A few weeks ago I let y’all in on some details from my life: I’m spending the summer in Nashville with the Halters! and Emily and I have driven from Vancouver, Washington HALFWAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY! Y’all, it’s SO CRAZY that we’re 1700 miles away from my home because it really doesn’t feel like it!
On our way out of Portland, we stopped at Multnomah Falls which was a really fun start to our cross country road trip.
The drive through the Gorge was so beautiful, and there was the most peaceful little viewpoint right outside of Idaho.
We made our way into Boise for some Boise Fry Company. It was happy hour so we got two small bowls of purple fries (WHAT) for the cost of one. I tried a few of the sauces – fry sauce, BBQ and BLUEBERRY KETCHUP (WHAT!). I ended up just eating them plain because they were that good.
After that we grabbed coffee and headed to our friend Annie’s house in Emmett, where we stayed for the night. After dinner we went with Annie and her precious girls to a little drive in for ice cream. I had what was basically an M&M blizzard. MY JAM. So good. It was also really good to stay up late talking to Annie – it’s literally been years since we’ve been able to do that!
That night we decided the next day we’d just spend the whole next day on the road to Denver. We stopped by Dutch Bros and got the cutest little messages from the barista who we’d told about our trip.
We passed through so many states! From Idaho we dipped into Utah where we stopped for coffee at literally the RUDEST Starbucks ever. It was like they were inconvenienced by their customers and plus have you EVER known anyone named Stephanie who spells their name like this?!
Whatever though! We passed from Utah into Wyoming, which was the worst of all the states. Just sooooo much boring.
From Wyoming we crossed into Colorado, where the scenery was literally almost immediately different and more beautiful. Driving through Colorado was so amazing. Also the first 40 minutes of Colorado we were rocking  99.9 MPG so that was pretty awesome.
We had this thought…. Chipotle STARTED in Denver, so we should PROBABLY go to the 1st ever Chipotle! We spent all of Colorado thinking about how excited we were for first-ever-Chipotle. We finally pulled up and…
IT WAS CLOSED FOR REMODELING STARTING LAST WEEK OMG WHAT. So naturally by then we were on a Chipotle kick so we went to Chipotle for dinner before heading to our friend Cari’s house, where we were staying for that evening. We were so grateful to have a comfy bed and warm shower after such a long day in the car.
We realized that nobody had said nice things about driving through Kansas so we opted to instead drive through Nebraska which was surprisingly beautiful. We booked a hotel room, woke up and hit the road. My car key FOB ran out of battery which we fixed ourselves (little victories, okay?) and hit the road.
Nebraska was pretty and will forever go down in my memory as the place where I had Dunkin Donuts for the first time. Apparently that’s a big deal that I’ve never had DD but now I’m a real American I guess.
We made our way to Lincoln, Nebraska where we stayed for the night. After checking in to our hotel we went to Cracker Barrel where we literally ordered the front of the menu. Emily had the Chicken campfire meal, I had the beef, and we split the Smores dinner. It was so good and filling.
We got to the hotel, crawled into bed and watched trashy MTV shows until we went to sleep.
You know what’s crazy? It hasn’t really felt like we’re halfway across the country because each day we wake up, get in the same car that’s driven me around Washington, and then we drive. It makes the country seem so much smaller because suddenly it’s all so much more accessible.
My dad keeps saying this is such a special trip because we get to see so much of the country in a way you can only see by car. Ernie said he was excited because we got to see the whole purple mountains and amber waves stuff of the country, and it’s true! We saw the rockies and endless fields and skies that looked like they were straight from a Pixar film.
I never realized until this trip that I would love to see all of the cities in this whole country that I call home, and it’s amazing to me that I’ve lived so much of my life completely unaware of what was connected to me. I’m excited to make our way to Nashville, but I’m also really looking forward to being able to drive through America to get home, again. I might have to take a different route, though, so I can see all new things!
