We're here! We made it!!!

Finally!!! We have reached our final destination

And here we are:

Kris and I would like to thank you  you guys for following along on our journey with us! Our trip across America has been so much fun, and we feel so lucky to be able to do this. Right now we don't even want to think about sitting in a car for more than 2 hours at a time!  We've had the pleasure of seeing so many beautiful parts of America, as well as some not so beautiful parts of America as well :P. I'd like to take this opportunity to publicly recognize the Wyoming (not Nyoming!) branch of Little America Hotels and Resorts.  Hands down, they had THE cleanest public restrooms I have ever seen. The award for least appealing restroom would be the rest stop somewhere in the middle of Colorado that we had the misfortune of encountering. This place left both Kris and I running to the car searching for our stash of Purell. Kris tells me that there was a sign in the men's bathroom that said "Do NOT drink the water!" (*shudders*)

I'm happy to say that after 8 days, Kris and I are both much better at naming state capitals, and can now locate Minnesota, Michigan and Utah on a map! We've come a long way, friends! We also filled our heads with some very useful knowledge about the US. For instance, did you know that Washington DC was built on a swamp, and that Wyoming is the least populated state in the country?! Kris can also name all 5 great lakes! Thanks again to Brain Quest. This trivia game was our entertainment of choice as we drove. 

Soo....we're safe and sound on the other side of the country now. Thanks for sticking with us!

-melodee :)

In the Bay

Just dropping in real quick to say hello from beautiful San Francisco! We've had the pleasure to be hosted by Kram & Rachelli at their pad and went out to a nice Thai dinner at Osha last night. Afterwards, they treated us out to Ghirardelli for some scrumptious dessert, followed by an intense game of Phase 10 (yeah, I came in last place). Anyway, we're off to Sacramento to get Melodee's nursing license and then last leg of the trip to LA!! We exciiiite...we'll check in when we make it there!

Greetings from Tahoe!

After an 8hr 30min drive last night from Salt Lake City, we're glad to have our last really long leg of the trip out of the way. We'll be heading to The Bay tonight to hang out with Kram & Rachelli and then at long last, take the 5-6hr drive to LA tomorrow night. 

This is us with the Colorado Rockies behind us just before leaving Salt Lake City. It was a quaint little city and seemed very sporty with a lot of people biking and running on it's hilly streets. We were craving some Asian food for lunch and had some Chinese takeout, but it didn't sit so well in my stomach for the rest of the day. I guess Chinese food isn't the same everywhere (did you know in China, they just call it "food?")

To further touch on Melodee's previous post, I was sleeping in the passenger seat with about 35 minutes left to go on the way to Tahoe. All of a sudden, she wakes me up and says we're getting pulled over. I thought for sure we were both going to get full cavity searched by some honky tonk Reno state trooper.  In her defense, it was probably a speed trap, where the speed limit changes right away after getting off of the highway without any notice.  It was only the second time she ever got pulled over so she was a little shook up, but luckily, the cop was actually really nice (he probably had some sympathy for the innocent little puppy face Mel was giving him).  Nevertheless, I've been calling her "Leadfoot" and "Speed Racer" since then and it's good that we didn't get a ticket and can just joke about it. 

Anyway, we're in South Lake Tahoe right now on the CA side.  We're going to go check out some nice views of the lake and then we'll be having lunch at the Ski Run Marina. We'll check back in when we hit San Francisco!

And of course, we can't sign off without hitting you up with one of these:

Lead foot!?

We've made it to Tahoe! We're in California! Although it's not our final destination, we've made it across the border! Just a quick post before bed. Kris and I are both exhausted! We almost got a ticket on the way here, but luckily the police officer was very nice and let us go. Apparently I was going 47 through town, and the speed limit is 25 (I swear there were no signs posted!). Ahhh.. very thankful to get here safely tonight!

melodee :)

Are we there yet?

Ahhh.. we're starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel! Day 5 of our trip, and we are now in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kris and I are fortunate enough to be able to take our time on this trip to stop and take in some of the sights across the country. I can't imagine doing this trip in 3-4 days,which I know some of you have! We've actually added another stop on our trip and will head to Lake Tahoe tomorrow. We'll probably show you guys all of the pictures we collectively take on this trip when we make it to LA, but right now I'm going to take you guys behind the scenes, and show you how some of the pictures are taken. 

