Fun Memories/Bad Judgement

I finally have our computer hooked up to the internet so I can post pictures from our drive home which was like a month ago already! Adam had some homework he had to do up on campus so I tagged along and brought my computer to blog while he studies hard :) I'm kinda glad I'm not him at the moment! I start school in less than two weeks, but I'm really really excited. I don't think it's even gonna feel like school to me. Doing hair/makeup/nails all day sound hard to you? It sure doesn't to me! Anywho..Here are the pictures and fun stories...

Day #1
We left Maryland about ten in the morning and wanted to make it to Nauvoo that night which was like a 15 hour drive. YUCK! We wanted to have the longest day done first cause we were splitting it up into 3 days. Due to the time change we got to a city right outside Nauvoo in Iowa at about 1:00 am which to us felt like 2:00 am. We were just a tad tired.

Day #2
We got up and drove to Nauvoo to see the temple! BEAUTIFUL! The Missouri river is right along it, but other than the temple there really isn't anything nice there. It's pretty run down. There were some old houses built when the saints were there, but that was about it. We wanted to have our picture taken in front of the temple and luckily there was an older lady from Oregon taking pictures herself while her husband was in their RV somewhere. She asked us how many pictures we wanted and Adam being sarcastic said "Go Crazy!!!" Yeah she literally did. I think altogether she took about 20 pictures. Only got a few good ones, but that's all that counts right?

The top of the steeple is a bell tower.

She got some good close ups, but didn't know how to use the zoom..so she manually did it and was right in front of our faces..kinda awkward.

So the second day was starting out pretty well. we stayed for about 30 minutes and then got back on to the road. We had all of Iowa to go through that day and wanted to end up in South Dakota. Well part way through we were on the freeway and our GPS decided it didn't know where we were at and didn't recognize the freeway. We had no clue where we were or anything so we got off and it took us to an older highway which would have been fine...if there hadn't been roadwork. The road was closed and there was no set detour to go around it so we let our GPS find us one. A few miles down the road it turned us onto a dirt road and because of the 3 inches of rain they had the night before it turned into MUD. I'm talkin..sticky, thick, clay mud. If we would have slammed on our brakes everything piled up in our car would have come flying into the back of our heads. My poor car was doing so good until about 50 yards away from where the gravel started back up. Yes we got stuck in the middle of a corn field in Iowa. We tried and tried to get unstuck, but it was no use. So Adam got out of the car and walked around the corner to a house up the street (about loosing his shoes on the way cause of how bad the mud was). He knocked on the door and about a 60 year old lady opened the door and Adam told her what happened. She wasn't surprised because I guess we were the 12th people that have gotten stuck in that spot because of our GPS in the last 6 months. She told us we needed to call the towing company to get us out. Adam called and it was about $65 to tow us 50 yards. YIKES. Adam got to talking with this lady and she must have got a good impression from him because she told him to wait while she went to talk to her husband. Someone was watchin over us that day. She came back with her husband and they said they would get their tractor and tow us out. They had never helped anyone else out until now. Her husband (Rick) had long white hair with a long beard and was pretty crude from what Adam could tell. The conversation coming down to our car with Adam went kinda like this:

"Where are you guys coming from?" -Rick

"Nauvoo"-Adam (In his head thinking..oh crap. No one is fond of Mormons around there)

"Oh so you're Mormon!"-Rick

Hesitantly "Yea we are"-Adam

"Don't apologize! I've got a good doctor friend who is Mormon too. So I guess I'm doin this for him!"-Rick

Luck? I think not. The Lord definitely answered our prayers and helped us out of our situation. I'm sure there are some of you who probably think we're idiots for even going in the mud in the first place, but now we've got a good story to tell and memories of Iowa right? :)

So we got back onto the road and our car started shaking...bad. we pulled over and adam had to dig all the mud out of the wheel wells. Even after doing that it still shook so we had to find a car wash to get the remainder out. Here is a picture after we dug all the mud out.

Poor Ellie...we still had mud falling out of the bottom of our car when we drove into Idaho Falls.

So because of that 3-hour detour we didn't get quite as far as we wanted. I think we still got to South Dakota though..I honestly don't even quite remember. All the states turned into a blur.

Day #3

Our final day of driving! We were driving into Salt Lake that night to stay with my grandparents. The reason we wanted to go to South Dakota was to see Mount Rusmore!!! So worth it...There is absolutely nothing until you get there, but here they are!

They had flags for all fifty states lined up

It is pretty amazing that someone could turn rock into that. That's a place I would want to go see again! Well that's about it for our roadtrip! I'm glad we did it. Financially, the summer wasn't too good to us, but we had an adventure and we will always remember our first summer married together.

Well I've got more pictures of things we have been up to since we've been back, but I think this post has been long enough. I'll save them for later!