When in Rome, do as the Romans...

...when in Colorado, buy a Subaru?

Yes, we're joining the club of Subaru owners in Colorado Springs. We knew we'd be needing a second car pretty soon, but our trip up the mountain this past weekend made it abundantly clear that the second car would have to be a little tougher than the Contour. So, we scoured craig's list and found just what we were looking for!



We'll be picking it up this evening (we hope)...which means I won't have to wake up at 5:30 to take Joel to work tomorrow!

A typical CO weekend?

The cold, rainy weather is back, but we had a few perfect days in between! Joel’s finished his first week of work on Saturday. They don’t normally work on Saturdays, but the rain and Memorial Day holiday put the company a bit behind on maintaining the properties, so Joel worked Tuesday through Saturday!

Friday night, we had a little night on the town and went to eat at a great Greek restaurant in Old Colorado City- we were able to eat outside and stopped for ice cream afterwards. This is the part of town where we ate our second day in Colorado Springs, and it is a neat old area of town with lots of shops and restaurants.

Even though Joel had to work, we tried to make the most of our first real weekend, and went on our first of (hopefully) many Colorado camping trips. One of Joel’s co-workers gave us a general idea of where we should go, so when Joel got home Saturday afternoon, we packed up and headed up the mountain. Our poor little Ford Contour didn’t know what hit her as the road got steeper and steeper and quickly turned to dirt.

Nonetheless, we made it to a spot that looked good for camping, and had a great time! Check out the view from our tent:

It was a beautiful weekend! We didn’t wake up until 9:00 on Sunday morning, and after packing up camp, we hiked up the road for a couple of hours until a storm started rolling in and we decided to heed the warnings we’d heard about lightning strikes in the mountains and headed back to the car. On the way back down, Joel was walking in front of me and jumped about 10 feet sideways when he looked over and found this figure staring at us:

We spent the next few minutes watching this deer graze through the woods. We ran across some other creature that remains a mystery to us. I even got out my Complete Field Guide to North American Wildlife when we got home, and we still don’t have a clue what animal we saw dart off through the woods as we rounded a turn. It was mainly black with long hair and a long hairy fluffy tail…it was bigger than a skunk, low to the ground, and sort of hopped like a rabbit. Maybe it was a baby Big Foot?

The quick camping trip was a perfect escape that made Joel’s one day off feel a little more like a full weekend.

Not much else to report here…I’ll be headed home Friday to take my state board exams early next week, so I’ll be packing the freezer for Joel as this week goes on.

A great local restaurant we found Sunday night, and there is a location right around the corner:

Sunshine!

We finally have nice warm weather- the bait and switch must be over! Yesterday started sunny and warm. I even had to take my sweater off to eat my breakfast on the back steps at 10:00 a.m., and previously we've had fleece on 24 hours a day. It didn't even rain yesterday, and today is stacking up to be more of the same! The Air Force Academy had its graduation yesterday, and my aunt called to let me know there would be "a flyover" around 12:45. I drove north a bit to find an open area to watch, and little did I know that flyover really means 30 minutes of fighter jets. It was pretty amazing:


Joel's work is going well! He did a bit more hands-on work yesterday, and the nice weather for me meant things were a bit warm for him. He is slowly getting acquainted with the properties that he is in charge of, and he is falling into the groove of things!

A few Colorado Springs idiosyncracies we've noted:

• What we'd consider a poorly maintained lawn is considered "native" here
• Rocks are an acceptable substitute for grass
• LOTS of people here smoke, which is especially surprising since this is the fittest city in America
• You have to find your own garbage collection service here...this really irks me, as it is one of the most inefficient things I've ever run across. The city doesn't do trash collection, so there are tens of companies. Not only is it inefficient in terms of trucks driving around the neighborhood, but I've had to call all of these companies to compare prices and packages (yes, there are different levels of trash removal...2 cans, 2 cans + 2 bags, their can, your can, recycling, no recycling, and the list goes on!). Early this morning, I just decided to throw a couple of bags on the curb to see if anyone picked them up....they're still sitting there...
  

