Our Roadtrip….

Okay….So on Wednesday, August 25, 2010 we left Albuquerque, New Mexico for Minot, North Dakota. Stephen drove his truck with the both cats (Sasha and Mackie). I had the suv with the dogs (Chloe and Payton). We started our adventure heading north. The towns came and went and after a few hours we were in Colorado. Finally we were making progress. We found ourselves stopping about every 3 hours to let the dogs go to the bathroom and get water. Around 10 pm we landed outside of Denver, Colorado in a town called Firestone. We were able to find a hotel that would accept pets and settled down for the night. As a side note: I find it interesting that even when you let your dogs out and they do there business they still manage to have accidents all over the hotel floor. Good thing we were in a pet room.

The night and morning came and went. We go up and got ready and got our things and the animals loaded in the cars. Next we found ourselves in Wyoming. All I can say about Wyoming is they have some of the nicest rest stop bathrooms I have ever seen. They are really clean. More states could learn something just by traveling through Wyoming and stopping at a rest stop. It seemed like we drove for every, but eventually we made our way into South Dakota. Now were were traveling north on highway 85 and I am following Stephen and of course what happens? Our Uhaul trailer get a blow out and our cell phones get no service. What are we suppose to do now. We have 4 animals, no water left, a flat trailer and not cell service. Luckily, we had passed a biker bar about 2 miles back. So I travel back down and ask for a working phone. They very interesting guy smoking out side tell me the phone is for local calls only and about half a mile up the road is a spot off to side where I should be able to get three bars on my cell phone. So i travel up the road and call Uhaul road side assistant and 2.5 hours later someone showed up to fix our tire. But of course the tire is the correct size, but the rim is not. They had to tow the trailer to Rapid City, South Dakot. Now this detour took us a little more east than we wanted to. But we found a hotel that took pets and settled down for the night.

Friday morning finally came. We went to pick up the newl?y fixed Uhaul. We decided to head to Mount Rushmore for the morning and then Minot. We weren’t able to stay too long because of the animals, but we were there long enough to take a picture. Next stop…Minot, North Dakota. I can say the Black Hills are beautiful…too bad were not closer to them. We finally made it to Minot around 8:00 pm. It really isn’t that bad, but different. The people seem nice, but again I just got here. We check into what will possibly be our home for the next 3- 6 months. There was a couple two doors down from us. They were very nice. They introduced themselves and invited us for dinner. They were super nice and gave some insight into what the real issues with housing in Minot was. In a nut shell….the housing situation sucks here and I really don’t know what were going to do after 30 days. In the end we made it to Minot safely.