Nashville, Country Music Is Just Not That Cool.

When we woke up the next morning in Cave In Rock, our main objective was to get out. The one thing this town had going for it? We got to take a ferry across the Ohio River to Kentucky. We had waaaay too much fun with this. The little 10 minute ferry ride across the river was pretty fun though, we parked our car and got out and talked to the ferry boat guy who was redneck as hell and loved us. We got dropped off on the other side of the river, Kentucky bound.

Our next stop was Nashville. Now, if you've never been to Nashville you are probably like us and picture it as this hip and bustling musical city that would be cool to visit, yes? Well, you're right, Nashville is a cool city. But god damn you better live and breathe and poop the country music culture. Walking around the city was really overwhelming with the dog because we couldn't play along with everyone else who kept ducking into bars shitfaced at noon. We were swarmed by blonde little bitches everywhere that looked like the devil spawn of Carrie and Reba. Country music twanged loudly out of every single bar and restaurant and we were the only ones without cowboy boots or a cowboy hat on. Now if you know us, you know we can take a lot. But not this. It was country overload.

Oh by the way, something very weird about Nashville- I don't think anyone that lives there has ever seen a dog. Every single person we walked by could not believe that Avery was real. We finally got so sick of people asking us what kind of dog she was, we started making up shit. Dillon decided she was a "chow-ridge-space-bernard." I just told people, "it's not a dog," and walked away creepily. Haha, people are so dumb.

Anywho, we did manage to see the one thing I wanted to while we were there which was the Music Walk of Fame. I thought it was going to be kind of like the walk of fame in Hollywood with the hands and shit but needless to say, it was a pretty big let down. None the less, the sky did put on a pretty impressive sunset. :)

In the end, I can now say that I have been to Nashville. I can also say that I probably won't be going back. Yee haw.

Cave In Rock, Illinois- Our First Experience In A Dry Town

Our next camping spot was in this town called Cave in Rock, literally in the middle of no where in Illinois. The only reason this town is even on a map is just as the name suggests...there's a cave. In a rock. And I guess people...come to...see it? I still don't really understand the whole thing. Anyways, there were open campsites so we went. The campground itself was actually pretty cool. It was tucked far back in the woods so it actually felt like real camping not RV park camping. (Which I now know, there is a difference.) The camp host was this hot mess of a woman in some gross leopard print nightgown at 3 in the afternoon. Our meeting was awkward, but she did tell us one very important bit of information--Cave in Rock was a dry town. At that point, the fourteen million Jesus signs and churches we had to wade through on the way in made a lot more sense. Dillon and I almost panicked when she assured us there was a town about 10 miles away where we could get booze.

I remember the drive down to the town for two reasons. First was the sunset. I have never seen anything like it. The sun was at least three times larger in the sky than I have ever seen it before in my life, and bright orange/red. It reminded me of those murals of African safaris you see where the sun is just this hot boiling orange thing that takes over the sky. At this point, I can probably apologize for continuously telling you about this cool shit when I have no pictures of it. I'm sorry, I did not take a picture. You'll just have to rely on my picturesque word choice and your creativity. But trust me, that shit was cool.

The second reason was that this was our first encounter with humid fog. This shit on the other hand, not so cool. At first it kind of was because being from Colorado, you never see it get so humid that your windshield fogs up and you can't really do anything about it. But after driving for a while, it gets kind of annoying and you start to look like an idiot as you struggle to wipe of quasi-fog with no luck. We're still struggling with this even now down in the Keys...I'll let you know how that goes.

Wow, sorry that was a super long tangent about absolutely nothing. ANYWAYS, we finally got some liquor and drove our butts back to the campsite, and that's when it happened. The frogs. They come out at night. With a force like you've never seen!!!! Haha, no but really, the frogs were nuts. There were so many of them and they were so loud that we were almost yelling at each other. It was right then and there that I decided the only way I was going to stand a chance in hell at falling asleep that night was to drink myself into oblivion. Sorry mom.

See that pot of spaghetti? Yep. It came right back up later that night. It was the second most disturbing puke I've ever taken right behind the one in front of the church the day after my birthday. (Brandon and Kelsi will attest to that.) After puking my guts out, Dillon says that I proceeded to lay in the tent, whining and crying in my sleeping bag that I couldn't fall asleep because I was spinning. Dillon said it was the only time he's ever seen someone spin when they were already laying on the floor. Needless to say, when I finally did fall asleep at whatever hour and woke up the next morning staring at a pile of completely undigested spaghetti noodles all over the ground, a few things became undeniably apparent to me:
1) I cannot, no matter how much I believe I can in the moment, drink as much as Dillon.
2) Frogs are some loud mothers, a problem I now feel is better resolved with earplugs, not alcohol.
3) I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to eat spaghetti again.

Everything else aside, I can now cross one very important thing off of the bucketlist: "Get so drunk in a dry country that you puke right back in it's sheltered little face."

