2015 Denise's States Trip- Alabama/Atlanta

As I'm writing this we are driving along highway 85 through Alabama. The sky is beautiful with white fluffy clouds and there are trees so thick on the side of the road that you can't see what is on the other side. Tim has his music playing and it is so peaceful and perfect. It makes me forget how hot and humid it is when I step out of the car. It only takes about 1 second and I remember how much I dislike humidity. The air is so thick that it's hard to breathe. I'll suffer through it because it really is amazing here. 

This is me in the humidity. I'm melting. 

We started out the morning at church. They have a whole Stake here in this area. The people were beautiful and oh so friendly. We were told multiple times that we should relocate and move here. Lovely people in the south. Church was great. I love that you can go anywhere in the world and feel the love of fellow members of our church. We went back to the hotel after and changed clothes and loaded up again. We then went to see more of Montgomery. 

This was the first White House of the confederacy. 

We saw the civil rights memorial. 

It was incredible. Loved the design and what it stands for. Then we drove by the rosa parks museum and walked the river walk. 

We drove through old Alabama town and then headed for Auburn and went to the university of auburn campus. I loved that campus. Red brick buildings and green everywhere. 

Then it was on to Atlanta. We had to backtrack a bit but I got a picture of this great sign as we were entering Georgia. 

The Chatahoochi River is what divides the 2 states. 

This is us for most of the last 2 days  lots of driving  

We found our hotel and then immediately left to try a BBQ place that was highly recommended.  Too bad it was closed on Sundays. We googled good BBQ in the area and found another place that was further away. I'm so glad we went and found it and waited the long wait as it was incredibly good. 

I love BBQ. 

While we were waiting for a table we left and found the Martin Luther King memorial and birth place. It was beautiful and well worth the visit. This was the church his father and he both preached at.

This is where he and his wife are buried. 

This is his birth home. 

We have decided to have tomorrow be our craziest day yet if it all works out. We are going to get up at 4 am and catch the shuttle to the airport by 4:30 am for a 6:00 flight to Washington DC. If we can get on that then we'll try for a flight to charleston, West Virginia. If all goes well we will be there by 9:30 am and enjoy the day there. Then we'll catch a flight back to DC at 7:30 pm and then try for Providence, Rhode Island at 10 pm. Won't that be insane?? If we can get on all those flights then we will relax and explore Rhode Island and Connecticut for the next few days. The problem is that you need a plan A and then plans B and C too just in case you don't get on a flight. Wish us luck!

2015 Denise's States Trip- Alabama

Hi!  You get Tim today for your daily Blog.  Our day turned out pretty good.  I got up and planned the day a bit.  Once I had multiple plans in my head, I went off to work out.  The work out room was severely small. Two women and I in this small room with a rack of hand weights, a bike and tread mill.  When I went to the floor to do push ups, I swear their face was by my feet as they stretched out.  Very odd.

We made a good decision to not get up and try for the first flight of the day.  I don't think any of the 10 standbys got on.  So they all rolled down to the 11:30 flight that we wanted to get on.  We ended up being 16 & 17 on the priority list with 16 unsold seats.  Fortunately, one person did not show up....so we both got on.

The flight was 2 hours and quite spectacular.  The plane dodged fluffy white clouds the whole way there.  It was a cool feeling as you soared among these pillow clouds!

I tried the online check in at the Alamo desk at the Atlanta rental car center.  Naturally after messing with it for 10 minutes, it rejected me.  I should have just got in line!

We made the decision to not worry about seeing much of Atlanta since our goal was Alabama.  So, off we went to Montgomery, Alabama!  150 miles from the Atlanta airport.  We passed by Auburn...home of the Auburn Tigers.

Alabama is very green.  The drive was nice!  It was fun watching Denise book our hotel for the night. I was very calm and supportive as she struggled to do my job. :-)  she did great, in the end.

Beautiful skies!

once in Montgomery, we decided to find a place to eat.  On our way to the BBQ place, we happened upon the Alabama Capitol.  It is pretty awesome.  We parked and got out to take some pictures.

All the older buildings are white....

These are the steps of the Capitol where the Selma walkers ended their 40+ mile walk.....

Jefferson Davis...they love him here.

Not sure who this statue is.  Hopefully Denise knows.....

We asked a number of people where to get good BBQ and they all said Dreamland...at the Alley.  The Alley is a gathering palace of many restaurants across from the AA baseball park and River Walk.  The BBQ was ver tasty.  A diet killer!

After eating, we headed to Selma, some 45 miles away. Having just watched the movie and the civil rights struggle to gain voting rights, we thought it would be cool to follow the road they took when marching to Montgomery.  At the base of the bridge where Bloody Sunday occurred is a small memorial park.  We stopped there to walk around for a moment.

The famous bridge spans the Alabama river.  It is quite wide and pretty.

A couple of pictures on the bridge.  Pretty amazing what went on here.  Quite brutal and very wrong.

Selma was a pretty poor looking town.  Even the monument areas were a bit run down.  But since it is celebrating 50 years since the walk, there were some new plaques that had been put up.

We headed back to the wonderful hotel that my wife booked arriving at 8 pm, Montgomery time or 9 pm Georgia time.  We did not realize that they were on different time zones which threw us for a loop.  It was an awesome day!

2015 Denise's States Trip- Chicago

Today was fun and stressful. We started out at a wonderful little cafe for breakfast. It was rated very high and we weren't disappointed. It was close by our hotel in Racine. We then headed down to the big city of Chicago. The toll roads are expensive and Tim is tired of paying them. My gps said it was going to take a long time to go a few miles and we soon saw why. Chicago has a real traffic problem. It was the worst we have ever been stuck in and that is saying a lot considering that we have driven in the Bay area in California often. At one point the gps rerouted us because of traffic and it was still bad. 

