the way home

the last day of our trip was a long one. we left laramie, wyoming in the morning and ended up going the rest of the way that day. when we finally got back to indiana around 4:00am we were both a bit slap happy, but glad to be back home!
it sure was a crazy idea to try and do a road trip like this on such short notice, but we both had an amazing time! it was really good to see sean and rachael again, but the best part of the trip was just riding in the car for hours on end chatting with diana and growing closer to her and falling in love with her even more as each mile clicked by (and there were about 3200 of them!). we had wanted to do something that would be memorable, and i'm pretty sure we did! now, how exactly do we top this next spring break?!?

road block

on the way to salt lake city, driving through the mountains, we kept driving by gates at each exit of the highway. diana asked what those were for and i told her that sometimes, when the weather gets really bad, they actually shut down highway 80 and dont let anyone through! she thought that was ridiculous. little did we know that on the way home we would fall into that very situation! we had gotten through most of wyoming when suddenly there was a huge traffic jam on the highway. we didnt know what was going on, so we tuned in the emergency broadcast am station and heard that the highway was closed off! crap! we were going to be stuck in laramie, wyoming for the night! the snow and wind had shut the highway down and there was nothing we could do about it. fortunately diana was thinking and turned on the gps, which gave us local hotels and phone numbers. we booked a room as we were stuck in the traffic jam. about an hour and a half later we were finally able to get off the road and get to the hotel. its a good thing diana had thought of the gps because by the time we got there, there was no vacancy!
it wasnt such a bit deal for us, thankfully, we had been planning on stopping for the night in the next couple hours anyway. we got to our room, got comfortable, and ordered some chinese food! by morning we were back on the road and it was opened back up again, but it was pretty slow going for the first 30 miles or so.
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rock walk

since we didnt get the chance to stop and check out the geology on the way to salt lake city, i promised diana that we would stop on the way home. little did we know that on the way home it would be covered with snow! well, we stopped anyway and found a little road that went into the hills a bit. diana and i got out and she got to pick up a few rocks and examine them to her hearts content!
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once roomies, always roomies!

in the morning diana and i woke up on time. it was our last morning in salt lake city and we wanted to try and get as far as we could back to indiana before we stopped for the night. sean was able to go to work a bit late that morning, so he was around to wish us off.
our unexpected stay with sean and rachael went by really quickly, but it sure was great to see both of them again. its amazing how close he and i became during that year and a half as roommates. i love him to death and really loved the chance to see and talk with him again! i trust that he too enjoyed our visit- and wasnt too put out by our surprise trip!
thanks a ton, guys- it was amazing to see you and introduce you to my lovely wife. may God continue to bless you two!!!

an evening with the patricks

after a day of diana and i wandering around salt lake city, we came back to sean and rachaels. they were both home from work for the day and we were all ready for a great dinner! sean had offered to grill out for us and we were more than willing to enjoy some burgers and brats! rachael got all the fixins ready for us and we dug in. it was a great time to talk some more about whats been going on in everyones lives and we were able to share even more of the old stories- and there are a ton!
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dr. volts

one of my fondest memories of salt lake city were of when i had scrounged up enough money to make a trip to the comic book shop! i've collected comic books most of my life, ever since my friend david carrol introduced me to them in 6th grade. i kind of stopped paying attention to comic books while i was in college, but when i lived in slc i renewed my love for them, but this time i didnt really care about individual issues- i wanted trade paperbacks of the different stories! and dr. volts, the comic shop in salt lake city, had just what i wanted! i would go there as often as possible because they always had new and interesting stuff that i had never heard of before. during my visits there i was introduced to such great classics as cerebus, tom strong, and my absolute favorite: hellboy! they always had the trades i liked as well as strange and awesome toys and figures to go along with them. still to this day, i think that dr. volts is the greatest comic book store i have ever been to! it was such a thrill to go back there again and see the place and chat for a minute with the owner (dont worry, i'm not one of those comic book dorks who pester the owner with questions about which hero could be which other hero in a fight...). i got one book while i was there, but it was just so much fun to poke around those shelves again!
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the old haunts