No Avery! Not Under the St. Louis Arch! (Missouri Travels)

After our departure from the Dead Flying Squirrel, I was really excited to hit up St. Louis. Neither of us had ever been to the arch, so we decided it was something worth adding to the list. Just outside of the city, I barely caught a sign for "microbrewery" so naturally, we pulled off at the next exit. We found ourselves in the quaint little town of St. Charles, Missouri. The only person I think would love this town more then me is Ashley. It was a mix between Boulder's fun college atmosphere and Estes Park's fresh and cozy mountain feel.

When we pulled in it was raining, but not too hard, my favorite weather. "Trailhead Brewery," where we stopped in for a beer, was really cool and much needed after the drive. After a nourishing break, we weren't quite ready to get back in the car so we grabbed the dog and decided to do some exploring.

Halfway through our walk, it starting raining again, but we didn't care it was awesome. The town was so cozy and beautiful with this gigantic raging river running right through the middle. We stumbled upon this beautiful open park that turned out to be an old abandoned railroad station. I thought this was way cool so we went snooping around the old train station and tracks. I wish I would have had the camera with me because this was probably one of my favorite moments of the entire trip.




We stayed in a hotel in St. Charles that night, and the next day we went into St. Louis. Much too city for Dillon, so of course I loved it. It reminded me a lot of Denver, but the pretty parts of Denver not the scuzzy ones. The arch was really impressive. It was right on the river, which was overflowing into the city. Yes, you read correctly, St. Louis was kind of flooding. It was weird, the river was so high that the ramps usually leading down the the river were completely flooded and the water level was about even with the street we were walking on next to it. In fact, when we went to leave we turned the corner to get back onto the highway and the street was completely overflowing with water! Dillon and I were pretty confused as to why their were no cops or any signs closing the road off, but we didn't want to take our chances so we turned around to go a different way.

The thing I will most remember about the arch, however, was our damn dog. The expression, "when you gotta go you gotta go" became a reality for us when right in the middle of this historic landmark--and I mean actually directly in the middle, dead center under the arch where families are gathered taking photographs, people are waiting in line to go up to the top of the arch, small children are playing--Avery decides it's the perfect opportunity to embarrass the shit out of us. This wasn't even a poop people. Our dog DESTROYED that arch. There wasn't even anything we could pick up. People were staring in disgust. I was mortified. So we did the only thing there was to do...we lost it laughing. Two stupid kids, watching their dog crap all over this landmark, laughing our asses off and doing absolutely nothing to stop it. It was only when a rent-a-cop started heading our way that we decided it was probably time to leave. Oh, Avery.

Dead Flying Squirrel Campground, Iowa

After an amazing few days in Minnesota with Jessy and Nick and all of their friends, we decided it was time to trade in our sweet ass hotel room for some rough-it-in-the-woods camping. We agreed that we wouldn't drive too far the first day so we could spend most of the day with Jessy, so we decided on a campsite near Cedar Rapids, Iowa called "Flying Squirrel Campground." I mean, come on. We had stopped at the grocery store and picked up hotdogs and such to make for a late dinner when we got to our site. We showed up at 9:27. The firewood stand closed at 9:00. Of course.

Out in the middle of no where in Iowa, we were stuck in the dark, with no tent set up and no firewood, which meant no dinner. We were on a mission. Unfortunately, there was no where in 50 miles that sold firewood. We found this out when we stopped at the one gas station anywhere around and the kid told me to check the county fair down the street, and when we asked some old man at the county fair for wood, he pretty much laughed in our faces and told us we were S.O.L. Fun times. We started to drive around like idiots looking for random wood and sticks lying around and I tried to convince Dillon that we should tear up the wooden entryway to this abandoned campground. He didn't really go for that. A little frog did land on the hood of our car at one point though and scared the shit out of us, leaving Dillon shouting, "What do I do?! What do I do?! I don't want to take him out of his natural habitat!" Yah, we're really good at camping.

I decided to carry out option "Last Resort"--finding anyone still awake in our campground and bartering for firewood with them. We came upon one site that was still up with a fire, and I hopped out of the car to ask for a favor. A gigantic 300lb. woman camp romping up to me and took me over to the next door trailer telling me, "Our neighbor's a little crazy, but he has a lot of firewood." We rapped on the door and out came this crazy ass mother. He looked like a skeleton with some dark skin stretched across it, covered up with cut-off Daisy Duke shorts and a tiny little tank top. He was screaming and cussing at his yappy dogs pretty much unaware that I was taking firewood from his pile while he started chasing them around his trailer like an insane person. Dillon started whispering, "Just grab the wood and GO!!!" My only regret was that I did not get a picture of the whole fiasco. I would have put it up on the "people who shop at Walmart" website. But what we did end up with was fire and dinner. Yay. (Side note, if you ever want to see Dillon squirm extremely uncomfortably, take him into a Walmart. He won't take his hands out of his pockets. I think it's cuz he's afraid he's going to get some disease. It's awesome.)

