We are home....sort of!!!

Yesterday we set out on the road in Des Moines, Iowa at 9:30 AM and arrived in North Beach, Maryland at 7:00 AM this morning. It was a lot of time in the car but well...we set a budget of $1,000 to get home and we were really close. We didn't want to ruin it with the cost of another hotel. Worth it? I don't know!

We had quite an adventure leaving camp and driving east. First we stayed a few days in Portland with Marc and Sarah Howell- awesome people! It was so hard to say goodbye to them and their three adorable girls.

Saturday: Olympic National Park, Washington
Drove the loop around the park. It was beautiful weather and picture-perfect scenery. Note: for those Twilight fans, we drove through Forks, WA. Everything is Twilight in the whole town. Kind of ridiculous!
317 miles 7 hours 30 minutes

Sunday: Glacier National Park, Montana
Drove through Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Loved this place- fall colors, lakes, mountains. Got to Glacier and was disappointed. Roads were closed because of the snow and it was really foggy. We decided to add it to the list of places to visit later. The plus side to bad weather was we got Huckleberry shakes- YUM! We got a hotel room in Great Falls, Montana because there was no way were camping in snow!
840 miles 17 hours 12 minutes

Monday: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming; ended up in Bozeman, Montana
On our way to Yellowstone our check engine came on so we decided to stop in Bozeman, MT to make sure everything was okay. We were looking for a garage when we are hit from behind. Even though it was a little tap, there was a good amount of damage. I guess thats what happens when a Dodge Ram hits a Honda Accord. So here we are in Bozeman, its snowing, our check engine light is on, and we just got rear-ended. This is the part in the trip where we really lost our adventuresome spirit! At this point we just want to go home! We decided to stay in town and not head towards Yellowstone because of the weather and slick roads. Later we found out that the guy's insurance was going to pay the damages fully! Praise God!
201 miles 3 hours 32 minutes

Tuesday: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
The drive to the park is awesome. Bryan fell in love with Montana- other than the fact that it was freezing in October. We got to the park safely and started exploring. We saw the paint pots, hot springs, geysers, and wildlife! We saw bison, elk, and a bald eagle. We waited on the benches for Old Faithful to go off and it was unbelievable. The whole park was like something you would see in outer space. We decided to drive through the night again to make it to Wyoming in the morning.
533 miles 11 hours 52 minutes

Wednesday: Mt. Rushmore Memorial, Crazy Horse, Badlands National Park
We did all of these things as quickly as humanly possible. We drove in, saw it, got the picture, and started on the road again. We saw bighorn sheep at Badlands- that was awesome.
702 miles 10 hours 50 minutes

Thursday/Friday: HOME!
The only thing we stopped for was gas, food, and to pee! We had to hit up things that reminded us of home so we ate at Panera and ChickFilA!
1,099 miles 17 hours 15 minutes

We are home safe and relaxing. We are staying at Bryan's parents and then heading to Salisbury tomorrow to see the family. The WHOLE family will be together for the first time in almost 2 years!

We have a lot of work to do since coming home. We are technically homeless though our families have opened their homes to us. We are jobless and not really even sure where to start. Its overwhelming looking online at jobs! We are excited because we feel we can go anywhere and do anything but that anything is hard to find! It all just kind of sunk in on our trip but we are going to enjoy the weekend with our families before getting to "work" finding jobs on Monday.
I will hopefully get to share pictures from our trip on here but I dont know when we will get our computer set up so please be patient. Thanks!