3,000 miles

So the drive across country was quite interesting.  We needed new brake pads along with an oil change so I got both done at a Pep Boys in Philly before we left.  Afterward, the car was making a weird squeaky noise, so Daniel took it back.  They said that was normal and that it would go away within 500 miles.  Well 800 miles later we were in Chicago with the noise much worse and being told we needed new wheel bearings. That set us back a huge chunk of money and extended our trip another day :(  And then there were several stops of scotch taping pieces of the car together that were falling off the bottom. And then we followed the wrong route on google maps for a little while which set us back another four hours.  That and a few gross hotels, some crazy thunderstorms that we thought we might die in, more fast food than I've eaten in my life crammed into one week, and a few more crazy adventures and we finally made it to Oregon.  From our drive through, we made judgements about what states we could ever live in based on their prettiness/ugliness/boringness (please don't take offense, we understand this is solely based on what we saw from the interstate).  Our decisions were as follows:

Pennsylvania - thumbs up (obviously)

Ohio - thumbs down

Indiana - thumbs down

Michigan - thumbs up

Illinois - thumbs up

Wisconsin - thumbs down

Minnesota - thumbs way up (I think this was our favorite to drive through)

South Dakota - thumbs down (minus Mt. Rushmore)

Wyoming - thumbs way down

Montana - thumbs up

Idaho - thumbs up (although we were shocked that we drove through a pretty part since we both think Idaho is ugly)

Washington - thumbs way down

Oregon - thumbs up (obviously, although when you first cross into oregon, it was probably the ugliest part of the whole trip, we know the rest is pretty)

Here's a few pics from our trip.  I took way too many, there's not much else to do while driving than take many many pics.  I call the first series "the many positions of Rocky"

Our last look at Philadelphia

Chicago

We stopped for some pizza and did a quick drive through the city.  I love cities and Chicago was no exception - wish I had spent the 7 hours waiting for our car to get worked on exploring the city rather than sitting in our motel.

I think one of these is Minneapolis and one is St. Paul? I can't remember which is which.

Sometimes nothingness is really pretty . . .

One of the highlights of our trip, Mt. Rushmore.  It was REALLY cool, I'm so glad we stopped there. (I also took a picture there with my favorite magazine hoping to get in their next issue . . . I'm kind of a dork).

I think this is Montana . . . ? It all runs together after awhile.

Idaho

Washington 

Our last stop in Spokane, WA- I actually really loved it here, we were in the arts district and ate the yummiest italian dinner and stayed in the coolest hotel.

 It was nice to finally get home, although it was hard having Daniel go back to work after ten days of being together nonstop.  And our kitty introductions went horribly wrong.  Sadie hates Rocky with a passion and things aren't getting much better.  But I love being back with Daniel (obviously) and am slowly getting the house put together and trying to orient myself to a new state.  I'm sure there are lots more adventures in store for us soon!