Map

This is just an overview of the route we plan on taking. None of these roads are exact, and this is not the route we have already gone.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Contest over!!!

Congrats to all who tried, a special congrats to the winner: "mom." Our total mileage driven was 7510 miles. The winning bet was 5265. Winner, please announce your name so all may congratulate you!!!
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Thursday, August 19, 2010

Homeeeeeward bound...

We wish we wereeee hooooomeward bound... But instead, we are sitting on the GWB waiting.. They project 90 minute delays.
Home, unpack the car then relaaaax :)
It has been an awesome month, thats for travelling with us!!!!!!! <3
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Even more doggies of the road!!

Macy in black and Charlie in white/brown
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Pennsylvania!

After a loooooooooong drive yesterday, and a LOT of traffic, we made it to Julias at approximately 2am. We are so happy to be here and see everyone. This morning we are meeting Lauren and Aunt Kathy for breakfast, then probably heading home... More later
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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Look Ma!!

Vegetables!! See, we eat well on the road!
Actually, they werent nearly as good as they appear.
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By golly Miss Molly!!

Something interesting has happened!! We passed a UHaul, shown above, and though you cant see into the trailer, we feel you can. ;)
Yep.. I80 sucks.
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The long trip ahead...

With the sad loss of an hour of our day (stupid time zones) makes our Chicago to East Stroudsburg just that much longer. We left at 930 am, and plan to be there at 1030 pm, after a 12 hour drive.
Tonight we will be staying with Sarahs cousin Julia and her boyfriend Dave and seeing her Aunt and other cousin for breakfast/lunch tomorrow! We are happy that our 12 hour notice was enough to be able to see them! :)
For now, weve paid the cheapest gas price so far on our trip at a whopping $2.49. Thankfully, we knew it would be cheaper outside of Chicago and did not fill up on $3.20 gas!!!
Back with more later, like when something interesting happens. Dont hold your breath.
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Chicago!

Today we toured around Hyde Park and went to the Oriental Institute Museum. After an enjoyable visit at the museum, we ransacked a used book store. We got 12 books, which all seem exciting to read, for less than 40 dollars. WHOOOOHOOOOO Sarah expects to be done with all 12 following the book shes reading, by mid October. Stefanie will follow shortly after with the one book she picked out to read. Michael and Betsy took us out to a wonderful dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Andersonville. We also walked around the area and enjoyed the fine weather (its been mid 70s and pretty clear for the last 4 days of our trip).
When we returned to the house, we tied Michael and Betsy down to chairs and forced them to watch a slideshow of our photos - but we were nice and dwindled our 5500 to 250.
Tomorrow we will head off to nomans land - i.e. weve yet again changed plans and dont know where we will be, who we will see, WHAT we will see - but we are sure there will be cows and/or corn - so stay tuned for the exciting last 3 days of our road trip!!! Its anyones guess what will happen next.
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Monday, August 16, 2010

WiNsconsin Dells

We spent the last two nights in Wisconsin Dells, at a wonderful campground.
Just sit right back and well tell you a tale, a tale of our lovely trip. It started from this not so tropic port aboard a medium ship. The captain was rarely seen, the tour guide loud and not funny. Fifty passangers set sail yesterday for a three hour tour... a three hour tour. The weather started getting rough, the medium ship was toseed. if not for the courage of our fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost. The Minnow would be lost. The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle.. with Gilligan and the Skipper too. The millionaire and his wife, the movie star, the professor and Mary Ann, here in Wisconsin Dells...
OK so thats not EXACTLY how it went about... heres our story:
We first toured the lower dells of Wisconsin, aboard a ship with Jim our captain and Lindsey our tour guide. Lindsey told us of all the spectacular sights along the lower dells tour. There were many rock formations, naturally occurred, such as a milk jug, with Elsie the cow on it, Hawks beak, profile of Black Hawk an Indian Chief, lover's cove, and gave us some history lessons about the Dells. This tour took just about an hour. The we boarded a bus to take us a block or two away (which we should have walked if we knew it was so short) and waited at the docks for an hour for our upper Dells tour. While we waited we watched carp swimming around the ducks that were wading. Stefanie was joking that gefilte fish looks different... When we finally boarded we had Captain Al as our tour guide and Bob as our Captain/Pilot. Captain Al was loud, though we probably shouldnt have sat on the speakers... We toured the upper dells, and were allowed off the boat at two locations: Witches Gulch and Stand Rock. Stand Rock is, apparently, very famous. HH Bennet created the first "stop action shutter" which he used with a cigar box and rubber band. The first photo he took with this invention was of fisherman, but noone believed him and thought it was staged, so he went to Stand Rock and had his daughter jump a 5.5 foot gap while he took photos. We saw a german shephard do this as our entertainment. This part of the trip (the upper dells) took about 2 hours. We then boarded the bus back to our car. All in all, our 30 dollar 3 hour tour took 7 hours, which included stopping at a local family restaurant for dinner.
We returned to the KOA, went swimming and had roasted marshmallows over our slow cooker fire.
Today we are off to Chicago to see some good family peepz! We will be there for two nights and then head further east.
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Saturday, August 14, 2010

