Road Trip to Ohio

So, most of you know, but for those who don't - Brian was offered a job at Scott's Miracle-Gro in Marysville, Ohio and we accepted it.  We left Utah on Wednesday morning, July 10.  Brian's first day at his new job wasn't until July 22 but we decided to leave early so we could break up our drive a little bit and so we could do some house shopping once we got there.  On Day 1, we drove to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.

At about 9:00 that morning, we stopped for ice cream cones at Little America which is a tradition in Brian's family.  I thought it was a pretty weird thing to be doing so early in the morning, but there were lots of other people doing the same thing.








We got to Mount Rushmore around 5:00 that evening. It was pretty amazing.  You can't see it the whole drive up the mountain.  At one point, you can see some of Washington's profile, but that's all.  Then after you pull into the parking lot, it comes out of nowhere and it's massive! We did the hike around the base and the whole thing was impressive.  It added a few hours onto our trip, but it was definitely worth it!

On Day 2, we drove to Gettysburg, South Dakota where Brian's grandma lives. We stopped at Pierre for lunch and had a picnic on the lawn of the state capital building.

We stayed with Brian's Aunt Laurie in South Dakota for 2 nights which gave us enough time to see the family farm, spend some time with Grandma, and go to the town museum!

Grandma Hepper used to work at the museum so she gave us the grand tour! We weren't really sure how to sign the guest book, but decided Ohio looked cooler since there was already lots of Utah names on there.  We saw lots of cool things at the museum - including this high school photo of Brian's mom!

Us with Grandma Hepper

                  Brian with his Grandma and Aunt Laurie

On Saturday morning, we left South Dakota and headed for Minneapolis. About an hour into our drive and Brian saw a sign for Storybook Land and I swear I have never seen him so excited in my life!  We had to sit in the car for about 10 minutes and wait for the place to open but I think Brian would have waited hours if he had to.

Storybook Land is basically just a big park with storybook scenes scattered throughout it.  It was an awesome park though and the castle was super impressive.

There was a whole part of the park that just Wizard of Oz. This yellow brick road was probably half a mile long and pretty much walked you through the whole movie. We accidentally started on the wrong end though so we went through the movie backwards and we finished our walk in Munchkin Land.

Stopping at Storybook Land put us behind a little bit, but it was a nice place to take a break and Brian was in heaven reliving his childhood!

When we got to Minneapolis, we checked into our hotel downtown and then rode the train to the Mall of America. The Mall was a little overwhelming, it was huge!!! If you spent only 10 minutes in each store there, it would take you more than 3 days to go through the whole thing! We went to the Aquarium, did some shopping, and then grabbed some dinner.

It's hard to tell from this picture how massive these lego displays are, but to put it into perspective the lego people were probably about 4 feet tall.

Sunday was the biggest leg of our drive.  From Minneapolis to Indianapolis was about 10 hours and we went through 4 states!  This day was pretty uneventful, just a lot of driving. We did go through Chicago, but there are just SO many trees out here that we couldn't actually see the city from the freeway.  We got to Indianapolis at about 8 pm that night and really excited to be out of the car after such a long drive. 

On Monday morning, we only had a little over two hour drive for the day so we slept in and didn't hit the road until almost lunch time. It was a short, uneventful ride so this was the only picture I took but we finally made it to OHIO!!!!!