The road out West begins in TN!

Alright, It's Day 1 of our road trip across the Wild West in the CR-Z with our awesome dog, Murphy! Me and Hayley (not Hayley and I) love to drive, whether it is for a reason or no reason at all. So, when we were thinking of our next trip, we figured we just got a sweet hybrid 6-speed sports car... let's go drive the crap out of it! We thought about leaving Murph-dog at home or leaving him with Becky, but we thought he'd be fine in the car and he best dog ever, so why not just bring him along too! We loaded down the car with our pop-up Coleman tent (so we wouldn't have to waste time setting up and taking down the tent every day), two sleeping bags, blanket, pillows, camera gear, wi-fi card from Susan, netbook, atlas, general idea of what direction we wanted to drive, and water for our boy. That exceeded the allowable cargo weight for the CR-Z, seriously. You are only allowed 400lbs: Me, Hayley, and Murphy weigh 360 lbs, my camera backpack is 30 lbs, the tent is probably 10 lbs...that's it! Still, the CR-Z drives like a Cadillac, carves turns like a Japaneese car should, and gets 50 mpg. Off we go!

We left kinda early, not too bad, stopped and got breakfast and headed out west. We went out to Nashville and cut up through Kentucky to St. Louis. We tried not to take highways and stay on back roads as much as possible, but for this part of trip we didn't really care we were just trying to get out there fast. Murphy was getting used to his bachelorpad back there in the CR-Z!
 He is the best dog to travel with, we would lay back there and sleep then he would come sit propped up on the center console with his head between our seats just enjoying the ride with us! We took turn driving and I roade back there with Murph for a little while and took a nap. It's amazing what will fit in such a tiny car! We eventually made it to Kansas and drove about half way across the state before we got to our first camping spot... the Wal-Mart parking lot. I'm pretty sure you can't leave from TN and spend 2 weeks driving around the country and come back to TN for any less money than it cost us. We are the masters of cheap, as already you know if you read the 2 month Europe trip part of this blog.

That's Day 1, come back and read about some the awesome stories that are coming for us as we headed across the country for no good reason with our dog!

Chicago/Minneapolis

The first catch-up post will be our trip to Chicago with Cody, Cassandra, Bridget, and Con Hunley. (You can't just say his first name, it's one of those that always comes as a pair) We drove up there in the evening trying to keep up with everybody in the other car speeding their way through the night. We stayed in an awesome hotel right downtown off the Magnificent Mile. Parking was $40 a night!

 

The next day we took our cars over to Bridget's sister Sandy's and checked out their awesome rooftop corner apartment. It was one of the nicest places I've been inside and it was mostly glass with a killer view of the city! We all went downtown and walked around checking out the crazy cars and eating hot dogs... wait that was me and Cody.

The girls were hitting up the 'Mile pretty hard, going to every store from $4 shirts at H&M to AllSaints where they have $265 shirts. We met up at the Goodman Theatre to see the musical "Crowns" which was actually really good. Dinner was awesome too!

We toured the city some more the next day and went on an architecture cruise through the middle of river downtown. We got tons of cool shots and a nice lesson on the architectural history of Chicago. Later we walked around and went to Calumet Camera (while the girls shopped) and that place was photographer heaven! Cody bought his Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 wide angle and we played with it downtown until we met up for lunch.

 

That night, we saw a really cool magic/play/musical in a tiny one room theater that was about Harry Houdini. We had a birthday dinner for Cassandra at Sandy and Billy's awesome condo and called it a night! The next day we went all over town again shooting the scenery and playing tourist with just Cody and Cassandra. We split up and headed to Minneapolis.

We went up there to do Hayley's interview for Sky West. The drive was super long, but no big deal. We are pro road trippers! We got a room and prepped for the interview. The next day Hayley was busy mostly all day, but we had lunch at the Mall of America... that place is huge! She finished the interview, but didn't find out about getting the job for almost 5 months. We drove home stopping along the way at Culver's for the best burgers and cheese curds ever. So, even though there weren't any crazy stories or misadventures on this trip, it was still a whole lot of fun!

Next Up: Our Out West Road Trip... I promise this time!

It's been a while...

It has been really long time since I've made a blog post! I am going to try get this started back up, I actually get a lot of views from people searching about Exposure Lock, Macro Extensions, Cokin ND filters, etc. that I have posted about. I have been slacking on the travel part for a long while (since we got back from Europe). So, here goes. So much has changed since the last blog post on here, so we'll just recap and get going. We had the best trip EVER on our summer trip around Europe and met some really awesome people that truly made our trip! I asked Hayley marry me in Ireland (she said yes). There was tons of after-college fun going on, working, hiking, camping, fishing, driving around, tons of photos around the Smoky Mountains of elk, deer, Cades Cove, bears, waterfalls, the starry skies, and hot rods. My sister had a baby, tons more pictures have been taken. My cousin had a baby, tons more pictures were taken. I got an awesome new camera, Nikon D7000. Did tons of photo work, weddings, babies, cars, cabins, ads, brochures, websites, National Geographic, Animal Planet, and a bunch of other stuff. We camped around some Florida state parks (that alligator pic was taken leaning out of a canoe), saw the Stone Temple Pilots in Cherokee, worked our same 'ol jobs a lot, thought "Hey let's go see the last launch of the space shuttle Endeavor when we get off work at midnight"...8 hours before it launched in FL! We made it to the shoreline about 10 minutes before liftoff and turned around and drove back home. We went to Destin with Candace, Virginia Beach, Chicago, Minneapolis, Alabama, Mississippi, Nashville a bunch. Most importantly, somewhere in that summary of our awesome post-college time... we got married and bought a house! It's been awesome, of course we knew it would be. Since then, we've been all over the place doing tons of fun stuff!

 More recently, and this where we'll start back with travel bloggy stuff, we both got new jobs. We didn't really mean to get awesome new jobs at the same time, but I design all the stuff that holds up all the lights and speakers for concert stages...big concert stages. Hayley got the job that fuels our travels, even though it keeps us apart a lot. We went to Minneapolis and they had a interview for Flight Attendants, they had a whole conference center full of people, probably a few hundred. Over 8 hours of interviews and various stages of cuts, they narrowed it down to about 50. Those 50 were then narrowed down and they called some back for a job, Hayley got it! She is based out of Minneapolis and flies Delta planes for Sky West. Stay tuned for awesome pictures and travel stories!
Up next: Road Trip out West!