Well, I'm at the local library that is just a short distance from our house. I'm taking advantage of their free wi-fi and a good selection of DVDs to rent with my new library card!

A few more views (sorry if all the pictures seem to look the same!):

Sorry to leave everyone hanging for a few days, but it has been for a good reason...we've moved into a rental house! After driving around the Springs for a couple of days looking at properties, we decided on a 4 bedroom house through a realty company that a church here recommended to us. The house is HUGE (to us!) and we have certainly been blessed. The company gave us a discounted rent since we went through the church (the owner goes there), and the three guys that were living there didn't want to clean the house, so THEY gave US money to move in early, and we used some of that to have a cleaning crew come in and clean the carpets, bathroom, kitchen, etc. It has been an amazing few days. This time last week, we were still on the road between Starkville and Amarillo, and now here we are moved into a house with plenty of room for guests! God has been good!

Aunt Bev and Uncle Wade and their friend Joe helped us unload the Budget truck on Saturday, and we got everything into the house and garage (yes, garage! that will be a lifesaver when it snows). On Sunday, Joel and I visited Village Seven Presbyterian Church, a large PCA church about 5 minutes from our house, and the same one that recommended the realty company to us. We showed up 20 minutes late because the service started at 10:40, but it was nice to be there! We plan to visit again and hopefully attend Sunday school to meet some folks our age. We found out that a friend of a friend from Starkville is interning in Colorado Springs this summer with Focus on the Family, so we hope to meet up with her sometime! It will be fun to see a familiar face.

Our Memorial Day began with the delivery of our 2nd washer/dryer set in as many days. On Sunday, we found a seller on Craig's list and went to pick up the appliances while we still had the Budget truck. The seller was an older man, and said we could bring them back if they didn't work...good thing he was true to his word, because after Joel and I lugged them down stairs and hooked them up, the dryer wouldn't turn on at all and the washer stopped mid-cycle. We called "Ron" back, and it turns out that his son, also named Ron, is an appliance repairman. Big Ron bought the washer and dryer off a neighbor who was moving to give her some cash, and was told that they worked just fine. Thankfully, Big Ron and Little Ron were both quality individuals, and Little Ron brought us the 2nd set on Monday morning, and even helped us get them all up and down the stairs AND set up! Once again, things worked out perfectly. We noticed that the dryer wasn't drying very quickly, so we checked the vent to the outside and spent the next hour vacuuuming out lint from the ducts. The following picture shows a garbage bag full of the stuff:
That solved the problem, and I've been wearing out the working washer and dryer since then.

Today was the big day...Joel's first day of work! Things went really well, and he thinks he'll really enjoy the job. I dropped him off bright at early at 6:15 this morning, and went about the rest of the day unpacking boxes, setting up utilities, and other minor details. The most exciting part of my day occured when I got back to the house after running an errand...to preface this story, I'll let you know that our neighborhood has LOTS...I mean LOTS of squirrels, and they're pretty big! They've already chewed up part of my bird feeder, and we think we have a resident in the attic. I got out of the car and walked in front of the garage and came face to face with one of the stubborn sciurids. I realized I had my camera handy in my purse, so I'll let you watch:


If you see that nice square hole above the garage door, we're thinking that is one of his entrances/exits.

On a side note, it has been FREEEZZZING here! We've had our windows open, but finally had to close them today because Joel and I were both walking around the house in long pants and fleece jackets! We've slept with our electric blanket every night we've been here, and it has also been raining! Colorado is supposed to have only 60 non-sunny days per year, and they've used up quite a few of those in the time we've been here...I think it was a bait and switch.


Not sure what this guy was doing in May:


Here is a picture of our den in the middle of unpacking boxes:


Sorry for the long post, but we'll try to update again soon. We're having to travel around town to use the internet until we get ours hooked up!

Looking for shelter

After going to bed at 10:00 last night, Joel and I awoke refreshed and ready to view some apartments/houses. We drove around a few areas of town that we'd not seen yet to get a feel for those parts of the city, and met a realtor that we talked to last week. We were referred to him through a church that we plan to visit, and right now, we're thinking the house he showed us may be the winner. It has a lot more space than the townhomes and apartments we've found, and it has a yard and garage!

