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. 

2015 Denise's States Trip- North Dakota

Lucas and I in the backseat. 

We had a wonderful few days with Cassidy, Mike and Lucas. It rained every day, but we also had sun most days too. Lucas is such a joy and so much fun.. We really enjoyed their new house. I think they'll be very happy there. Some highlights of Oklahoma were: Lucas, Alfredo's, playing games, the awesome theater room and watching movies, the incredible storms... It was really was a great visit there. Very humid, but still great! I love spending time with my beautiful daughter. 

We are trying to get on a flight, any flight, out of Oklahoma city now.  It's not happening very smoothly though. The loads were terrible and we almost decided we were going to wait until tomorrow when we noticed a flight that was delayed 5+ hours to Chicago. When a flight is delayed that long it is great for standby travelers as people have to jump ship to find a flight to get them to their connecting flights. We rushed (like throw our stuff in- laundry from the dryer, bathroom stuff, electronics- and run. We get to the airport and run to the gate (literally) and wait and wait. We waited for over 3 hours and then finally got to load the plane only to have them shut off the engines because Chicago is having a flow problem. Too many planes all coming in at once. So here we sit:-). After only 15 minutes we are on our way.  Can't wait to see if we can get on the last flight of the day to fargo, north Dakota. 

The Lundberg's in from of their beautiful, new house. 

Tim decided to take a meeting while we were waiting for the delayed flight to go. An enterprising fellow I married. 

They have the most amazing toilets in the OKC and Chicago airports. You wiggle your hand over the sensor and it gives you a new seat cover.  For someone always desperate to go fast, this is awesome. 

The Chicago airport is huge and has some really pretty things to look at as you walk.

Dinner for the starving travelers.

Our hotel room in Fargo was freezing when we got in there. Like 50 degrees cold! 

We went to the drugstore across the street. I wanted this sweatshirt but changed my mind.

It started to rain and Tim had this great suggestion to stay dry:-)

2015 Denise's States Trip- Oklahoma

I have decided to hijack Tim's blog and document this trip we are on.  Some say I am crazy, but I am so excited. I set a goal forever ago to visit all 50 states before I die. It has been a long and slow process, but incredibly fun and enjoyable. I have rules for this of course. I must eat or sleep in the state. I can't count airports. I must confess that I have been to lots of corners of states. If I see that it's only a few miles to go the other direction and get a new state I am all for it! I have been very lucky that Tim humors me on this. Well, I was complaining to Tim that this was taking too long and he said that we should just plan a trip and get the remaining states I have left (except Alaska. We have an Alaskan cruise planned for July 2016 with my parents and siblings). The states I have left are north Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama, west Virginia, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Pretty spread out right? We are starting the trip at the Lundbergs in Oklahoma and ending it at the Hunters in New York. We will be in 15 states with all the airport stops we will have. I hope we can survive this! Our flight into Oklahoma city was crazy. They were having a big storm and it made for the rockiest flight I have ever been on. It was intense. We are loving our time here and getting to be in their new house is awesome. 

I'm totally new at blogging and not very good at typing so this might be a mess. I'm not sure if I am even going to tell anyone about this. We'll see.....

This is us after we got upgraded to first class from Houston to oklahoma City. Happy people. 

Tim and Lucas in his new bedroom. Cassidy and Mike did a great job painting it. 

Enjoying their theater room upstairs. Pretty awesome.