Bye, Bye Seattle.

Our small group's trip to Camano Island our last weekend here.

Well folks, our time in Seattle has come to an end. We’re really going to miss this place and all the friends we’ve made. It’s odd because as sad as we are to leave, we’re just as happy to see everyone back home. August is gonna be a whirlwind of a month, but we have tons of fun things planned!

If you’re wondering what we’ll be up to after August, well, you’re just as clueless as we are. We’ve been saying lots of prayers, having dozens of heart-felt talks, and spending countless hours pondering what’s next. We honestly don’t know. Your guess is as good as ours :). So say a prayer God will reveal to us the next leg of our journey!

We honestly can’t wait to see all of our Atlanta folks! We missed you just a bit. Ok, a lot! We leave in just a couple hours and plan to be back by late Saturday night. It’s about 48 hours of driving in all! We have some fun stops along the way so it shouldn’t be too bad. I foresee lots of singing to bad country songs in our near future, hehe.

Praying for safe travels home,

Justin & Jennifer

To starve or not to starve.

Last Monday morning we were up bright and early to start the week…well Justin a little bit earlier than me :). Justin had a full work day ahead of him and I had hours of unpacking and organizing to do. We had made sure to save leftovers from dinner the night before so we could at least have lunch for the day. Keep in mind we had NOTHING in the apartment to eat. Getting groceries was definitely a major priority for the day.

Interesting building along the way to the farmer's market.

Call us spoiled, but we’re used to grocery stores being convenient. You drive to one, get what you need, and drive home. Or you can walk. In San Diego we had a Ralph’s about a block away. Easy. Well, that’s not the case here. There isn’t a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods anywhere near walking distance and driving here is a semi-nightmare. Tons of weird one-way streets, not to mention the horrendous parking. We decided to try walking about 7 blocks to a farmer’s market on the water.

Inside the Ferry Marketplace.

The Ferry Market Building is pretty awesome. It’s home to several specialty shops that have pretty much anything you could want. Unfortunately, the prices are also insane. We would have paid double to get everything we needed there! We did get a loaf of bread and some really delicious lemon olive oil. We had walked all the way there so we couldn’t walk away empty handed right??

Acme Breads.

Incredible California olive oils.

We also got to stop in at Boccalone, which is chef Chris Cosentino’s small sandwich/meat shop. We’ve seen this guy on tons of stuff on the Food Network and were dying to try his “salumi cone”. It’s basically a paper cone filled with an assortment of his meats to try. Delicious! We split one and it was the perfect afternoon snack.

After we had explored every inch of the building, we started our trek to our car. Whew! These hills can kick your butt. Seriously. By the time we made it to our car, we were both ready to give up finding food and just starve. After careful consideration of the pros and cons of this plan, we decided to press on. Luckily both grocery stores we needed to visit had parking. Sweet!!

Now that's a hill!

Seven huge bags and two grocery stores later, we were heading back to the apartment. By this point it was almost 8:00pm and we were tired and starving. Not a great combo. Since we have to park so far from our apartment, we realized there was no way we could carry all the bags at one time and it would be incredibly obnoxious to make two trips. Justin decided to drop me off at the building with all the groceries and go find parking while I waited. I should mention that our building entrance is on an alley that also happens to be a one-way (sounds much sketchier than it is!). So picture us struggling to get all these massive grocery bags out of the car and into the lobby of the building as cars are piling up behind us waiting to for us to move. Lovely, right?

So there I am sitting behind a locked gate in our apartment lobby waiting for Justin. And waiting. And waiting some more. Then he calls me. He accidently got on a one-way street with no way to turn off of it. Twenty or so minutes later and he finally finds parking and makes his way back to the apartment. We struggle up the stairs, unpack the food, and make dinner.

The morale of the story is be grateful for convenient grocery stores and nice people who don’t honk when you take forever to unload groceries!

The First Two Days

Greetings from Flagstaff, Arizona! We’ve just settled in for the night and though we would recap the past two days of travel. I know it’s hard to believe, but we’ve been having a blast despite driving 28 hours and close to 2000 miles. We’ve really enjoyed the scenery and finally getting time to relax and goof off. The trip is off to a great start!

So long, Atlanta!

To recap, we left Atlanta on Thursday at 6AM in hopes of leaving before Georgia’s “Blizzard 2010” :). We made great time and decided our first meal of the trip would have to be Shoney’s for their breakfast bar. It’s not as great as we remembered, but it still hit the spot. We managed to make it to Dallas by 6 that night with only a couple bathroom stops, a Chick-fil-a fix, and onemuch needed energy drink. My sweet friend Alicia bought us this book of questions called “If” that really helped to pass the time. The drive wasn’t the most interesting in the world (so much flat land!) but it was enjoyable.

Much Needed Energy Drink

We got to Dallas in time to have dinner with one of my closest friends, Ashley. The BBQ place we picked wasn’t the best, but it was great to see Ashley and catch up. She’s getting married in July, so I needed a little time to catch up face to face. Having dinner was a really nice break from driving, but we  got back on the road as soon as we said our good-byes.

Jennifer & Ashley

After Dallas, we headed to Oklahoma City, OK, about 3 hours away. By the time we got to our hotel (around 11pm), we were exhausted! We have to say a HUGE thank you to my mom who helped us use priceline.com to book our hotel. We called her and told her the area and she booked it online. We managed to get a $150/night room for $64 including taxes. Awesome!

Hotel Lobby

Oklahoma City Hotel Room

This morning we woke up to a lovely ELEVEN degrees below zero in Oklahoma City. Strangely enough, I wasn’t that cold but poor Justin was freezing. We hightailed it out of town hoping it would get warmer as we went. There wasn’t much to see as we drove to Albuquerque, but we did take a couple interesting pictures. All I have to say is that there are some strange things you see in the middle of nowhere. As great as everything has been so far, we did have one  unpleasant little experience. Justin got caught doing 85 in a 70 mph zone and got a $200 ticket–not fun. Gotta love small town speeding traps. We’ve since been using cruise control religiously :).

Crooked Water Tower = Engineering Fail

Giant Cross, Little Church

In Albuquerque we stopped at “The Standard” diner, which was featured on “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” on Food Network. We love the show and wanted to try to stop at places they featured along the way. My cousin Carrie moved to California last week and her family drove the same route, so I saw where they went and we’re following suit. The diner was ok, but nothing special. We did make sure to try the green chili soup since green chilies are the speciality of the city.

After a quick lunch, we were back on the road for the 5 hour drive to Flagstaff. I completely forgot that on the drive to Flagstaff we would be passing the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. It ended up being pitch black so we saw everything “in theory”. We’re just going to pretend we saw it :). The drive itself to get here was interesting. Imagine driving in the pitch black desert with only your headlights. When it wasn’t dark, what we saw was gorgeous. New Mexico is a gorgeous state, and once we see Arizona in the daylight, I’m sure it will be too.

Beautiful New Mexico!

When we finally got to Flagstaff, we were really surprised. We assumed Flagstaff would be a big city. Wrong. It’s about the size of Stockbridge and smack in the middle of nowhere. We managed to take about 20 wrong turns getting to the hotel, but we’re finally here. We also used Priceline and got this $100 room for $50. It’s pretty dang nice too!

Flagstaff Hotel

We had dinner at this amazing mexican restaurant, Salsa Bravo, which was also on “DDD”, and now we’re ready to crash.  Tomorrow we head to the Grand Canyon which we can’t wait to see!!

Jenn