arctic_allie

10:36 pm: Dewey’s Traveling Zoo Update
This is my first "journal" done on the road to Fairbanks, hopefully I will actually update this site from time to time!

Where Have They Been?

So far, we have traveled from Orlando, Florida to Raleigh, North Carolina where we enjoyed a two-night all expenses paid vacation at La Chateau de Bubba (for you southerners out thar that is the House of Bubba aka my brother Mark’s house). This is where we picked up the schmancy laptop I'm using now. Big thanks to the bubster!!!

From NC we traveled through the beautiful Smokey Mountains to Knoxville, Tennessee. The Smokeys are beautiful (and they do indeed look smokey!) but the winding roads made for a lot of white-knuckle back seat driving action from yours truly. I guess windy roads are just not my thing - Mark persevered without biting my head off even once for the commentary. He deserves a medal or something - I would have smacked me;-) To make matters more harrowing we caught the tail end of Dennis and the weather was awful. We didn't see the sun for days. We went through Kentucky and Illinois on our way to St. Louis, Missouri. Let me tell ya' the midwest is not called the breadbasket for nothing! I never realized how much farmland it takes to feed our nation. And this was just the beginning of it...

Many cornfields later we arrived in St. Louis, Missouri. Somehow we always manage to get in a city right at rush hour so that was great fun and added about an hour of swearing to our trip. We did get a nice view of the St. Louis Arch but it was really foggy so I'm not sure if the photo will do it justice. FYI, most of the photos are taken out of the car window so don't expect any Ansel Adams shots to show up any time soon. Nothing much of interest happened in St. Louis other than the cool arch so we headed out to Omaha Nebraska.

This is where we heroes starting hitting the challenges in our quest for education and snowmen.

Challenge One - Up until this point our animals had been wonderful traveling companions - maybe a little occasional meowing, whining, and begging during fast food stops but nothing monumental. That changed on the way to Omaha. Apparently dogs cannot eat popcorn chicken and travel well. First Fred gets sick all over the back seat (luckily covered in towels) and we have to pull over. We get back on the road again and Luke starts (finishing off the towels in the back) and we have to pull over again. At this point Mark is not a happy camper. Finally we arrive in Omaha and settle down for the night. Next we are off to Rapid City South Dakota.

Challenge Two - Half way to South Dakota I realize that I can not find my cell phone anywhere. We decide that it is probably in the tick on the Honda or in the back. We finally arrive at our Ramada Inn. Up until this point we had stayed at La Quintas - pet friendly, high-speed internet in the rooms, and wonderfully cheap. Well, there was no pet friendly La Quinta in Rapid City so we chose the Ramada. Little did we know that a) my cell phone was not anywhere in the car b) the hotel charges out the wazoo for local, long distance, and c) the rooms had no wireless connectivity. Aaaah! We were cut off from all civilization!!!

Challenge Three (they always come in threes!) - We fork over the exorbitant funds to call home only to find a message from our buyer - he can't close that day and it would be another week. We didn't know if the buyers had not qualified, if we needed new buyers (and thereby another 30 days to close), and if we could afford to eat that night. Every call was another charge and we could not get on the internet in our room to e-mail. It was now too late to call anyone in Orlando (you guys are two hours ahead of us at this point). I thought we were going to have to send up smoke signals until we found out that the lounge area of the hotel had one (1!) working high speed internet dial-up connection. Mark went down there and e-mailed our woes to my mom. We had our fitful sleep and woke up totally unrested. Again, my mom and dad came to the rescue and handled all of the details for rescheduling the closing and transferred more traveling money to our account (bolshoi thanks Dad and Mom!). Mark gradually lost the hulk green tinge and we dropped the animals off at the Peterson Ranch kennels and headed to Mount Rushmore.

Mount Rushmore was awesome! It was in the upper 90s (but its a dry heat - hee-hee!) and pretty windy. It didn't seem that hot and I got totally fried walking the Presidents' Trail. When we were first driving up I was a little disappointed - they weren't that big from a distance but when you actually get in the park it is soooooooo huge! I never realized how cool it was! The view, not just of the monument, is beautiful. The mountains just steal your breath away. After sweating our way around the monument we decided to check out Beautiful Mt. Rushmore Cave. Again - AMAZING! There are huge caverns with intricate rock formations throughout. It is definitely a work out due to many steep inclines and declines. The end of the accessible cavern is a huge room named The Big Room. I will attach the pictures - way cool! After the heat of Mt. Rushmore the cave was the perfect way to end our site seeing. We got to eat in an honest to goodness restaurant that night due to the pets being kenneled so that was a treat as well. On the down side - there was no sign of my cell phone at the La Quinta we stayed at in Omaha. I feel like I am missing a vital part of my body. We head out to Wal-Mart and pick up a Tracfone. Our new number is: 605-209-3393. When we got back to the hotel we finally heard from my mom and our buyer and it looks like everything is fine to close on Wednesday. Yea!! Next stop - Billings Montana!

Billings was pretty uneventful - we stayed at a pet friendly Holiday Inn (which had wireless high speed internet - yay!!!). Daphne got to swim, Mark very kindly did laundry while I plotted our next stop and our dogs are actually behaving. I think Fred learned that he was not the king dog of the universe while in the kennel and he is much less aggressive with the barking. Our next stop - Post Falls, Idaho...

Where were they yesterday?

We traveled through the Rocky Mountains to Idaho. Apparently the Rockies consist of many different areas. We passed through the Crazy Mountains near Bozeman Montana, the Tobacco Root Mountains, and a whole bunch more. We were surrounded by gorgeous purple mountains majesty. It is like being in a sculpted bowl. This is definitely a great place to be and I don't think pictures can do this area justice. It is breathtaking and makes you realize what a wonderful country we live in. As a flatlander I never imagined just how truly awe inspiring mountains can be. We crossed the Continental Divide (6,393 ft. elevation). I asked Mark exactly what that was and he explained that this separates the way the rivers flow - rivers east of the divide empty into the Atlantic Ocean (Gulf of Mexico) and west of the divide they empty into the Pacific Ocean. I love it when he gets all smart like that - tres sexy!! We stayed the night at our first Holiday Inn Express in Post Falls and it was awesome! They were pet friendly, served cookies and milk (free!) as a pre-bedtime snack, and from 10:00 pm to 2:00 am they had PB&Js in the lobby for a midnight snack (we zonked out too early for those). The free continental breakfast had the best cinnamon rolls ever and the check out was a breeze.

Where are they today?

Today we traveled to Seattle, Washington. Along the way we checked out the scenic overlooks and also the Gingko Petrified Forest. Yours truly expected to see fallen petrified trees (or even a whole forest!) but it was more a case of isolated remnants of trees. Still, the hike was fun and the dogs got a bit of exercise (and me too...). We are settled in for the next couple of nights at a La Quinta in Seattle. Tomorrow we are boarding the animals for a day and night to check out the zoo and local attractions. I hope to find a mall (typical- I know) so I can purchase some clothes. All I have are my workout clothes (sweat pants and t's) and one pair of thick, dark blue denim jeans. I just about died hiking the forest today!!!!!!

If all goes according to plan (hah-hah) we should go from here to Bellingham to catch the ferry. We did not score a sleeping cabin on the ferry as they sell out early in the season so we will be camping out (in a tent no less!) on the deck. We will let you know how all of this goes after these important announcements from our sponsers...