Road Trip: The Move to Calgary

Day 1-June 15, 2008
We've begun our move from Houston to Calgary. The 32 hour, 2200 mile journey will take us 4 days. Road Trip! We are about to begin day 2. We spent the first night in Lawton, Oklahoma (Home of 2007 Miss America Laura Nelson, Incidentally), and are now headed to Denver, Colorado. Shawn has worked hard to get us free hotel rooms through Wyndhams "lowest rate guarantee," and has succeeded for Denver (yay for free hotel!). We almost got the night free here in Lawton, but filed our "lowest rate guarantee" claim with less than 24 hours, so it was a no go.

Day 2-June 15, 2008
The massive road trip continues. Day 2's 12 hour excursion took us past the Indian casinos of Oklahoma, up to the land of Oz, and west toward the Rockies.

We had a good time yesterday, enjoying our car-made sandwiches- and these aren't plain ham and cheese. We got the works, cause I (Tania) get bored of the same food quickly. We got chipotle mayo, honey mustard, cranberries, provolone, Cheddar, avocado, honey ham, turkey. Many combinations too choose from. Yum.

We listened to another Dave Ramsey (Financial Peace University Series) CD. The guy's hilarious!! We're going through the 13-CD series cause we want to be wise about money. Dave has a great testimony about how he rebuilt his wealth after going broke (after having had a net worth of 4 million dollars at the age of 26) based on biblical principals. We also spent some time quizzing Shawn for his University placement exam on music theory. G major, 7 flat, flat 13, yada yada, yada. It's a whole different language. I just smile and tell him when he gets the flash card right. Good times.

We stopped at a nice Walmart in the middle of no where to restock on groceries somewhere between Kansas and Colorado. Walmart's fun when you've been in the car for 8 hours:)

Below is a pic of the modern windmills we saw in Kansas. They're huge. Very cool energy makers:)

We're now getting ready to head out for day 3. Up we go to Montana. We stayed the night south of Denver FOR FREE at a very nice Day's Inn. Go "Best rate guarantee!!"

Day 3 and 4-June 16 and 17,2008

So were done! 32 hours later, we arrived in Calgary, Alberta (Where deers and bears walk into buildings! Not kidding!).

Day 3 was a great ride from Denver to Montana. As we were leaving Denver we ran over this huge piece of plastic that left about 5-6 vehicles with flat tires. Fortunately, we didn't get a flat.

The rest of the ride was fields, fields, and more fields. As we went north, gas prices kept going up as well. Here is Shawn looking sad as we have to painfully pay 4.09 per gallon of gas :)We stayed the night in Townsend, Montana at a KOA camp. As we were arriving to the camp site we stopped about 10 feet from hitting a deer! Welcome to Montana! Below is the cute little cabin we spent the night in. It was a gorgeous camp site, with a beautiful lake and the mountains surrounding in the distance.
Day 4 was the final stretch. A shorter stretch, only 7 hours from Townsend, Montana to Calgary. It was a beautiful ride: rivers, lakes, mountains, and the cutest little towns. The little towns were a different world for us city folk, and we kept wondering, "What do people do here?" It was fun to imagine the lives of the people there, especially the children who rode their bikes around with so much freedom.

We arrived at the little border town of Sweetgrass, Montana/Coutts, Alberta at about 1 p.m., and after being grilled by a few very straight faced Canadian border patrols and filling out lots of forms (including an itemized list of all Tania's things and wedding gifts), we were on our way 2 1/2 hours later. We arrived in Calgary Tuesday evening around 8 p.m., with lots of sunlight still around (It didn't get dark until around 10 p.m.) Overall, the trip was great! We were very blessed with great weather and safety. Yay for no flat tires and no deer hitting!