Our Journey to Colorado

Day 1: We left our home in North Carolina on Wednesday, July 21st. We packed up both of our Madza 3's and began our drive out west. It was a easy scenic drive through Greensboro, NC and Charleston, WV. We found a pet friendly hotel in Huntington, WV for our first night's stay. Once we checked in, Varun and Vinay went out to pick up dinner in town while Christina stayed in to give Liliana a bath at the hotel. We ended up ordering dinner from a delicious Indian restaurant called Nawab Indian Cuisine located in downtown Huntington near Marshall University. We had a quiet night in the hotel with our Indian food followed by a game of Rummy (which has now become our favorite form of entertainment since we still don't have our household goods).

Pilot Mountain: Mt. Airy, NC

Marshall University: Huntington, WV

Downtown Huntington, WV

Day 2: We continued our journey the following day by traveling through Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri. Much of the drive was pretty rural with the exception of Lexington and Lousiville, KY. It was nice to drive at a steady 75 mph without hitting any traffic. We stopped for the night in St. Louis, MO. We stayed at our friend Tien's downtown loft for the night. Tien was actually out of town but it was so nice of him to offer us his home for the night. We enjoyed the downtown experience in St. Louis. We walked to an outdoor restaurant for dinner and margaritas and we were happy that we could take Finnegan to eat with us. We were sad that we were not able to see Tien, but we hope to make it back to St. Louis soon for a longer visit!

Driving in Kentucky

St. Louis Arch

Dinner Downtown St. Louis

Day 3: We began our third day of travel with a great breakfast at the London Tea Room located below the lofts. They had a great selection of coffee, tea, and breakfast bakery items. Once we hit the road, our luck with traffic was over. We were stuck in traffic for a while as we drove through the suburbs of St. Louis. While we were stopped in traffic, Liliana started to get sick in the car. It wasn't quite as bad as the Emergency Room incident, but it was enough to soak her shirt and car seat. As soon we got out of the city traffic we were able to stop and clean her up. We pulled off at a restaurant called the Saint Louis Bread Company. From the outside it looked just like Panera Bread. As soon as we entered we realized that they are actually the same company! Panera is actually headquartered in Missouri but goes by the name of Saint Louis Bread Company in the metro area.

The rest of our ride after that was pretty easy. We drove through the rest of Missouri and into Kansas. Eastern Kansas had gorgeous views of green rolling hills. We were actually surprised since we all thought that most of Kansas was flat. We stopped for the night in Salina, KS. When we arrived at our hotel we saw at least a dozen restored classic automobiles in the parking lot. We later found that the Salina Car Show was occuring over the weekend. For dinner, we ordered a family style meal from Martinelli's Little Italy. We had Chicken Marsala with a bottle of wine which was great!

Saint Louis Bread Company

Driving in Kansas

Day 4: On our final day of driving, we traveled though the rest of Kansas and into Colorado. It was a pretty uneventful drive. About an hour after leaving Salina, the gorgeous green hills turned to completey flat farmland. After about 400 miles, we began to see the Rocky Mountains as we drove closer to Denver. We were so excited once we reached our new home. It felt like we had been driving for much more than 4 days. We took some pictures of our sold sign in front of our house before checking everything out on the inside. We had pizza and beer for dinner and played Rummy on our first night in our new home.

Western Kansas

Yay! Our new front yard!