JoeBlogJoe and Sarah’s Thoughts .. oh my!

Now that we are home I’m going to get caught up on the picture review side of things and keep on Sarah to finish up her restaurant reviews. Day 6 started very very early .. 4:30 am Vegas time (7:30 am in my home time zone).  That was by far the earliest we had stumbled [...]

Today marks the last day of the trip.   We are happy that we are going to be home tonight but sad as well.   Its been a great time and we saw alot of America. Today we start off from RockFord, IL, meet up with an old friend and his wife for lunch, then do the [...]

We did the touristy things in South Dakota, visited the monuments (which are nestled along some really twisty roads along the route we took) and also visited Wall’s drugs, which has a gazzilon road signs along the road.  I got caught for speeding Mt Rushmore.  I think we came in the back way as the roads [...]

Howdy all! We made it to Sheridan, WY and bunked up for the night.  The drive through Montana was a long one and we didn’t even go through the whole state.   The last couple of hours, from Billings, MT to Sheridan were pretty barren.   It reminded us a lot of the desert.   This leg went through [...]

We just made our reservations for our stop tonight (Day 11).   We are going to make it to Wallace, ID which is about 90 miles from where we are eating dinner in Spokane, Washington (at Mizuna which has awesome food .. very upscale).  Day 12 is a travel day so i don’t think I’ll have [...]

We start our swing to the east today.  We start off out of Portland (after grabbing some more vegan donuts) and heading east along the Columbia River.   At Kennewick, Oregon we catch I-90 and head northeast to Spokane, Washington, continue on through Coer D’Alene and drive into Montana.  This part of the trip we start [...]

Howdy World! Today starts day 10 of our western road trip.  We start off from our current location in Weed, CA  (it makes Sarah giggle every time i say it) at the base of Mt Shasta.  Mt Shasta, a mountain that reaches over 14,000 ft, really dominates the landscape.  Its my idea of what a [...]

We made it to North of San Francisco and pulled over to find a hotel in Weed, CA to make a reservation for tonight.   I’ll have more later .. until then here is Day 5 in pictures: I’m trying to catch up a bit here.   On Day 5, we traveled from Kingman, AZ to Las [...]

Our dinner on July 14 was at Which Wich? on the University of Oklahoma campus. This is a small fast food joint.  You order by picking a bag corresponding to the type of sandwich you want (ham, chicken, vegetarian, whatever), and mark which sandwich and toppings you want.  You give this bag to the cashier, [...]

The first full day of the road trip, we had lunch at Isadora’s Wonderful Things in Joplin, Missouri. This place is a combination bead shop and coffee bar.  This place was full of wonderful things: the awesome food, great people and pretty beads, pendants and crystals.  I couldn’t resist a beautiful chakra pendant I found. [...]

Our first day out on our road trip, July 13, we ate at the Shangri-La Diner in St. Louis, Missouri.  This is very hippy-dippy-trippy restaurant located in the Cherokee Historic District, a somewhat uppity (per Joe) antiques shopping area.  The restaurant was run by a very punk-looking group – one chick had spiky white & green [...]

Presenting The Grand Canyon Sarah gets the good seat in the helicopter – co-pilot! The colors really pop when the sun shines down on the canyon.   Unfortunately it was pretty much overcast the whole day for us so we only got glimpses of the sun on the canyon. The thing that takes your breath away [...]

Hey all!   We made it yesterday to Brett & Wendy’s house in Temecula, CA which is right in between Los Angles and San Diego.  Today is reserved for checking out southern California in particular running around San Diego.  The only really thing we have planned is a visit to the USS Midway museum. The weather [...]

And we are off!  I had serious doubts we’d be awake enough but so far so good.  I’ve found you tend to sleep a lot deeper (and therefore wake more refreshed) if you are exhausted when you go to bed.  Imagine that! Today’s plan is: Get some real donuts that both Sarah and I can [...]

We made it to Vegas!    Today saw a visit to the Hoover Dam and the tour down into the guts.  You can actually feel the raw power of the water flowing through the pipes.   Its an incredible feat of engineering.   Oddly enough we felt more vertigo looking over the edge at the Hoover Dam than we [...]

The day started out with a really yummy breakfast for both of us compliments of Macy’s European Coffee house & Bakery.  Sarah had the vegan waffles with fruit topping and I, the biscuits & gravy.   My biscuits were nice and crunchy like they should be and the gravy, with i don’t think had any real [...]

We had a lot going on today and finished it all albeit a bit longer than we had planned.  We rolled into Kingman, AZ at 12:30am Indiana time, 9:30pm local time. The Grand Canyon is awesome …. And with that we are hitting the sack.  Will have more tomorrow.  Its going to be a pretty [...]

What a day!    On Day 3, Monday, we visited the Petrified Forest National Park and Meteor Crater putting about 260 miles on the odometer (including the walking at the park).   We had Walnut Creek National Monument on the todo list but they were closed by the time we got there (missed it by 30 minutes).   [...]

Here are some shots from our Day 2 trip from Vega, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Every day has a beginning, this is ours for day 2:   Texas west of Amarillo is FLAT .. see for miles kinda flat: As we approached New Mexico the landscape started to have more features: This is a [...]

We made it to Albuquerque.  Lot less of a drive than yesterday.   In fact we got here too early to check into the hotel.   To kill time we had a late lunch at El Patio, a Mexican restaurant that was on the Sarah-compatible list.   After that we got checked in and headed out to ‘Old [...]

Howdy folks.   Woo-Whee!   We dove 720 miles yesterday and made it from mid-Missouri all the way to Vega, TX.  We are heading out for today (Sarah is stomping her foot at me) so I’ll have to post more later.    On tap for today is about a 4–5 hour drive to Albuquerque, then we can slow [...]

We rolled out about 3 pm EST.   We ended up traveling 371 miles for the day.   As i mentioned before it was pretty smooth sailing until we approached St Louis from the east.  Traffic just stopped,  most of the time going 0 MPH (which doesn’t get you much anywhere).  According to the GPS markers i [...]

We are off!   I’ll post more in the morning but i wanted to say we made it to St Roberts, Missouri.   We were making great time until we were just getting into St Louis.   They decided it would be fun to resurface the highway during rush hour traffic which had the effect of funneling 3 lanes [...]

I think we are done packing.   I’m sure there will be all kinds of last minute stuff that crops up tomorrow. I’m pretty tired.  Its been a busy week finishing up the floor tiling so that we didn’t come back to a complete mess.   Here’s a snapshot of the current gas prices out there in [...]

Nice <sarcasm>: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070711/BUSINESS/707110488 Indianapolis’ average price for a gallon of unleaded today went above $3 a gallon for the first time since Memorial Day weekend, but could reach record levels by Sunday in the Midwest, an industry analyst said.   By the end of the week, prices could reach $3.25 to $3.50 a gallon in [...]