We made it!!

Hi friends!

Well, our cross country road trip will definitely be one that we remember forever. (And one day, when we head back to Atlanta, it will seem like the quickest trip ever!)

As you guys know, we ended up getting snowed in in Glenwood Springs (Aspen), but it ended up being a great experience. We stopped off, had dinner at a local microbrewery & stayed at Hotel Colorado, a really cool hotel built in the 1890's. You walk into a huge lobby with fireplaces & comfy couches, and the rest of the hotel basically looks like a mansion with multiple bedrooms, rather than a hotel. We woke up to much snow, but paved & salted roads that we could travel on (thank you, Jesus!). All in all, we had never been to Aspen before and we made the best of it.

We left at 830am on Tuesday from Aspen. We drove through the rest of Colorado, Utah, Nevada and into California. The drive was ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS- mountains, canyons, just beautiful! Pictures will come... our internet is a bit slow here at the Hampton Inn :) We made it into LA around 830pm that night, and stayed in the middle of Hollywood. We had dinner at a cool restaurant right in the heart of Hollywood & got some rest in preparation for apartment hunting the next day.

All day Wednesday we searched for a place to call home. The pricing here is obviously disgustingly expensive... we were choosing between a place more in the city, but for $2100 being the cheapest we could find, we started looking a bit outside of the city. Studio City is where we ended up-- it's 6 miles from Alex's work (we drove it at 6pm on the 101 and made it in 17 minutes!). We got a 2 bedroom for a great price. The city is fairly walkable-- grocery, pharmacy, coffee within walking distance (as well as a couple of restaurants). We have two assigned parking spaces in a covered parking lot (so hard to find here in LA). We are really excited about living in this city! The only thing we forego is that this part of LA is about 5 degrees hotter than other parts; however, for saving about $400 in rent a month, we decided we would sacrifice somewhere!

Things we've loved so far about LA:
 1.) It's a state law to have calories posted for every food in restaurants. Instead of eating about 2000 calories for dinner last night, I ate 800 because I saw the calories. I guess I can't knowingly choose to eat potato skins anymore... :)
2.) The weather is fantastic.
3.) The Morgans live about 5 miles north of us. 
4.) The Hampton Inn we are staying in now... Compared to the place we were staying in Hollywood, we are in HEAVEN. FREE breakfast & parking (hard to find here). Inside. Free WiFi. We will be here until Monday, when we move into our new home.

Things we were really surprised about LA:
1.) There are NO washer & dryer connections in apartments here. To have a washer & dryer in your apartment, you pay an extra $500/month in rent. Very different from Atlanta! Community laundry here we come.
2.) Just how expensive housing is! $2100/month for 900 sq ft! Just as we were getting a bit frustrated and thought we should just get back in the car back to Atlanta, we found Studio City and we were very thankful for that.

When we can, we will post pictures of all of our travels! We love & miss you guys so much and couldn't do it without all of your support. More to come!

Choices & Consequences

So we got weather advice from our friends before making the journey to CO, we also double checked that info(not too thoroughly cuz we took their word for it) and we paid the price for that. Today we got a late start cuz we had our car serviced due to a wheel squeak, so got on the road around 2:30. Within 60 miles we were looking around thinking, if we were in georgia with this weather we would pull off the road. We quickly called Kendall and asked for what we were getting into. He told us its totally okay in co to drive in this snow, but still be careful. We took his word and said "if these simi-trucks can do it we can too, and look at all these cars with co tags, they're flying, we got this!" Then those co tags started to slow to about 20mph, that's when we looked for a place to stop and see if we could wait it out. At the restaurant we found a local as well as talking to the waiter, both of them said "oh yeah, I wouldn't drive tonight it's just going to get worse and I-70 gets really sketchy at night when it's like this, I would start again in the morning." So at 4 1/2 hours and 140 miles we found a great hotel for cheap and we are safe and sound. Well let's be honest, we played the lottery driving to co in January, we lost. It cost us One day lost and a hotel room but man was it worth it getting to see and hang with so many people we love and miss.

Choices

So we have been bombarded with text, calls, emails, emails with links to an itinerary for our travels, all revolving around dropping by Denver. However Denver is not drop-by-able it adds about 500 miles extra to our trip. BUT we are still kinda traveling west, and lots of people we love live there... So, here we are, in the car on a 16 hour drive to "drop in" to Denver Colorado.

Memphis y'all

We made it to Memphis yesterday! We pulled in around 2pm, so we had the majority of day & night to have a mini vacation (which was much needed after a week of sadness & packing). Michael got us such a great hotel one street down from Beale Street, with a great view of all of the exciting things in the city. We walked around & explored the city for a couple of hours before we went to see the Peabody Ducks. They live at the Peabody hotel, and basically, the owners from a long time ago went shooting, drank a little too much Jack Daniels, and brought ducks to swim in the main lobby of this fancy hotel, so that's how the tradition began. Every morning, they get paraded down a red carpet to the fountain, and every night they walk back down the red carpet, up the elevator to their penthouse duck homes. They were so fun!!

After the ducks, we headed over to Rendezvous for some amazing BBQ. My pappou's brother actually helped start this southern famous BBQ joint, so it had some greek family ties, which I loved. We ate our fare share of ribs & beef shoulder and left full, fat & happy. 

We then made our way to Beale St to see find some good jazz & blues- and we did! We watched this one jazz trio for what could have been hours at a place called King's Palace. We were in heaven. We went to a couple of other different places, saw a couple of other different bands and had such a great time! 

Michael was such a great tour guide in Memphis- it felt good to have a good ol' southern vacation before we head out west. 

WE LOVE YOU GUYS!

Article Found By Ryan Beach

Hum?...

First stop

185 miles in and we find our breakfast stop via gift card at chick-fil-A! Something strange happened this morning while we were saying our last goodbyes, I found myself getting mad at myself for not being more upset and emotional. Granted it was extremely hard and I didn't like leaving the people I love so dearly but I was not overcome with sadness(like someone who will remain unnamed ((Kendall) told me i was going to be)) Then Alex said something that made me realize why that was and that everything was good. She said "you're my home". And it clicked, this was so hard for Kendall cuz he was not married. I am taking my home with me to California. That is a Great thing!

Hey!!

This is my first post on our blog, we would be doing it together but the little lizard is taking a much deserved cat nap. This is so you guys can kinda follow us while we trek across the country together. We'll try and upload something fun at least once a day on the way out there and maybe keep it going while we're there. Thank you all for all the love a support thus far, we really couldn't do this without you all!
-Michael&Alex