That night we kept smelling something freakin' awful but we just thought it was the lake next to us. We got drunk enough to forget about it and fell asleep, but the next morning...oh. my. god. First of all, if you've ever woken up hungover and smelled the remnants of liquor and beer and such from your night before and almost threw up right then and there, you have a fraction of an idea of what the next morning was like for me. I awoke out of a drunken coma to the most foul, rotting smell I have ever dealt with. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't. Something was definitely dead somewhere really really close to our tent, and was definitely rotting like hell. I made Dillon wake up when I had gag reflexed upwards of ten times and we packed up our shit as quickly as we could without throwing up on each other. Needless to say, that campground will always be remembered in my mind as the Dead Flying Squirrel Campground.

Fourth of July in Minnesota

We left our campsite the next day to start out on the lovely 10 hour drive to Minnesota. Because regardless of what you say, it IS on the way to Florida. But more importantly, Jessy lives there. Yay Jessy! We got into Minneapolis the night of the 3rd and our hotel room was looking pretty good after sleeping in muddy rain water the night before. Jessy and Nick came and met up with us for a couple drinks, and T.G.I. Fridays is now my new happy spot. Maybe it was because I could literally fall out of my hotel room onto the patio of the restaurant, maybe it was the $4 shots of Jack, maybe it was because Nick was so hammered the first time we went there he couldn't speak. Whatever the reason, we would continue to utilize their happy hour the remainder of our trip. Jessy, Dillon and I proceeded to rack up an $80 tab there the next day, which consisted purely of booze. At happy hour prices. Our waitress was impressed. Needless to say, after that the staff loved us, we loved the staff, and Dillon got a pretty impressive pity laugh from the server at one point which became the highlight of our day.

Jessy's friends are awesome because they love to party. On the Fourth, we celebrated our nation with good BBQ and cherry bombs. We ran through the sprinklers like idiots and I got to eat corn which made me super happy. Speaking of corn, this country has a shit ton of it. Anywho, the Fourth ended up being a fantastically drunken blast and Dillon and I went home early. We watched fireworks across the city skyline from our 16th floor hotel room, and apparently I blacked out a shower later that night. Good times.

Although the drive was long, it was waaaaay worth it to get to spend the holiday with good friends. But one thing is for sure--- Wyoming and South Dakota pretty much suck to drive through.

PS. Never, EVER, under any circumstances go to Sioux Falls, SD.

Mount Rushmore Rain and Boozy Yahtzee

We had planned to get to our campsite around 9pm so that we would have some sun to set up camp. Of course, we left Boulder at 9 instead, putting us in the quaint little South Dakota town of Custer around 3 in the morning. Luckily, we were so damn sick of packing and moving and cleaning at this point, the sheer fact we had made it out of the state inspired us. So we did what any other couple on a holy crap road trip would do. We started chugging tequila.

It took us a couple minutes to set up our tent, and then of course we were too wired to go to bed so we decided to go tromping through some trail in the woods that we probably shouldn't have been on. Everything was dewy from the rain earlier that night, and with the sun coming up and us pretty drunk and delirious we were having a damn good time. Needless to say, when we finally passed out around 6, it was much needed. Luckily, the family in the tent next to us woke up two hours later at 8 and unleashed their children on the campground with fury. I think it was payback for us bombarding the campground at 3 in the morning and proceeding to drink tequila all night long. Either way, I stick to the claim that I am never having children.

Other then that, the campground we stayed at in Custer, "Big Pine Campground," was damn near perfect. We got an awesome tent site in the back where no one messed with us. The next morning we decided to go see Mount Rushmore. It was pretty freakin' awesome. From far away it doesn't look as big as you expect it to, but when you get up close and start hiking around it gets much more impressive.

On the way back to our campsite, we spotted something that made Dillon very happy. The Flintstone's Hotel and Campsite. Who would have known something so tacky could be entertaining at the same time? Although Big Pine did us good, I think it's safe to say that if we ever find ourselves in Custer, SD again, we will be staying at Bedrock.

When we got back to the campsite, it started pouring rain. I mean pouuurrrinnnng. We grabbed the bottle of tequila, my pipe, and Yahtzee. Let me tell you, amazing rained-in combination. That night we decided to be the most generic campers we could possibly be so we went to the store and bought hot dogs and s'mores stuff and shoved our faces while rockin' out to Leftover Salmon. Needless to say, a great start to a roadtrip.

Goodbye Boulder, Hellllloooo A lot of Driving

I stumbled my hungover butt over to the fridge from our slumber party set up on the living room floor, and poured what was probably the most delicious tasting cup of water I've ever had in my life. I looked over at Dillon and Avery passed out in a mess of sleeping bags, Thomas and Aspen asleep in my empty walk-in closet, and Johhny face planted into his jacket in the middle of the bedroom floor. I let out a groan loud enough to make sure everyone else would wake up and join me in my hangover. The night before was our going away party. And today, we were leaving Boulder.

After a lot of grumbling our sorry asses made it to The Buff for one last hoo-rah. And some bloody marys. Ok, a lot of bloody marys. They're a dollar don't judge us. We said our final goodbyes, packed up the car, threw the dog in the backseat and took off. Seven hours late. Because that's just how we do. A quick stop in Fort Collins to say bye to Dinah and Hanson, and we were on our way to Mt. Rushmore for some camping. Holy shit, we're moving out of Colorado. Here we go...