Arizona or BUST pt. II

This was the second day in my trek to Phoenix. The BEST part of my day was being able to talk to James for hours on the phone. Sure we would randomly lose connection because I was driving in the middle of nowhere, but it was GREAT to hear his voice. I'm SO EXCITED to see him TOMORROW!!! Today's drive was uneventful until arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But let me start at the beginning before I come to the more eventful end.

We started our drive at 8am sharp. The rout that was recommended to us took highway 54 to I-40 to I-25 to the motel. We passed through the rest of Kansas, the "handle" of Oklahoma (Texahoma is a REAL place - we got gas there) and a bit of Texas before making it to New Mexico. We ended up stopping randomly in New Mexico for lunch. We didn't know what town we were in and when we stopped, we didn't even know there was a restaurant there. It looked like a gas station with a little shopper's mart attached. Even though the appearance of the restaurant was rustic and a bit run down the food was EXCELLENT and INEXPENSIVE. We asked the waitress what town we were in and she said Logan, New Mexico. So if you ever find yourself in Logan, NM and you notice their gas station, stop for food. Its great!

The drive went really well until we got to Albuquerque, NM. The drive through the mountains was beautiful as we neared the town. But also as we neared the town traffic began to pick up. After we merged onto I-25 and before we exited for the motel I was almost sideswiped about 3 times by the same truck. A couple minutes after that and after we exited the interstate I was almost rear-ended by a moving truck.

The mountains here are beautiful. They more than make up for the crazy drivers.

I managed to snap a couple photos today. I took the first one when we were starting out for the day. After that I randomly took a couple shots through out the day.

Starting out for the day...already looking tired.

Making our U-turn after the GPS freaked out.

Heading the right way again.

Arizona or BUST pt. I

Today was Day 1 of my trek to Phoenix and WOW am I tired. Driving all day really is exhausting.

My friends who are also moving to Arizona and I had planned to start our day at 6:30am at a restaurant in Clive, IA, but due to a random power outage the place was closed and we spontaneously came up with plan B - meet at Hyvee instead. A few other minor incidents caused us to leave town about 45 minutes after we had planned, but that really wasn't too bad.

What could have been a boring trip was made FANTASTIC by being able to chat with James for most of the day. YAY!!! (With the exception of my phone randomly losing all its service bars and dropping our connection.) I was also able to chat with my best friend, Chrissie, for a while too. Again YAY!!!

The drive itself was OK other than when we hit Kansas City. At a rest stop in Missouri we were told to take I-435 around Kansas City rather than go through the center of it on I-35 because I-35 had issues with a bridge and road construction. BUT the lady at the rest stop didn't know that a big chunk of I-435 was down from 3 lanes to 1 and that the ramp we needed to use to return to I-35 was closed. Thanks lady. You really made our drive better. Because of being at a complete standstill for a while on I-435 one of my friends was able to whip out his cameras and take pictures of interesting things like piles of rocks sitting on the side of the road and a speedometer reading 0 mph on the interstate. I was also able to take that extra time to text my family and friends, do my nails and take a nap. OK slight exaggeration on the nails and nap, but the texting and pictures really are part of our story. What made the limited lane access completely worth the extra time sitting on the interstate was that they really WEREN'T working on the road. The miles of construction cones blocking off the other 2 lanes were likely a strategic part of the KC plan to preserve the roads and not reconstruct or fix them. Brilliant plan.

We arrived at our motel in Pratt, KS at 4pm. At first I was disappointed that we wouldn't be covering more miles on our first day, but I didn't sleep well last night and I didn't use my air conditioner so I'm rather drained and am looking forward to going to sleep REALLY early tonight.

Once we got to the motel we walked to Walmart then got dinner at Taco Bell. We're now sitting in the motel updating our blogs, facebook, texting, etc.

Tomorrow we plan to leave here at 8am and should arrive in Albuquerque, NM around 6pm-ish.

I'd write more about today's trek, but I'm tired and at the point of losing coherence.

Big Changes pt. IV

In Big Changes pt. 1 I mentioned that right away after James and I started getting to know each other I realized that we would end up getting married. Thankfully James came to the came realization quickly after I did. In mid July while James and I were talking on the phone, as we do for anywhere between 3 to 4 hours a day, and we decided that October 30, 2010 would be the date for us to get married. YAY!!!!

Ever since that conversation I've been planning our wedding and preparing to move. My goal was to plan as much of the wedding as possible before I moved. THANKFULLY I have been unemployed and have been able to spend multiple hours a day focused on wedding details. I have to admit that I am somewhat impressed because in 6 weeks I was able to plan a wedding that won't take place for another 67 days.

Big Changes pt. III

Obviously, I have no idea what soon means. Sorry about the delay.

Here are some of the "little" details that God orchestrated in order to bring James and me together:

James put his condo on the market the same month I put my house on the market. My house sold within a few months while his didn't until AFTER I had moved away and come back. If his condo would have sold right away and he would have returned to Phoenix right away we wouldn't have met.

Although we first started talking at his good-bye party, James still wasn't planing to move for two weeks after the party. So we had a little bit of time to get to know each other face-to-face before James moved.

God timed things so that James and I would both be unemployed for his last two weeks living in Iowa. If either one of us would have been employed we wouldn't have been able to spend hours getting to know each other every day.

The weekend before James left, my immediate family was all in town for a niece's birthday party, my mom's birthday party, and Father's Day. Because of that, James was able to meet my family and it gave my family an opportunity to get to know James a bit.

My high school cheerleading coach moved to Phoenix about 14 years ago. Before they moved I was able to get to know her mom, who also moved to Phoenix. After James moved I knew that I needed to follow as soon as I could. My former coach's mom was told that I needed a place to live and offered to open her home to me. Her home is only 10 miles from James' apartment.

After finding a place to live, I needed a way to get to Phoenix. Obviously, I would need to drive. BUT I needed to get someone to make the 23 hour (actual drive time) trip with me. God timed it so that some of my friends from a former church would be moving to AZ only two months after James left IA and I will be caravanning with them.

BEFORE James and I met and after I move back to DSM from CR I had the gut feeling that I would move from DSM again but this time with only what I could fit in my car. Because of that I decided to start selling my bigger household items.

There are a LOT more details, but I'm not going to share them right now. Hopefully this post will point to God as being the one who pulled James and me together.