Our plan for the first day was to stop and eat lunch in Nashville and end up in St. Louis for the night. Well, we stopped in Knoxville for lunch because Nashville was too far away... Then we were tired of driving so we also stopped in Nashville and walked around Vanderbilt campus. We finally made it to St. Louis that night and fell asleep almost immediately. (Well, immediately after unloading our bikes and luggage.)
The second day was the longest drive- St. Louis to Fort Collins, CO. The majority of this ride was through the plains of the Midwest. Some of it was pretty, green rolling hills and lots of cows. Most of it... well, it was the plains of the Midwest. That's pretty self-explanatory.
As a side note, Sammie used to love car rides. When she heard the keys jingle and then was invited to come along, she would jump with excitement and do her "dance" moves. This trip may have ruined her car-riding spirit, at least for the time being. She went from being pretty relaxed, riding like this:
Don't let the picture fool you, she had more room than either of the humans in the car!
...to riding on the center console for a lot of the trip. This is pretty dangerous, but for a lot of the plains we were going straight with not much traffic around. She must have been very restless back there. (Not that we weren't!) After many of the rest stops, we had to force her to get back into the car. I think for a while she must have thought her new life was just going to be riding in the car every day. I have heard that for the most part, dogs like predictable routines. This new routine was just not okay with her.
We finally arrived in Fort Collins on Thursday night after a 14+ hour drive. Our hotel in Fort Collins was much nicer and we were in much better spirits knowing that the next day, we would get to relax and explore the town.
Fort Collins was a great town. It is no surprise that it's been voted as one of the top places to live several times. There was a great public park with everything- pond, paddle boats, water park, pool, walking paths, fitness trail, tennis courts, horseshoe, and more! It was really nice, too, unlike some public parks.
We also went to New Belgium Brewery. They had a very comprehensive, 90-minute tour complete with 5 beer samples. The facility was amazing. It was so clean and nice and much of it was new since they have been expanding rapidly. They are even opening another brewery in Asheville, NC.
I had never seen a brewery with so much style! In the left, there are bicycle rims (turned into art) hanging from the ceiling; the middle has the wood casks for sour beer; in the right picture, you can see there were decorative tiles around each piece of equipment. They each told a different "story" in pictures.
We also went to some good restaurants in Fort Collins (Choice City Butcher & Deli and Restaurant 415) and noticed that not only were the prices more affordable, but the tax was SO much lower! We went from a 10.5% (or more) restaurant tax in Charleston to about 4% in Fort Collins and Jackson. That was a nice surprise!We also took Sammie on lots of walks around the park and Colorado State University Campus. It was warm and sunny in Fort Collins and perfect for touring the town. Overall, it was a nice break from the road trip!
On Friday, we had about 7-8 hours left to go until our final destination. This seemed short in comparison to the others. Southwestern Wyoming was definitely.... interesting. It almost looks like a different decade in some of the towns. Many of them are in the oil industry and have large refineries with not much else going on. We also saw some very, very long trains going in and out of them. One interesting thing about many of the towns were the "hillside letters." They had the first letter of the town name arranged in stones on a hill close by. After doing a little research, these letters are apparently just to display town pride and unity. Many college towns in the west have them as well, such as UC Berkeley, University of Utah, Brigham Young, etc.
We finally got to Jackson and easily found our new apartment. We were all happy to have a place to call home after being on the road for 3 days. We have already been on lots of walks and explored some hiking trails.
More to come about Jackson!
