The driving continues...

Even though we haven't been on the road forever, it feels like it. We actually have to double check at times what day of the week it is because we have lost track. Funny how that happens when all you seem to do is drive. So with that, we decided to take some stops along this trip for our own sanity. Here's what we have been up to in the last two days:

Thursday we drove from Vega, Texas into Oklahoma City with our stop for the evening being in Bristow, Oklahoma. Along the way we made a stop in Erick, OK to see the Roger Miller Museum. It is very small, but had a lot of interesting things to see about his life. We weren't allowed to take very many pictures, but there were a few items we could photograph. Some things we couldn't take a photo of were his FFA jacket, lots and lots of photos, scraps of paper where he started writing song lyrics for his well known hits, jumpsuits/suits and his records. The few things we did snap photos of were a motorcycle, his Big River poster (with his tux in the photo that he wore when getting his Tony's for being in the Broadway play), a street sign with his name on it, and a picture of him with Willie Nelson playing an electric guitar. While the museum was small it was really interesting, and as we wer the only ones there, the lady running it gave us our own personal tour. Did you know that Ryan is actually related to Roger Miller? And that we have seen his brother Wendell at a family reunion play?! Yup its true Ryn is related to EVERYONE!

After that small adventure off the beaten path....literally....we headed into OKC. Ryan has a friend who lives there that we met up with for dinner. While we waited for him to get off from work, we drove over to the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. What a powerful thing that is to see. Two walls/arches stand on either side, both with a time on them 9:01 for what life was like before the bombing and at the other end 9:03 for what life is like after and into the future to be for OKC. There was a chair made of bronze and glass for each person who died, all 168 (including 19 children)...each chair was put in a row representing the floor where that person worked or was visiting and had died that day. There are 9 rows. There was one extra row of 5 chairs representing the 5 people who were on the street that day that died. Julie took photos and made sure she got every chair. You don't remember one, you remember all. The saddest one had to be a chair for a child (they are smaller then the adults chairs) with a teddy bear on it. We can't imagine what it is like to lose a child, and that was hard to see. Next to the memorial is a museum, and on the outside, you can still see damage from the bomb on the building. Apparently they put a protective coating on it so it won't get any further damage from the weather, but that you can also see how big this explosion was. Finally there is the survivors tree. It is still standing. It was planted in someones backyard in 1910. It moved to the Federal Building when it was built. It withstood the blast that destroyed the building and all of those lives. To us, and we are sure to many others, it shows how we as American's are...Strong.

After the memorial we met up with Ryan's friend Clint. Clint used to live in Lemoore for a few years and actually went to high school with both of us (but Julie never had met him)...we also went over to his parents house to say a surprise hi which was a treat for them. We enjoyed having dinner with Clint, his wife Fallon and her family. We wish we could of stayed longer but we still had some miles to put in before we called it a night. We headed over to see Julie's friend Stacey as well after dinner. Again, only about an hour to visit then we had to leave. Hitting the road at almost 11pm and getting to a hotel at 12:30 made it a LONG day.

Getting up Friday morning was not easy but we needed to get started on those miles AGAIN. So we loaded up the car and started our day. Before leaving Bristow, Julie headed into WalMart to get a few things, and was SHOCKED to see no one in Pj's (totally common in most places) the whole store was clean, and an aisle full of clearance items! None of these are things you see in Cali. She thought she was in a blackhole or something.

After that adventure we headed just north of Tulsa to Claremore and the Will Rogers Musuem. Man is that big! And the view, is AMAZING! Lots and lots of interesting stuff to see about him. We took tons of pictures. Our favorite part was seeing his Masonic items. His petition to join Lodge, his Fez and all the infomation about how he joined. It was a nice surprise to see. Julie knew he was a Mason, but didn't think about it until she saw the display. She didn't know he had also been a Shriner. We were both glad to see that they had that information on display. A lot of people don't know much about Masonry and might have otherwise thrown it out, or never put it on display thinking no one would care to see it. Glad they did here!

Finally after that stop we headed out of state. Which by the way, when asked at a toll booth where you are going, remember where it is. We kind of stiffed the DOT in OK. Shhhhhhh don't tell because we thought we were going to Tulsa when in fact we were already outside of it, and were heading to Joplin. Opps! We owe them a bit more, but oh well. Off we headed to Missouri. We had dinner in Lebanon at Dowd's Catfish and BBQ. When we were headed out they had a HUGE USA map on the wall and asked that you pin where you are from. Lucky us, we were the first to pin right on Lemoore, Ca! Don't worry we have pictures of that as well. And after dinner we headed our last 1.5 hours to Sullivan, MO where we stayed for the night.