So...some of our jumping pics wouldn't be possible without:

Kris, his tripod, and the remote for the camera. We found that this is a much better way to take our jumping pictures. This works well, so we don't have to ask random strangers to take the jumping picture for us. When we were in the Philippines, we entrusted our tour guide to take a jumping picture for us, and it kept coming out like this:

So after this experience (and this was the 3rd attempt!), we learned that if you want a good jumping pic,  you should do it yourself!

Another weapon that Kris has is:

In this case, yes, size DOES matter! We've probably generated more raised eyebrows when people see this lens, than when people see us taking our jumping pictures!

We've had to pull the car over to the side of the road in order for Kris to get in a shot or two of mountains, windmills, and passing cargo freights. Even though I roll my eyes when he's taking too long, the end product has definitely been worth it! He takes good pictures when he's not doing this:

Hope you guys enjoyed the exclusive behind the scenes look!

-melodee :)

Mt. Rushmore National Park

We had a slightly earlier start to our day today compared to the usual daily travel schedule. Not by choice, of course, but mainly because we set our alarms the night before and forgot that we're now 2 hours behind EST time zone. We actually didn't realize it until it was about noon, but it was a blessing in disguise since we got to see Mt. Rushmore before a whole lot of people started showing up. I was like a giddy little school girl with all of the photo ops and of course, we had to take our usual jumping pictures as well. 

Anyway, the national park itself was filled with all sorts of commemorative presidential stuff. Usually, when we go on these kind of things, Melodee is all about soaking in the culture and the historic facts, and then she'll get mad that I'll go wander off and just take pictures. So I guess you can say, between the two of us, we get a pretty complete impression of the place.  

Usually, when we go on vacation together, we'll always have this photo scavenger hunt where we each have to find three things and take a picture of them.  Sometimes they are pretty straightforward, other times they are just silly. For instance, in the Philippines Melodee had to find a guy with a mohawk and in Prague, I had to find a tranny (which I actually did, and took a picture right in his/her face.) For this trip, my challenge is to take a picture of 1) a red porsche, 2) twins, and 3) a black person in South Dakota. Melodee's challenge is 1) a female state trooper/cop, 2) a "population sign" (for the record, Keystone, SD has a population of 311....I think I have more Facebook friends than that whole city has inhabitants) and 3) an Asian person in South Dakota (Melodee used to live in North Dakota and somehow thought that finding an Asian & black person in S.D. would be hard. I told her it's 2009 and Barrack is president and that anything is possible). Well, below is a picture of a black person in South Dakota, and a picture of Melodee pretending to take a picture of Mt. Rushmore, but really taking a picture of some random Pinoy tourists we stumbled along. We are now tied 1-1.

Anyway, in more serious news, after a 7 hour drive, we're in Denver now and tomorrow we'll head to Salt Lake City, Utah. Stay tuned for more broadcasts from the open road!

-Kris

There's a lot of "middle of nowheres" in this country...

After leaving Chicago yesterday, we touched down in St. Paul, Minnesota. We spent a few hours at The Mall of America today.  There's something about Minnesotan accents that make me wish I played ice hockey.

Here are some pics from The Mall of America (hyperlinking is something Kris tells me people use in "the blogging world," so i'm trying it out.)

Apparently The Mall of America is the Nation's largest retail and entertainment complex. 

Unfortunately we didn't have time to ride the roller coasters :(

So, before I end this post, I'd like to touch on one of Kris' previous entries in which he posted the picture of me sleeping. I was slightly offended, as I pride myself on being an excellent passenger on this road trip. I admit that I do sleep (but never longer than 45 min to 1 hour!).  Seriously though, I always keep the car a comfortable temperature, I switch the songs on the ipod when necessary (and change from fast songs to slow songs, depending on our moods), check that there are no cars on the right side when Kris needs to switch lanes, and I keep us entertained (we bought brain quest today!).

During my leg of the drive today, Kris fell asleep as well, with the pink neck pillow and blue snuggle blanket. I have too much respect for him to post the pic, though (I really just forgot the cord to my camera in the car). It's harder than you may think to take a good picture of someone sleeping in the passenger seat, while you are driving. For one, I had to reach across to the glove compartment with one hand, turn the camera on, put it on the right setting, then angle myself against the driver's side door in order to get the right shot. All of this with one hand on the steering wheel and two eyes on the road. Can you do THAT, Chris Brown?!

