Oops.. just kidding!

Kate, here. So.. we said we'd have an new post every morning and clearly we failed on the very first day. But now we're in Denver, Colorado, and TADAH! a new blog entry. First some housekeeping: I wanted to let you know that this Blogger account is in my name so it always says I'm the one writing, but it should be pretty obvious to anyone actually reading this blog that David has written everything up until this point. Also, we will include a couple of pictures here, but you will have to wait until we get to Montana to see ALL the pictures and we'll post them on Facebook. Now.. entries for the 10th and 11th!

DAY 1

DATE: Tuesday, August 10

LOCATION: Columbus to Iowa City

DISTANCE: 554.7 miles

On our first day we picked up Carla (pictured above - that's what we named her), the Kia Rio and set off for Iowa City. As normal for this trip, nothing very interesting happened. We made sandwiches in the car, enjoyed Carla's air conditioning, and tried to ignore Indiana. We arrived in Iowa City and our friends Nate and Deanna had kindly prepared dinner. We spent the evening playing with their awesome 2 year old daughter Ellie and Boz the cat.

DAY 2

DATE: Wednesday, August 11

LOCATION: Iowa City to Denver

DISTANCE: 783.6 miles

Our day started better than most days - Nate made us eggs with cheese and peppers, hashbrowns, bacon and coffee while Ellie and Deanna made the pancakes. Such service! We left at about 7:30am and headed toward Des Moines. We were saddened to come across severe flooding east of Des Moines - cars, barns, gas stations and crops completely under water. Shockingly there was no water on the highway and we made it through without incident.

As we passed Des Moines into unchartered territory we decided to fire up the GPS belonging to my parents. We had originally named it Clarence like the guardian angel from It's A Wonderful Life, but when we discovered she only has one voice and it's a sort of British sounding woman, we changed it to Clarice. Clarice estimated our arrival time in Denver perfectly. Soon we were in Nebraska... where the speed limit is 75!!! YES!! I think I yelled out loud. We coasted at 80 the rest of the day (which we know is but a warm up for the speed limitless Montana). Miraculously we had NO bad weather at all the first two days of the trip - I was convinced we'd drive through severe thunderstorms in Iowa and Nebraska in August, but we lucked out. Other than the sweltering 90 degree heat and the unbearable humidity, the weather was just about perfect.

Nebraska was surprising - many more trees than expected. I was just expecting a sea of corn, but Iowa has far more corn along route 80 than Nebraska does. And after a certain point... a looong point granted... it starts to feel like the West.

Despite the tedious drive through corn and beef country, we kept ourselves occupied with the famous license plate game - today we saw both Delaware and Alaska in Nebraska which seemed to make the whole thing worth it.

Next we drove into Colorado. Little corn, just cows and wind. We couldn't see any mountains for a long time, but Clarice informed us that we had gone from an 800 foot altitude in eastern Nebraska to 4000 feet in only a few hours. My ear popped once, but otherwise we didn't take much notice. Denver is gorgeous - a city with a perfect climate surrounded by mountains. And no bugs! No bugs at all! We're staying with our friends Nick and Megan Bradley (and their two dogs Roar and Ollie.. David might steal Roar before we leave) and we were so jealous to confirm that there is no humidity, it hardly ever rains, and there are hardly any bugs here. I think David and I will be coming back to Denver!

NEXT STOP: Moran, Wyoming.