We are both really tired from all this driving. It is now Saturday am as Julie writes this. We won't be in Williamsport until Tuesday morning/afternoon. Our only interesting stop today will probably be the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Not sure of anything else we might want to see. And tonight we will be spending the night in Indiana. Yes, another state...

Cross Country Drive

So here it is, we have started our journey with a drive across the USA to head to our new home in PA. We headed out late (go figure) on Monday, March 19th. It was not easy leaving Lemoore. Saying goodbye to Julie's parents was not easy for Julie.

Our first stop for the evening was Needles, CA. On our way as we passed through Tehachapi we saw a billboard that caught our eye. It was of our good friend Amanda, who is a lawyer, and was advertising her law firm. It really caught us by surprise, and Julie sent her a text message telling her how we saw her on the way.

We got into Needles around 8pm, had some dinner and spent the night. We have been taking lots of photos along the way, but don't have the right cord to upload them. Good job Julie! Oh well, we will have them up when we can.

Tuesday as we were going to head out for our day of 350 miles (what we have to drive according to the relocation package) when Ryan had a small accident and hit the boat trailer on a cement post. Banged it up a bit. We headed to a shop to see about getting it fixed and a guy there happened to be an iron worker and offered to help us out. We followed him to his house (yes you read that right, random guy, random house......Julie called her dad and gave him the guys address....and said "if you don't hear from me in awhile, he killed us and dumped our bodies, but at least you know where to start looking!") and had him start working on it. He turned out to be a very nice guy, even offering us a cold drink and told Julie she didn't have to sit in the truck, but could sit on his front porch and enjoy herself (um thanks but no, I gotta be ready to drive the truck away if he comes after us.....paranoid, probably, but better safe then sorry.....I might want to stop watching so much Dateline NBC!) After getting it fixed, we headed to Gallup, New Mexico. Yup, drove ALL THE WAY across Arizona. That was a LOONNNNGGG drive!

When we finally got into Gallup, in the dark, both hotels we went looking for from our trusty GPS were no longer in business. Great! Headed to another hotel and they were full. Finally got a place at 11pm (PST...12am MTN).....and the room was cold. Ryan cranked up the heat and left it that way all night....pretty much smoking us both we were so hot!

Today we headed from Gallup to Vega, Texas (about 30+ miles west of Amarillo.) We arrived here around 9pm Central time, checked into our hotel, had a great dinner and are now ready to settle into bed for the night. Tomorrow we hope to meet up with Julie's friend Stacey and Ryan's friend Clint in Oklahoma City for a short visit.

We really wish we could stop and visit places along the way, but getting those 350 miles in has been an all day event. We take many breaks along the way to stretch, and move around. We are packed nice and tight in the truck, so not much wiggle room.

We hope everyone is doing well. We hope to post pictures within the next few days. It has been a pretty nice drive so far, seeing snow in every state. The mountains in New Mexico were amazing! Next time we do this, we are taking our time and enjoying all that these cities/states have to offer!

Finding a House

So today we went driving around with our realtor to find a place to rent. She showed us three different places. One was a house in the country that we had seen pictures of earlier that she had sent to us. We saw a small house in town, and a condo that was near the entrance to one of the prisons. Ummm, thanks but no?! We put in our application for the house in the country. The realtor whispered to us "you do understand that farmers use manure, right?" We laughed. And then explained more about where we were from. hahahahaha.

We did learn a few interesting things about PA. 1. Milk prices are regulated. If you want to buy a gallon of milk, its the same price at the grocery store as it is at the gas station. So that is nice. 2. You can't buy beer or liquor at the grocery store, or the gas station. You can only buy beer at the beer store, and liquor at a liquor store. That is another thing they control. 3. Truck drivers don't drive 55 on the freeway. They can do the same speed limit as everyone else. That is not fun at night having big trucks passing you on the freeway. Yuck!

There is snow on the ground, but it rained some today, and its supposed to be sunny the rest of the time we are here. We were told all of the snow will probably melt away by the time we leave.

We did a quick walk through one of the bigger grocery stores this evening. We were able to find salsa, avocado's, tortilla's, and they even have tri-tip at times. So we will be okay! haha

Hopefully tomorrow it will be sunny and Julie can take some nice photo's around the area and can post them on the blog. Hope everyone is doing well. We will be back to Cali on Thurs!

Hi Everyone!

So, as everyone knows, Ryan and I are starting a new adventure. We are moving to Pennsylvania. We decided to start this blog to let everyone know how it is going. We head out to visit on Sunday for five days to find a place to rent. When we come back, we will call the movers, get packed up, say goodbye and start our drive across the good ol' USA. We will be posting pictures on here along our drive so you can enjoy the adventure with us. We hope you enjoy keeping up with us.