill especially liked the blacksmith and gunsmith shops! We also saw the tinsmith, the old Red Brick Store, the brick maker (bricksmith?), and got some really pretty shots of the Nauvoo temple. It is always fun to hear about how people lived and worked back in the 1800's. We had a quiet evening, ate at the hotel's buffet, took a quick dip in the pool, then it was lights out!

Nauvoo

Day 11
On our way home! Not a very fun day...just another loooong drive. We drove from Nauvoo to a small town in Idaho Springs, Colorado, past Denver and way up high in the mountains. On the way we had to endure Iowa and Nebraska--not that there's anything wrong with these states--they're just not that exciting to drive though. Bill had a treat as we stopped for lunch at Cracker Barrel, one of his favorite restaurants. We had fun trying to solve the little peg puzzles that I think are at every CB restaruant. A few times I got down to two pegs, but mostly I was just an "ignor-a-moose!" We didn't get to our hotel until about 1 am; we were sure tired!

Day 12
Almost home! It was fun waking up to the beautiful Rocky Mountains, since when we got to our hotel it was pitch black, and the last thing we had seen was flat farmland. We had a yummy breakfast at Marion's Family Restaurant or something like that, apparently a local favorite. We drove through the Eisenhower tunnel, apparently the longest tunnel in the U.S. So I was expecting a dramatic 5 minutes+ drive though a mountain, but it turned out to be barely 2 minutes. It was still cool nonetheless. We drove though a few more pretty towns in Colorado, but then the land began to flatten out a bit, and then we hit Utah. Now, I have seen a few not-so-attractive landscapes in my time (I thought the drive through Wyoming was bad), but this was truly Ugly. We were on I-70 going east into Utah. All around was barren, yellow...stuff. Rock, sand? I don't know. It didn't even remind me of Mars; it was more like Venus. No plants, no houses, only an occasional out-of-business gas station with the price still at $1.99/gal. We got on UT-6 and once we hit Price, things began to get a little more green and bearable. Spanish Fork canyon was pretty, and finally we were back in Utah county! What a fun trip! Thanks to Bill and his family for letting us accompany him on the trip. A splendid time was had by all.