Sioux Falls

After a busy day visiting a 50s diner, an 1880 town, antique shopping (got a great nifty household item!) and seeing Al's Oasis, we arrived in Sioux Falls. Camping for one night, but certainly trying to spend our time wisely. We set up camp, Stef made beans and franks (for the Franks), ordered in some firewood and set out upon the town! We had our sights set on a laser light show at the Falls Park. We got there an hour early, plenty of time to enjoy the falls in daylight, layered ourselves with bug spray and sat in the grass. After twenty minutes, the lights dimmed and music played, which included La Boheme. Then the show began! Excitement filled the air (all fifty of us sitting there).. The announcer came on to state some parking laws and welcome us to the show. By us, we mean US, "Sarah and Stefanie who travelled all the way here from NY."
The show consisted of cartoonish depictions on a wall of the history of Sioux Falls. It is very true what they say, "you get what you paid for." The show was free.
Now we are back at camp trying to keep our campfire lit. Sarah is not going to continue this blog as she needs to take the lighter fluid away from Stefanie.
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Friday, August 13, 2010

Corn Palace!

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Service here is minimal!

Sooo its been a while since we've been able to really blog. We miss it!! Sorry bout the delays, but heres what we've been up to::
We took a journey to the center of the nation! Proof is in the photos, but our internet won't upload them because we are in bumble-blank South Dakota so you get no actual proof here. But! We can tell you abouttrhe trip. First, we went to the visitors center of the town who holds the distinction of being the "center of the Nation," Belle Fourche (for you English-men and women, thats pronounced "bell foosh"). They gave us all sorts of information, maps and let us know that we would not be tresspassing. So off we went! We drove 13 miles down the street and took a left turn onto a gravel/dirt road. The speed limit was 55, but Stefanie wanted to do 20. After 10 minutes, she sped up to 50. As we watched our side and rear view mirrors, all we saw was dust/dirt flying up creating clouds behind us, and we could hech other because the rocks were coming up and smacking into the back of the car. Sooooo glad we were driving a rental. After 7.8 miels of that fun, we pulled aside to a small sign. It once was an arrow sign which had been removed from a street somewhere (though were, we don't know) and someone put bullets through it (perhaps to prevent the sign from flying in the wind). The side which we could easily see was paint in, yep, red and blue and read "THE TRUE CENTER OF THE NATION." The background was white. Stefanie allowed Sarah to enter the property first, which required holding barbed wire so Sarah could climb through. Once through, Sarah held it for Stefanie. (You should always listen to your visitor center employees - when they say its not a good idea to go alone, they mean it. Who would have held open the barbed wire???) So off we went! Trekked through about 50 yards of grass that was nearly to our waist, with about o, a gagillion grasshoppers hopping around like they owned the place. There were some other random bugs flying but we could not identify them. After 50 yards there it was, a square of concrete about 2 feet around, with a plaque. The plaque was circular with a diamater of approximately 2.5 inches. Next to it stood an American flag, flapping in the wind. A few photos later, we trekked back through the grass to the barbed wire, climbed through, go in the car and returned to the gravel/dirt road for another 7.8 miles.
Beyond that, we saw Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Wall Drug, swam in the pool, sat in the hot tub, roasted marshmallows, made a smore or two...or three... or four... we lost count, met a LOT of bikers (initially, the hot weather followed us, we dropped that off somewhere in Texas and picked up some rain, and we later swapped that for bikers - 800,000 of them), drove around Rocky Mountains on the Trail Ridge Road (after spending 40 minutes driving around the wrong mountain), searched for the worlds largest log chair (which we never found), searched for a giant can of tomato soup (we were hungry, but alas had to settle for a sandwich) and did not search for but found the largest KOA in the nation - and it was huge and it was wonderful (and only had like, 100,000 bikers).
Tonight we are in Belvidere, South Dakota which you may have heard of because it is the home to the most famous 1880's town! Tomorrow, we will have breakfast there and then head further east. Sadly, we do need to go home at some point.
Stay tuned for photos! So far, we've taken 4000+...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Craaaaaaazy Horse

