Happy Halloween from the West Coast

We left Reno Saturday morning, heading west toward San Francisco. Thankfully, this drive was a much more manageable four hours. We got into the city and found our hostel without much trouble. To avoid paying $25 for parking, we drove around town for awhile and eventually landed at the Golden Gate Park. It was packed with all the other crazy tourists, but it was a pretty oasis of a park in the middle of such a big city. Later, we drove to Presidio Park to watch the sunset by the Golden Gate Bridge. When it was safe to park the car, we found a garage and headed out on the town. We enjoyed some vegetarian Chinese food and walked around downtown San Francisco. Since it was Halloween weekend, we saw a lot of interesting characters in their costumes, at least we hope they were costumes. The next day, we headed 45 minutes south to Half Moon Bay State Beach for our first night of camping on our supposed month-long camping trip. It was actually so nice that we decided to stay another night, and here we are at McDonalds using their free wifi and eating nutritious food, of course.

Golden Gate Park

 Presidio Park

 Golden Gate Bridge

 A good looking man that Dan saw jogging

(I think San Francisco is getting to him)

 Downward facing Dan doing yoga

Stackable Snyders


*TRIVIA QUESTION #1*
What type of cookie was invented at Golden Gate Park's Tea Garden?

Yes, we are in Reno

So this is what we’ve been doing…

After spending the night in Cody, WY, we hit Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Both parks were amazingly beautiful, definitely better than I imagined. The day was sunny, but it had snowed the night before. Most of Yellowstone was covered with a light dusting of snow making it look like a Winter Wonderland. We took a lot of pictures of the landscape and wildlife, so we can put together a long slideshow to show everyone! Unfortunately, we were not able to camp in Yellowstone or Grand Tetons for a number of reasons: snow, cold temps, an itchy case of poison ivy for Kristen, and most of the campgrounds being closed for the season. Oh, so sad. After grabbing some dinner and a quick nap, we left Jackson Hole and headed to Reno. It took about 10 hours and all of the credit for getting us here safely goes to Dan, who drove straight through the night while I tried desperately not to fall asleep without any success. So now we are here in Reno just relaxing and enjoying some warmer sunshine, watching the World Series, doing laundry, and covering my itchies with calamine lotion. It has been a nice, little stopover. We’ll be leaving tomorrow and heading for San Francisco.

And Reno...

Hi from (almost) Yellowstone!

Well, a few people love us. Thanks Aunt Gwenda, Josanna,  Uncle John and Anonymous (perhaps Dave and Kristy)! So for you all and anyone else who is wondering, we made it to Chicago. We actually stayed just outside of the city in Wheaton with Donna, a friend of Dan’s Aunt Mary Lou. She was a great tour guide (and local celebrity!) and provided us with all sorts of information about Chicago, including the best pizza joints and the best place to get a veggie burger. The veggie burger was a delicious deviation from our strictly pizza diet. After eating our fill of deep-dish pizza and checking out the city’s main attractions (The Bean, Wrigley Field, Magnificent Mile, Lake Michigan, Willis Tower, and Navy Pier), we headed to Sioux Falls, SD. Dan drove about eleven hours straight, Kristen may have slept for five of those hours. We spent the night there and left Tuesday morning for Mount Rushmore. We stopped at Rushmore to get some pictures, then kept driving toward our next stop Yellowstone. We had some snowflakes along the way, but made it to Cody, WY outside of Yellowstone and stayed there in a hotel for the night. We just finished a delicious continental breakfast that was well worth the extra $10 we spent to stay at this hotel and are just getting bundled up to head to the park now. Temps are pretty low now, so we’ll keep you posted as to whether we will be camping or hotel-ing while in Yellowstone!

Here are a few pics from Chicago and Mt. Rushmore:

Hi everyone!

Thanks for reading our blog. We hope to keep everyone updated as much as possible so you know where we are and what we are doing... and that we are still alive! We have cleaned the yard and house as well as we can and have actually already started packing, which is way ahead of schedule for us. Packing itself was interesting. Dan is definitely a minimalist and I like to be over-prepared for anything, so we have repacked a few times, but I think we are getting the hang of it. Now we have a few last minute errands to do and we have to figure out how to get everything into the car. We'll be leaving tomorrow around 6 AM and driving straight to Chicago. We'll be staying with a friend of Dan's aunt and eating a lot of deep dish pizza apparently. After a couple days there, we'll be heading to Mt. Rushmore and then the Yellowstone area.

Please pray for safety while we are camping (no snakes or bears or things of that sort) and driving (Dan will be the only driver as we are taking his car and it is manual) and for nice weather (so that I won't freeze and Dan won't have to spend a lot of our budget on warm, cozy hotel rooms)!

<3 Kristen (and Dan, too)

~* If you love us, leave a comment! *~