one of the things i was most looking forward to with out trip to salt lake city was seeing all the old places again. i spent two years living there and became quite familiar with that town. i was excited to see some of these old places again, but also excited to show diana the places i would often tell stories about. she had never visited before, but was often inundated with my stories about my old apartments, the old coffee shop i worked at (which was also my church), my old school i taught at, and even the comic book shop i loved! it was great to see the old haunts, but it was kind of weird too. some places were just as i remembered them, and some places were gone all together!
i stopped by the coffee shop/church, my old apartments, and the school i worked at.

tune talk

after we had a great time at dinner, diana and i headed over to sean and rachael's house. they had moved since last i visited, so it was fun trying to find their new house. we punched the address into our gps, which started a new round of a little game i like to play called 'the gps is wrong'. now, granted, a gps is supposed to know all the roads in the entire country and give the best ways to get to any given destination, but i often find that it does not always do that. diana always gets so annoyed with me because i think i know a better route than the gps does. the thing is though, i'm usually right! (diana will tell you the opposite...) i've been out of salt lake city for over 7 years, but i'm pretty sure i still know my way to the highway from where we were, and it wasnt the way the gps was telling us! so, after about 10 minutes of fighting the directions it gave (going the right way instead of what it said) i felt like i had gotten us to the right area, so then i followed its directing. eventually we made it to their house, taking the most direct route (thanks to my skills at correcting the gps).
we got there and all hung out around the kitchen table. rachael took us on a tour of the place and we got to see their beautiful home- very impressive! it made diana and i realize just how small of a place we have been living in! we stayed up for a bit playing with their dogs and chatting some more, reliving the old glory days. eventually we got on the topic of music (as sean and i always seem to do!), after about the first half hour of music talk, the girls opted to head to their beds. rachael had to work in the morning, and i think diana was just bored... both sean and i then pulled out our laptops and compared bands we have discovered since i moved. we ended up making a good music swap list for each other, sharing our own treasured music gems! finally exhaustion set in and we both called it a night.
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full of laughs and pasta

tuesday night we finally arrived in salt lake city around 6:00pm! it was great to arrive, but the weather was really bad with fog everywhere, so we didnt even get to enjoy the beautiful mountains.
we had made plans with sean and rachael to meet them downtown for dinner. i didnt remember very well what exactly was down town, but i did remember a chinese place. we got down there about a half hour before we were to meet them. as we were walking around we came across buca di beppo- an amazing italian family style restaurant! we couldnt pass up some good food like that, so we texted them and changed our dinner plans. diana and i got there and found a seat. soon after the arrived! it was so cool to see them again- the crazy thing is that they both looked almost the exact same, even though its been 6 years! we had a really great time catching up and reliving the old stories- especially the 'no pants' incident of '02'!

hotel cheyenne

after about 14 hours of driving, diana and i decided it was time to stop for the night. i had kind of hoped to make it to cheyenne, wyoming by the end of the day, so we pressed through until we got there. eventually we found a hotel that had a good price and a queen size bed (i was shocked at how many hotels had two twin beds but no queen sized beds!) we brought some stuff in, but crashed pretty quickly. its kind of strange that we could be so very tired from just simply riding in a car all day!
in the morning they offered free continental breakfast, but it started at 7:00am. that is way too early, but on the other hand, it was free. oh, the dilemma! we came up with a pretty crafty solution: i got up at seven and got a tray full of food for the two of us, we both ate it all down, and then headed back to bed! we finally got up a couple hours later, packed up and were back on the open road!
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d.b: our trip mascot!

no long distance road trip would be complete with out a silly mascot, right? well, the morning before we headed out we looked around the house for a mascot to bring with us to guide us on our journey. diana grabbed this guy! its actually a rabbity thing from a set of puppy toys we had for poco. we gave him one of the other ones in the set, but kept this one on the shelf.
through out the trip diana and i would play with this little guy and have fun coming up with different names for him. he is a bunny and diana suggested we call him 'dust bunny'! i liked it, but i suggested we just call him d.b. diana and i agreed- d.b. guided us the rest of the way!