Anyways, time for bed over here. Tomorrow we're off to see Mount Rushmore!

-melodee :)

In the Windy City

We only had a few hours in Chicago and despite the cold, we made the best of it. We started out by taking a short driving tour of downtown Chicago and then headed over to Millennium Park to see "The Bean." It is actually really named "The Cloud Gate" but apparently everyone just calls it "The Bean." 

After that, we checked out the observatory on the 94th floor of the John Hancock Building which is apparently a better view of Chicago than the Sears Tower. Just a tidbit of local news for ya, today actually marks the name change of the Sear Tower to the Willis Tower, since some British investor bought the building. Doh! 

Shouts again to Eli for being a great host. In a few minutes we'll be heading to St. Paul, MN, a 6.5hr drive and we'll be arriving close to midnight. Will check back with you then!

Greetings from the Chi

After a 13+ hour drive, 777 miles, 4 pee breaks,  3 state borders, and 2.5 gas stops, we've managed to make it to our first destination safely. I'm glad our longest leg of the trip was over because I'm already starting to get sick of driving, but I guess my navigator isn't doing a half bad job keeping me company. Except when she is doing this:

But in all honesty, we've both been able to take a nap and switch driving and keep ourselves entertained while counting license plates and naming state capitals, which we realized we're a little bit rusty at.....For the record, Havana is NOT the state capital of Georgia, and Chicago is NOT a state...FYI.

We'll be doing a few hours of touristy stuff tomorrow morning before heading to St. Paul, but tonight we decided to go authentic Chi-town steez with a deep dish pizza @ Pequod's and hung out with Eli & Eileen. 

Thanks to Eli for his hospitality in housing us for the night! Check us out on our new Twitter sidebar that we'll be updating along the way.

All our bags are packed...we're ready to go!

Soo...in about 6 hours Kris and I will be starting our cross country roadtrip adventure! Thank you to everyone who came out for our farewell gatherings. We're excited about our trip, but at the same time, we're going to miss you guys!

goodnight!
-melodee :)

Westsiiiiiide - It's official!

Wellll, it's official. We're leaving for L.A. on March 11th and taking an 8 day road trip across our great country to get there. We've set up this blog in order to document our trip, so hopefully we'll have some time to update it along the way. Just a little background on why exactly we're doing this....We both quit our jobs at the end of 2008 after agreeing that regardless of the current economic climate, there is no better time in our lives to take a dip into the wild wild west than right now while we're still young and have the rest of our lives ahead of us to work and build our careers and do whatever it is we're here on God's green Earth to accomplish. So without further ado, we've decided to go for it. Melodee will be working as a travel nurse and my plan is to continue running my video biz and hopefully get a decent amount of work done on the documentary I've been sitting on for a few years.

So back to the journey at hand. We've decided to take a north route to get there since we have to stop in Sacramento to get Melodee's nursing license there. I'll be leaving from Paramus, NJ to meet Melodee in Philadelphia and then we'll transverse one of the longer legs of our trip straight to Chicago where we'll have some time to hang with some college friends, Eli and Eileen. The next morning we'll leave to take a 6hr 45min drive to St. Paul, MN and possibly do a drive by at The Mall of America if we have time. Day 3 is a 9 hour drive from St. Paul to Keystone, SD to see Mt. Rushmore on the way, because when else would we ever get to see it, right? Next morning is a 6hr 30 min drive to Denver, CO. It's too bad I still can't snowboard because of my knee because there will be plenty of heralded slopes on our route. Day 5, we'll be heading to Salt Lake City, UT after a 7hr 45min drive, only to be followed by a 9hr 30min drive to Sacramento the next day. After that, we'll head over to SF to hang with Kram and Rachelli. And then at long last, we'll take the 5+ hr drive to LA!

Anywho, that's pretty much it in a nutshell.  We're only planning to be gone for about 6 months or so, just to get a taste of Cali, so we'll probably be back before you know it.  But in the meantime in between time, please join us for a send-off happy hour on Friday, March 6th @ 6:30pm at Solas Lounge! Hope to see some familiar faces there and we'll check back in when it's time to hit the road.