A summary of the drive

I realized that I hadn't really shared any photos from the trip over to Minnesota yet! I had shipped my car to Seattle, and Colin and I drove from there. So here I am by my car in Seattle at the beginning of our trip. You may notice that it's a little bit wet outside! Well, that precipitation turned into snow soon enough when we were in the Snoqualmie Pass! I was driving at the time, and I was suddenly really grateful that I had all-wheel drive and studs in my snow tires! We were driving slow because of the conditions, but we were still passing by some people. Colin made the comment that people probably looked at our Alaskan license plates and said, "Oh, well that's why".





We made it through the pass just fine (me a little white knuckled, but still in good spirits), and that actually ended up being the worst of our trip; the rest of the way we occasionally ran into a little bit of snow, but hardly anything was sticking to the roads, so we were in good shape.



If you listened to my audio blogs that I posted (which I should do more of soon), then you know that we stayed overnight close to Butte, Montana, where we pulled off the highway at the first reputable motel :) We had driven about 9 hours that day, I belive. It wasn't really long, but we were pretty tired when we stopped. We also didn't know if there would be another good place to stop if we pressed on for another couple hours. It made for a long following day, but all was well.

The second day of driving brought us to Sioux Falls, South Dakota after about 14 hours. We had pushed to the end because we had relatives to stay with there. It helped that there were two of us, so that neither of us had to drive when we were too tired. We stayed in Sioux Falls for 3 nights. We have relatives from both families of our maternal grandparents, so it was really nice to meet relatives that we hadn't even met before! The first day we primarily hung out with my grandmother's sister and her husband. We met a couple of their grown children as well. The second day we primarily spent with my grandfather's siblings. They all gathered at one brother's house, and we had a great time looking at pictures and hearing stories. What's great is that I'm actually very close to Sioux Falls. It's only about a 4 hour drive from Saint Paul, so I plan on going back regularly. There's a family reunion happening this summer that I'll hopefully be able to go to. It really was nice getting to know more of our family.



Finally, our trip was completed by that 4 hour drive from Sioux Falls to Saint Paul. It was great to finally be home!

All in all it was a nice way to move. Shipping the car to Seattle was a really great thing to do! Having only two days of long driving was very doable, and I had fun. It was the longest drive I have ever done, but I enjoyed it! So that was the trip!