This is the beautiful countryside we passed through. 

This is said to be the original McDonald's.  

My view from the car.

It started raining about the time we found Navy Pier. As we were looking for parking it really started to downpour. Parking was a flat $25 and with the rain we decided to go find the Sears Tower as it would be inside. Parking by it was $25 also. We drove around the block and found a place on the street that said it was only $4 an hour. What a steal. The only problem was that no one was parked there and that made us nervous, so we drove on. We discovered why no one was parked there. On Fridays it was street cleaning day on that side of the street. We would have been towed! We ended up finding a lot that only cost $8 for 2 hours. It was about 1/4 mile walk from the tower and it was so wet that my feet were slipping and sliding in my sandals. We wanted to go fast as we were worried about the $25 fine if we went over the 2 hours we had paid for. Such a lot of work to have a car in a big city. Next time we'll park somewhere and take a train in. Luckily it wasn't crowded at the tower. It was amazing.

This is the Chicago river. 

The Sears Tower is the tallest building in the world. It is 109 stories tall. The elevator only takes 60 seconds to get you to the top. Our ears were popping big time. They have a see through ledge that you can go out on. It was freaky to look down through your feet and see cars that looked like matchbook cars. Really cool. Tim was so nervous to step out there but he did it twice for me. What a stud. You could go look out on all 4 sides and see forever. Because of the rain it wasn't that crowded and we got to take our time. I bought a souvenir replica of the tower.

After we left there we walked around the city a bit. We came upon Union Station. What a wonderful building. So fun to photograph.  

A beautiful church we passed by.

We decided to hit the road to find our hotel in a suburb of Chicago called Hoffman Estates. Seriously the most frustrating drive. It was before rush hour yet it was bumper to bumper barely moving congestion.  I thought Tim was going to go crazy. We need to get him out of big cities!  We got to the hotel and saw a movie theater close by. Some brainless down time sounded good so we ran to the movie San Andreas. It was not the best movie, especially to Tim, but the funniest thing happened while we were there. Alarms started going off and we thought it was part of the movie. Soon a voice said to vacate the theater. It was a huge theater with 30 screens so there were a lot of us leaving. They made us all move away from the building. The police came and then the fire department. The firemen all went in fully uniformed. After about 30 minutes they called us all together and the theater manager said we could go back in and they gave us a free movie coupon. Our movie started up right where it left off. We never found out why we had to vacate.

This is us outside the theater.

We ended up going out for Indian food. It was pretty good. 

Our hotel room is nice. We are tired again. How many more days are we doing this?? Our flight we hoped to get on to Atlanta in the morning is now oversold. It had 8 seats this morning. We will have to figure out another one. Then we will find what we want to do in Atlanta and Montgomery. 

2015 Denise's States Trip- Wisconsin

Well, we did get on that last flight to North Dakota. Fargo was awesome. The people were very friendly. It was a bummer that it was rainy but we got to see what we could. Fargo has a growing economy. They said they had 3 new hotels built there last year. Microsoft has 4 campuses there. It is green and pretty. I learned that it sits right on the Minnesota border. Part of the city is on the Minnesota side but it is called Moorehead. A river divides the 2 states. Pretty great to finally get here. Oh, no oil drilling in this part of the state. 

We caught a flight back to Chicago at 11ish. Small plane and full flight. Standby travel is an interesting thing. You have anxiety if you'll get on the whole time. No relaxing until you get that ticket, which is usually after everyone has already loaded. More than half the time you don't get to sit by each other. I really wish I was thinner whenever I get put in a middle seat by 2 strangers. I forget this feeling immediately after the flight and then want a cookie:-). It is amazing too though. I've been able to go to so many places that I wouldn't have without it. Tim is awesome to do this with as he is always researching hotels and places to stay because you can't book anything until you get that ticket. He booked our hotel for tonight as we were walking on the plane. He realized right after he finalized with Hotwire that he had done the wrong night. He called them and talked them in to letting him change nights. So stressful. I'm so glad he is amazing at doing this. 

We got to Chicago and went and got the rental car that Tim had reserved. I was so nervous about navigating us out of the big city. It went very smoothly. We are staying in a town about 1 hour away from Chicago. It is called Racine, wisconsin and it is right by Lake Michigan. We checked in and then went exploring. The lake is so huge that you feel like it is an ocean. We walked along it for awhile. The weather is perfect today. We had looked up restaurants for tonight and had found one that was featured on Restaurant Impossible. I love that show and told Tim that was where we were going. It was  about 20 minutes north of where we were staying. It was called Mike La Susas. It was really good. The special tonight was that all the appetizers were $5. We got calamari and something they called Italian nachos. Both were incredible. The baked pasta wasn't as good as Neza's but it was still good. We decided that we would go on to Milwaukee as we were only about 10 miles away and find dessert. I googled "best desserts in Milwaukee" and they said Babe's Ice Cream. I put it in my gps but goofed up somehow and navigated Tim very successfully to some other restaurant. Tim thinks I try to multitask too much. I think I'm terrible at technology. Who knows? Probably a little bit of both:-). We shrugged our shoulders and put in the right address. So glad we did. The ice cream was phenomenal. The tour of Milwaukee was good too. There are tons of great buildings in Wisconsin. Love the architecture. We came back to the hotel and went swimming and hot tubbing. A really good day today. Off to tour Chicago tomorrow. I've never been there. Tim is researching hotels right now. Good man. I'm tired. A good kind of tired.  

Our rental car. It is brand new. 

You have no idea how hard it was to get this picture but I knew they wanted to welcome me!!

Beautiful Lake Michigan. 

The drive to milwaukee. 

Milwaukee 

Italian nachos

Our hotel room.