Its huge, lets start with that. We have no real service in SD, so blogging will be minimal, at best, for a few days. We will see lots today, do lots, and maybe crash here for a third night if we enjoy it so much (the first night was last night and the second is tonight).
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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Monday, August 9, 2010

The rockies

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License Plate Game Update...

WE DID IT!!
We managed to see a car from every state in the US, while outside of that state. We also saw 2 Canadian Providences and 2 plates from Mexico.
Today we saw Montana, and as we were about to blog "just one left", Utah plates drove past. How exciting!!!
Meanwhile, we are heading into Wyoming today, Pikes Peak was too stormy and rainy. Saw lots of interesting roadside attractions in Denver and heading to see a large can of soup. :)

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Another day...

After sleeping extremely well in New Mexico, we enjoyed some KOA pancakes for breakfast (too lazy to make our own). We headed out and saw lots of pretty views - and lots of cows - along the way to Denver, Colorado. After getting some forewarning about "possible thunderstorms" in Denver, we decided to skip camping and stay in a hotel for the night.
Along the way to Denver, we stopped in Colorado Springs and saw the Uncle Wilber Fountain, a fountain in "America The Beautiful Park", Santa's workshop at the North Pole, the entrance to Pike's Peak, very large paper clips, a door to nowhere, Garden of the Gods and a lot of lightening. Tomorrow we plan on going back to C. Springs to make the 38 mile (round trip) drive to the top of the mountain. First, however, we must check the weather so we aren't rained out again.
After shooting over 1,000 photos, and deleting about 990 of them, the following photograph was retrieved:

Enjoy the night :)

More dogs of the road...

Troy


Honey



Dog hanging out the window



Dog Statue

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Not ready anymore...

The peak has closed for the day, at 6pm. We are thinking and considering returning tomorrow to drive up.

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Everyone ready???

Its up the mountain we goooooo!! Peak of Pikes Peak will be defeated by us tonight! Climbing? Get real. We've got a rental!

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Lunch...

...with A view!

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Photos :)

One of the many wind farms we passed...













White buffalo statue... next to a field of sunflowers :) Pretty... Also, VERY randomly placed. You've got to drive down a "Farm to Market" road and suddenly theres a turnoff, with a statue.














Stef got a great pic of a black-tailed prarie dog looking right into the camera. Say cheese!!

Saturday, August 7, 2010

New Mexico..

We are just over the Texas/NM border and o boy is New Mexico wonderful! But lets start at the begining... As you've probably already read, last night was a disaster. We watched our tent float away and get stopped by a grill; we watched our neighbors watch our tent and point as it floated away; we watched our neighbors tent rain cover get ripped off and fly away while their stuff got soaked; we watched our neighbors tent spike come out of the ground, lifting one corner of their 10 person tent; we learned about a fallen sign which took out power for the area; we went over to assist our neighbors with their tent when they returned at 12/1230am; we eventualy fell asleep: Stef "stretched out" (yea right) in the backseat, and Sarah in a contortionist position in the front passanger.
Today, however, has been a better day. Well, after we reassembled ourselves and made sure most of our stuff was relatively dry... We passed about 400 wind turbines and boy were they pretty!!! We also:: saw two statues of white buffalos (one female); a gorilla on top of a personal injury law firm, as well as one in front of the office; statue of Buddy Holly; saw black-tailed prarie dogs in a controlled prarie dog town; saw the worlds largest muleshoe (not as exciting as one would think, but whats best is that noone in the town knew of such a thing - despite the plaque in front depicting the words "WORLDS LARGEST MULESHOE"........); saw slaughterhouses and dairy farms (we prefer the dairy farms); saw lots of horses, bulls, etc.; saw lots of windmills; drove through windy mountainous areas; towns that have less people than have visited our blog; and so on and so on...
Tonight, we are camping in beautiful Tucamcani (or something like that) with our tent facing a mountain (thinking its the one that this town is named for) at a KOA Kampground. We went in the pool and hot tub, had yummy dinner courtesy of Stefanie (again), and are sitting relaxing.
On another note, we have finally broken through! Our heat wave that has been following us everywhere has decided to leave us alone (heat wave last night too, despite the hail). Tonight's temperature is expected to be in the 70's....



WHOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

And now we relax, read, and then its off to bed - in our secured to the ground tent (its windy here!).. Goodnight blog readers. O, and we are all confused about the time change... today we passed into Mountain Time Zone and barely realized it...

Prarie Dog Town!

It started with 4 that were trapped inside these walls and they reproduced to form a town. It is completely protected so they may live in peace. :)

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Wind!

This is a small section of one of the numerous wind farms we've passed. We are in Sweetwater Texas, the Wind Capital of the World. They make no sound, and are beautiful to see.

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Friday, August 6, 2010

Yummy dinner!

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A flood

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Our picnic table... thru the rain

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Wind!

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Hail on the car windowsill..

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Water...

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Its raining.

Before arriving in Abilene, we checked the weather. Clear skies all around. Temperature was to drop to 80 by midnight and 75 by 6am. We got to the KOA and checked in, set up camp,made dinner. Stef made short ribs, sweet potatoes and zucchini. As we ate, we received warning of possible storms. We finished eating as it began to drizzle. We got our stuff put away - except the tent- as it downpoured. While sitting in our car, we watched our tent float away in the river created by the rain. It was stopped by a grill. We saw hail - not in the storm report - which was the size of large marbles. There is thunder and lightening (not cloud to ground though, so that's good), massive winds (55 mph) and a lot of flooding. Tonight we will sleep in the car while the tent stays out and attempts to dry. Dessert is watermelon. :)
(More Photos will be posted.)

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Tonights abode

Tonight we are staying in Abilene Texas. Our camp is setup, food is cooking and we are enjoying a Seagrams Classic Lime Margarita. Its 95 now but should drop to 85 within 3 hours :)

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83 North...

Stef: I got a new job. Want to stay on vacation for an extra few days, maybe a week?
Sarah: Okay. Sounds great.
Stef: Let's do it!
Sarah: Next road you hit, go west!

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Only 4 days left !

If you've not already placed your bet, you still have time. The person who guesses our total trip mileage closest without going over wins special road trip memorabilia! You can place your bet on this or any post by clicking comment and submitting your bet along with your name. Good luck to all!

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On the road again...

Change of plans... We got the itch and we got it BAD. We've rerouted ourselves and are heading to South Dakota. It's our journey to the center of the United States.

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

Grandpas Raisin Cake

It looks tasty!

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San Antonio

Well, we've been here for a day and a half and are having a BLAST. Yesterday, we hung out with Grandpa and Marge, had dinner and didn't do too much. Today, however, we went to a place called Morgan's Wonderland - and it was AWESOME. It is a fully accessible park - but not like your neighborhood park - this one had a carousel, a train to ride, "off-road" car ride, and many other things. Everything in the park was accessible via wheelchair, which meant we ALL could ride the carousel, the train and so on. The park also had this nifty system which we have not seen before. Like most places, you get a bracelet when you enter. These bracelets had GPS trackers in them so if you became separated from your party, you could scan in at a monitor and it would show you where your party members are in the park. Sarah almost had to use it, but found Stefanie, Marge, Grandpa and Marge's friend's son Angel before she got to try it out.
After the park we came back to the house and went shopping for some food items to make some cakes for Grandpa tomorrow. His favorite is raisin cake, so we are going to make mini loaves of raisin cake and banana bread for him. They freeze pretty well, so he will have them for a long while (they told us they just ate the last raisin cake we made for them last year).
After dinner, we hung out and chatted, watched a little Jay Leno with Grandpa and are now heading to bed but wanted to blog first. We've not blogged for a little while.. Tomorrow we are making the cakes, as well as some eggplant parmesean for dinner. Marge has two friends (Gloria and Kermit) that are coming for dinner so Marge will make spaghetti and meatballs, and Stefanie and Sarah will make eggplant parm. It's a good ol' Italian dinner made by Jews for a German man and whatever Marge's nationality is.  :)

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Over the hill and thru the woods...

