The road trip of a lifetime.

Too little sleep. Too many hours in a car. Too many memories. Those three statements just begin to describe my time with Esther in our 5-day road trip. We "technically" started off our journey in Richmond, VA, however, the main stretch started in Chrisman, IL (my hometown).

We left Chrisman on May 22nd early in the morning. We ended up driving around 650 miles, mostly on I-70, to Sterling, KS. We spent the night there with Lindsey, Esther's and my former RD, and her husband Stephen. We got the grand tour of the quaint town seeing all the sights! Since they both work at Sterling College, we were able to go look around the college and even got to see a beautiful sunset over a wheat field. We all ate a yummy meal back at their house and got to sit and catch up for a while!

The next morning, Esther and I set off on the biggest leg of the trip. We drove for over 800 miles! Mostly on I-70! We went from Sterling to Moab, Utah. I don't know how we would have done that long haul drive if we weren't good friends. We would have wanted to kill each other! But when we arrived in Moab, we had to find a campsite for the night. Unfortunately, all the campsites we could find were full! It took us over an hour driving up and down the Colorado River for us to find a place to set up our camp! By the time we found a place, it was almost 10 pm, around 15 hours after we left Lindsey and Stephen's. We set up our tent and made a fire in almost complete darkness. Keep in mind that as we did this, we had no practice with either. It was a new tent and new supplies we were going to be cooking with. Our only light was from the headlights of Esther's vehicle, which someone came over to where we were in the middle of trying to figure our what to do complaining about the lights. Grr. We ate our partially cooked food in the dark while being completely exhausted. We crawled into our tent ready to end the night. However, we did not put the rainfly on the tent while setting it up so as we settled in for the night, the winds picked up. On my edge of the tent, the wall kept hitting me, keeping me awake. Eventually, I ended up looking out the door of the tent and saw flames. Apparently, when we put out the fire with some of our water, we didn't actually put it all out. In a frenzy, I raced out of the tent and tried to find all of our water to get the flames out! By the time I finished putting it out, we were almost out of water (which you have to bring into the camp with you). After this, Esther and I put on the rainfly to help with the wind. By the time the sun rose at 6, we were up for the day. I'm not a fan of 4 hours of sleep, let alone bad sleep! 

With our early morning, we were privileged to watch the most beautiful sunrise! Esther and I figured out how to boil the water we needed for our delicious instant ramen and oatmeal breakfasts. We packed up the tent and everything else and jumped in the car off to our next destination. We drove over to a ranch where we were able to ride horses. For the first time in 10 years since I broke my neck by being bucked off a horse, I rode a horse. Major life accomplishment. We went on a beautiful trail ride for a couple of hours. What a way to start the day. After we rode, we drove into Moab and filled up the tank with fuel and our water containers with ice water. Exactly what we needed. Our next destination was Arches National Park. We stopped at the Visitors Center and got a map and drove into the park to see some of the beautiful sights! Really awesome place. However, we were on a tight schedule and Esther couldn't really hike, due to a grade 3 sprained ankle, so we didn't get to see as much as we had hoped! But a couple of hours later we drove around 125 miles to Cortez, Colorado. On the way there, we had a slight scare that the tires were screwed up, however, one of them was just a little low on air! We arrived at our campsite, learned how to properly set up the tent, and had a much needed early night.

The morning of the 25th we ate some yummy breakfast, packed up the car and drove to our next stop, Mesa Verde National Park. This was one of my favorite stops on the trip. While we were waiting in line to buy some tickets to a tour of one of the ancient cliff dwellings, Esther and I met two lovely older couples. They were some of the nicest people. We also ran into a lady whose granddaughter is a student at ONU, where we both just graduated from. The world is a small place! But we wandered the park for a while before we went on our tour and saw all the sights! When we arrived at the location for the tour, we ran into the older people that we had made friends with earlier. Esther and I really enjoyed chatting with them and touring the cliff dwelling. Right after our tour, we drove to Great Sand Dunes National Park. Literally a giant pile of sand in the middle of nowhere. We were completely unprepared for this. We walked out in the dunes and the sand was blasting our bodies. At least it was a good exfoliator. We continued our drive and ended up in Colorado Springs, where Esther is staying for the rest of the summer for an internship. We ended up driving around 400 miles that day. The roads were pretty empty so it was a pretty boring drive with some beautiful views. 

On Saturday, it was my last full day with Esther on our road trip. I helped her settle into her host home. We also found a REI, aka Christmas, where there was a huge sale because of it being Memorial Day weekend. We literally spent HOURS there. So much fun. We went grocery shopping and had a couple of good meals. It was really nice to be chilling for a little while. The next morning, we found a cool church to visit up in Denver and it was really awesome. We grabbed some food and then Esther dropped me off at the airport to fly back home and our adventure was over. I'm so thankful for the opportunity to have spent time with one of my favorite humans before having to say "see ya later" for an indeterminate amount of time.