my little geologist

diana loves rocks. when she first went to college she was a geology major- thats how much she loves rocks! i havent really seen that side of her before, but while we were driving through some of the different parts of wyoming and utah she went nuts for the landscapes! once we got out of the great plains of the midwest we started to see the start of the rockies and diana was thrilled! she just kept ranting and raving about all the cool rock formations and layer composites and all kinds of stuff. she grabbed the camera and just kept shooting everything she saw! this picture is actually a composite of some (not all...) of the pictures she took while we were driving. always asking if we could get off the highway so she could collect rock samples! by the time we got to utah she made sure we went to a book store so we could get her a couple books on geology so she could identify and explain what we were seeing.
it was a side i certainly didnt expect to see from my wife, but it was really cool to see her so excited! i also got to hear some fun stories of the different class trips she went on with her geology classes in college.

on the road

after getting everything squared away for the trip (which involved a late night drive to diana's dad to take our dog and a midnight laundry run), we were ready to roll! we filled up the car and were on our way. we left the house around 7:30am. it was funny, i went on mapquest to check the directions and it gave me 7 steps, the first six were really short, trying to get me to the highway, and then it said 'when you are on highway 80, stay on it for 1400 miles till you arrive in salt lake city'! yikes!
i still hadnt gotten ahold of sean and rachael yet... around about omaha sean called. i chatted with him a bit and said that diana and i were thinking about stopping by sometime and were wondering if they would be up for it. i tried to play it off as casual as i could... he said 'sure!' i asked 'how about tomorrow?' he was pretty surprised but they gave it the go ahead! we were already 8 hours in to our 22 hour drive by the time we actually got the ok to stay at there house. probably should have planned that better...
well, it was a really long trip, we made some pretty good time- mostly because i was going as fast as i could to get out of nebraska! man, that state sure aint pretty!
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unplanned road trip!

one of the things diana and i talked about during our anniversary dinner was that we wished we could travel more. we got talking about how we would love to go to just hit the road and go! on the way home from the dinner i asked her a crazy question: 'if we want to go on more road trips, how about we just do it? lets go on a road trip right now!' so we did!
it worked well for us because i happened to have spring break for the next week and diana doesnt have a job yet, so we started making plans. by the time we had gotten home from dinner we had it all worked out: we were going to utah and visiting my friends sean and rachael! one small problem: we needed to tell them that...

the cake (one year later)

in following with tradition, diana and i had a piece of our wedding cake on our first anniversary! i remember after the wedding thinking 'there is no way we are going to keep that in the freezer a whole year!' as it turns out, its really easy to keep something in the freezer for a year... or two... or three (i'm looking at you sausage patties from 2005!)
we were both really excited to fulfil this final part of our wedding activities. the most surprising thing about it all was that the cake itself was still actually pretty good! i've heard it said that you are newlyweds until you eat the last piece of cake. well, this whole newlywed thing has been going so well, i almost hate to see it go. my mom had the foresight to put three pieces in the container, so diana and i figure we will have another piece next year, and another one the year after that! so we've got two more years as newlyweds!
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one year

we made it! recently diana and i celebrated our one year anniversary! wow, i cant believe its been a year. there are some days where i cant believe its only been a year, and there are other days when i cant believe its already been a year!
i've got to say, its been even better than i thought it would be. the year has been filled with great times, good times, and just plain ol' times (which sometimes actually turn out to be the great times!)
for our anniversary i surprised diana with dinner at a fancy restaurant. the place is called the lighthouse, its in cedar rapids, about a 45 minute drive from our place. i had called to make the reservations about two weeks ahead so as to be sure to get a spot! i didnt tell her at all where we were going, i just told her to dress up!
when we arrived she was very happily surprised! the restaurant is right on the edge of cedar lake, with a great view! we got there just in time to see the sunset- it was beautiful! we had a great time talking about the year and about each other.
one year down, hopefully many more to go!
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