Hopefully, a final decision will be made tomorrow, because there is a chance we can move in early next week (preferably even Sunday or Monday)!

If this one doesn't work out though, we drove around town enough today to find something we hope. We had lunch in Old Colorado City, which is a neat little area just west of town. For supper, we went to Garden of the Gods and ate a picnic dinner and walked around the park. The entire day was a little drizzly, but the mountains were still beautiful with the clouds hanging in front of them!

Garden of the Gods from far away.
This old man of Asian descent was walking with an umbrella, wearing a blue sport coat, and humming in the Garden of the Gods.

We made it!

We arrived in Colorado Springs this afternoon...around 3 pm central time, 2 pm mountain time. It is certainly beautiful! We got a late start from Amarillo this morning, but we had a good night's rest, which made it worth it! We saw lots and lots of antelope along the way, and finally got our first view of the Rockies!

After getting semi-settled in a hotel and grabbing a snack and sweet tea from Chick-fil-A, we drove around town a bit to orient ourselves and check out a couple of the properties we've been looking at online. Seeing the city in person really helped us narrow our search, so hopefully we'll have some luck tomorrow! We can't wait to unload the Budget truck and get situated here so we can enjoy Colorado Springs!

Well, we're pretty much pooped from the past few days, so I'll post some pictures below and call it a night!

Joel arriving in Starkville after finally acquiring a truck.
Joel and Mrs. Butler in front of the beautiful artwork at the TN welcome center.
Crossing the mighty Mississippi.
My workstation on the road (time, mpg, mph, and all other necesary road trip calculations)
THE ROCKIES! (wayyyy in the distance)
Entering Colorado.
Another Budget passing us...
Pike's Peak!

Rockies or bust…

I’m writing this on the road as we near the end of our first day of traveling west. The day has been (thankfully) pretty uneventful…much less so than our day of packing yesterday!

A review of yesterday’s events: Joel reserved a 16’ Budget truck and car dolly about a week ago, and we were supposed to pick it up at 10 a.m. yesterday. It turns out that the place in Starkville didn’t have our truck…or any other truck we could use. Our options were to choose another rental service with no reimbursement from Budget, or drive to Columbus to pick up a 24’ diesel truck that they would let us use for the same price as the smaller truck. We weren’t very happy campers, as we anticipated lower mpg’s, more difficulty driving, and high diesel prices, but God was certainly taking care of us. The ordeal set our packing back 3-4 hours, it has turned out better than the we could have imagined! Diesel was more expensive than gasoline in Starkville, but has been much cheaper than gasoline the farther west we go. Also, we could have fit all of our goods in a 16’, but it would have been much tighter and required a bit more figuring than the spacious 24’ truck. All of that to say…my parents helped Joel and I load the truck for 6 hours yesterday, and we finally locked the loading door down around 8 or so last night!

Sooo…just picture us in the big rig shown above, and insert that in a map of the U.S...and that has been our day! Joel let me start the day with a City Bagel pickup order, and we left Starkville at 7:30. I’ve kept myself entertained by keeping up with our mpg’s and mph’s with my notebook and atlas and acting as navigator, while Joel has been in his driving zone.

A few views from our trip so far…

PICTURE TO COME SOON: Mrs. Butler met us at the Tennessee welcome center to deliver my b’day present and wave us off, and it was fun to see her as we really started our journey, though I don’t think she liked seeing Joel as a truck driver.


PICTURES TO COME SOON

Thus far, my favorite part of the trip has been using the diesel lanes at the Love’s Truck stops…it’s a whole different world on the other side of the station.

PICTURE TO COME SOON

Well, we’re turning in for the night in Amarillo, but we hope to have some more exciting posts over the next few days as we arrive in and explore Colorado Springs

P.S.- if you ever have to drive I-40 across the country, note that Arkansas and Oklahoma City have terrible roads. I didn’t even want to think about my crystal and china in OK City (see video:)

Miles traveled from Starkville: 916

Hours traveled: 7:30 am-11:15 pm

Avg miles per gallon: 9.4

Average miles per hour: 60.7