Hit The Road Jack

So starts trip number one, and the first blog post of the trip. It's been a long few days to get here so I'll give you all a quick run through. Friday I traveled to Florence, AL to watch the one and only Rachael M GRADUATE! Unfortunately I had to book my plane flight to Albuquerque on Saturday so I only go to partake in part of the celebration, but we still had a blast. After 2 hours of sleep I rolled to the airport at 5 AM Saturday and made my way back home. Once landing I spent the day eating my way through the city at all of my favorite spots, and visiting some great old friends. Yesterday I got to eat at El Pinto (Courtney, you remember those bottles of Green Chili Sauce... those are El Pinto) ... and typing this now I realize I left my left overs at Laurens last night. Oh well, guess she'll find a great surprise awaiting her along with ridiculously decorated cookies (I'll get to that later). So after our amazing lunch we go meet up with Lauren (her mom was my 4th and 5th grade teacher, weird, right?). We make our way to the store for cookie supplies and a few 1.5 L bottles of wine (because who wants to decorate cookies sober?). 7 hours later and we have a ton of awesomely decorated cookies and a potential hang over.

Snake on a plane and the Death Star!!

The only other highlight of the weekend was going to REI yesterday and finding a backpack for EUROTRIP!

But onto the current trip. My Dad, Buddy and I are getting ready to pull out, headed through the 4 corners up to Colorado today, and I realized I haven't told many people how this whole trip originated. So here it goes, short and sweet:

My Dad was a rancher up in Williams Lake, British Columbia, Canada for many years when he was younger, and he has many old rancher buddies up there that he goes and visits about once a year. He also knows people along the way.. so he will visit and stay with them as he goes up to Canada and back. Growing up I always saw these posters hanging everywhere in his house and never really knew what they were about. I knew that the were from his Ranching days but that's about the extent of it. I eventually learned that they are posters he has collected over the years from the Williams Lake Stampede.

This is the main wall, but he has several more. It's funny to think my dad used to be a rancher, my favorite thing about him are all of his amazing stories... which I'm sure I'll hear plenty more of on our travels.

Getting to the point, last year my Dad was up in BC visiting and he always sends me these beautiful post cards and tells me how pretty it is and how much I would love it up there, I even have one of the pictures he took years and years ago blown up on my bedroom wall. So I said to him "well, why don't I just road trip up there with you next year, I have Christmas Break off" ... and he responds with "well, hell, why not?!" .... and from there we spent the last few months planning and figuring out all the little details... but for the most part, we're just driving from one side of the county to the other and enjoying every stop along the way.