...to Grandfathers house we go!
Less than an hour from San Antonio! We are replanning the few days we will have between Texas and Illinois. Make sure you've placed your bet below: see post archive on the right for the header "PLACE YOUR BETS" in mid July. Its anybodys game, and prize(s) will be nifty!!

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Biiig

On our tour of Houston we've now seen giant president heads, giant beatles with instruments, a house made our of beer cans and a giant sax made out of car parts! Very cool!!

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The Beatles!

We went to David Adickes sculpture park. He had sculptures of all 43 presidents and the Beatles. All the important people in the world. :)

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Mommy!!

Standing at a mere 24 feet high...

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Baby...

Awwwwe how cute!!

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Welcome to Rayne

The frog capital of the world!!

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License Plate Game...

We've just seen a plate from Mexico. We are 6 states shy of having them all: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and Nebraska. This might be the year we get them all!!

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Wow

That's a lotta sugar cane!! Not sure how much you can see in the pic, but its endless farms of sugar cane. :)

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Stefanie, the theif!

She tried to steal Sarahs Cafe Au Lait at Cafe du Monde!! tsk tsk

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Sunday, August 1, 2010

Louisiana!

We have travelled far and long over endless bridges treading along the gulf coast the whole way. No oil sightings of oil as of yet, though we feel confident we shall see some, or smell it.
It seems the US feels it needs more bridges, as everywhere we go we see them being erected; possible the country is sinking...

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Camping at the Forgotten Coast

We went to the smallest police station in the united states, and found that it shares a building with the following: a school, which we believe us k thru 12, a medical center, dentist office, WWII Museum and Boys and Girls Club. It read a surprisingly small building.
We camped at St George Island, known as the forgotten coast, walked along the beach and saw lots and lots and lots of sand crabs and a beautiful sunset followed by lightening. It stormed and poured most of the night but our tent did well on keeping us dry.
Stef made s yummy t bone steak for dinner with corn on the grill. We snuck and had dessert before dinner, but it was just watermelon so we can get away with it. :) For breakfast she made egg beaters and flat bread.
Now we are off to Nawlin's.

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Saturday, July 31, 2010

It was a teeny weeny itsy bitsy yellow polka dot post office...

OK not really. This was not the smallest in the US, but its by far the smallest we city-folk have seen to date. At 330pm, they appeared to be open. Stef went inside, lights were on and there were approximately 100 rent-a-box mailboxes inside. We mailed our nephew Clayton a postcard from Florida at this post office. :)

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Northern Florida...

We are driving on the northwest coast of Florida, passed some interesting things along the way. After our dissappointing side track earlier, we've plunged forward on our search for the Smallest Police Station in the US. Let's hope its also a low crime area. ;-)
We have seen many young women on the street with large oaktag signs which read "CAR WASH" and have recently passed two young ladies with signs that read "HONK 4 JESUS." That was a new one for us. Otherwise, just passing lots of trees: many of them of the palm variety.

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Not so miniature...

What a crapshoot. The Orange shaped Building was PITiful and the "giant" golf ball was not so big...

Orange we sorry we came here.........

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For our Aunt Marcia and Uncle Bob

We found the Boston Lobster Feast car outside of Target and had to photo and blog the lobster car :)

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On the road again...

Well, we've left our family in Boca and are headed North. Since it was so hard to leave we've picked some fun attractions to see. First stop: giant golf ball. Also, orange shaped building, possibly a chinese themed supermarket (not an asian/chinese market like we all know, this one is a Winn-Dixie with kites). Last stop will be the Worlds Smallest Police Station, then its off to set up camp in the panhandle. :)

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Danielle on ice...

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