Farewell from Sky Harbor International

So we are packed up and waiting for our flight home. Me, Mom & Dad that is :( We said our farewell's last night after dinner and shipped him off on his own. He had orientation yesterday afternoon and met his classmates. He found out he was starting at the Tempe campus and has afternoon classes. Today he gets all his toys during a 10 hour orientation, soooooo long. He will get his new MacBook, some kind of microphone and other gadgets that mean nothing to me :-P

We had a great stay out her in Arizona. Stayed at a very nice Hampton Inn & Suites in Scottsdale, AZ. We spent Wednesday to Friday night getting Ry's apartment all ready for living. It looks very nice. Mom and I went shopping at the Scottsdale Fashion Square which was hugeeeeee with every store I could ever wish for. We got our hair done at Tony&Guy which was a really nice salon :) I got new boots which I am suppppperrrr excited about :)

Other than that we explored different places to eat and all the ones we tried were really good! We take off around noon our time from Phoenix and will be flying into Manch Vegas around 8pm home time. Its been a fun adventure :) Can't wait to be back out here for Thanksgiving :) Black Friday shopping in Scottsdale, can't wait!!!!

Goodbye from Arizona!

Good morning from Arizona!

Hey everyone. We arrived safely yesterday around 3:30pm which would be 7:30pm for you guys. Ryan's new apartment is very nice! I will be visiting the pool later :) We picked up the parentals at 5pm ish from the airport in Phoenix! We all went out to dinner at Mimi's Cafe, kinda like an Olive Garden. Then we went on a crazy shopping adventure to Wally World to get Ryan's apartment livable. He has a red themed apartment, very lovely.

This morning Dad is of course trying to be productive andddddd mom and I are laying in bed on our computers not cooperating. Hes off to find a Subaru dealership to get the car an oil change and mom and I are still sitting in bed. Lots to do today, meetings and more shopppppping :) Then hopefully some serious pool time, but who knows, I still might be tooooo hot even in the pool.

Hope everyone has a good day, even though its almost noon for you guys its only 8:20 am for usssss  

P.S. I found a Dunks near his school/apartment, all is well!

I'll put up pics on fbook sooooooon

Gullup, NM

So day four is complete. We traveled from Oklahoma City to Gullup, NM. It was a 10 hour day through the rest of Oklahoma, the tip of Texas and most of the way across New Mexico. It was a pretty relaxing day, nothing overly exciting occurred. We went to a restaurant called the Big Texan which was featured on the Travel Channel on one of those food shows. It has a 72oz steak challenge, if you eat it in an hour it is free. No one was participating in the challenge when we were there for lunch though. New Mexico has fencing that ran along side both sides of the high way alll 300 + miles to keep the wild cattle from getting in the road. It was cool to see cattle that wasn't going to end up in the grocery store. We did see a huge slaughter house on the side of the highway :( it was really really sad, thousands of cattle packed together. That was the only downer of the day though. Oh besides the non existent Dunkin Donuts.

The closest I have come to Dunks in the last two days is a Dunks trailer truck yesterday on the highway :( Went to a Cracker Barrel for dinner tonight, that was a new experience, don't really have any of those in New England that I know of. It felt like the entire highway through New Mexico was under construction with lowered speed limits and orange cones but we didn't see one worker the whole wayyyyy. Ry and I have also been a bit disappointed in the number of cool cars on the road, the Bat-Mobile still ranks highest and it was on a trailer.

That is all from New Mexico. See everyone in Phoenix, Arizona tomorrow!
Lauren & Ryan

DAY THREE OKLA CITY!

Hey... so today Lauren and I set off around 7:30 from beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana toward Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I wont lie the morning into early afternoon were extremely uneventful. While in St. Lois we missed and exit so we got off into the city and explored for a bit. It was nice. Then we traveled on and on and the speed limit in Oklahoma was 75!!!!!!!!!! who knew. Then as we were passing through Tulsa, Oklahoma we happened upon a CICI'S PIZZA AND PASTA BUFFETT!! I know it is amazing we were pretty amazed ourselves. We stopped in and said a quick hello to the nice man behind the counter. We then made it to Oklahoma City and the hotel was right there.

We got settled in and such and began looking for somewhere to eat. We wanted sea food but really we would be happy if we could find something anything that was open. We drove around the city for probably a half an hour and were close to the only car on the road. Everything was closed and it was only 7PM! we drove and drove until we saw a police station where I went on to say... "I would run a red light and be pretty confident that no one was coming. We finally came back toward our hotel and for some strange reason... there was a wonderful world of restaurants and night life. so we went to raw bar which was sushi and it was fantastic. Then went down to a bowling ally for one string of bowling and then ventured back to the hotel. We are heading out to our final stop tomorrow in Gallup, New Mexico. Have a nice night.

Lauren and Ryan from Oklahoma

Hello from Indianapolis City

We just finished day two of our Journey across country :) Spent most the day in Sandusky, Ohio at Cedar Point Amusement Park. Went on some very big rides! Drove five hours from there to where we are now. Indianapolis City is beautiful! Such a nice night, so much fun walking around downtown. Motorcycles are a huge deal here, people are riding around like crazy. Oh horse and buggy rides are pretty popular here as well.

On the road today we discovered Ohio is VERY bad at picking up there road kill, I think we counted into the 20's when it came to unidentifiable rodents in the break down lanes. Also discovered today....Dunkin Donuts are slim to none :( I found ONE sign today, thats it! I am pretty upset that I might not get Dunks for the next week! Found the Bat-Mobile on Interstate 75 today, pretty sick, it was on a trailer but it was very legit. Ohio turned out to be a pretty drive despite the road kill and tire shreds all over the highways. If you just didn't look directly at the road it was really pretty.

Tomorrow we ship off bright and early to Oklahoma City. 11 1/2 of driving to do tomorrow, which means its bed time for us!

Night All!
Lauren & Ryan

Clevelanddddddd

So 12 hours of driving and a slight detour...we arrived in Cleveland, Ohio. Day one has been completed. We decided to visit a wonderful trailer park today. It has a 9th street if anybody was wondering. Our hotel was not there, had to re-route that one. :) Went and had dinner at Winking Lizard Tavern which was reallllly good! Pretended to be a Browns fan, the game was vs. St. Louis.

Can't wait until tomorrow! Off to Cedar Point to ride HUGE roller coasters :) Off to bed and up at 6am.

Goodnightttttt

~Lauren & Ryan

5 AM

Oh man. Its 5Am on Saturday August 21st. Wayyyyy to early in the morning, haven't seen this hour since high schooool. Can't wait to get going! See you all in Cleveland, Ohio!

~Lauren (Ryan claimed the shower first so I am on this)

We forgot to pack the snowboards, speed has picked up in the Hawkins householddddddd

K Bye