Grant Makes Captain!

Grant's was promoted to Captain at the end of May. His effective date was 31 May, but because that was Memorial Day, they did the actual pin-on ceremony on Tuesday. I didn't go, but someone was there to take a few pictures.

Congrats Captain!!

Moving!

Wow...it's time to move already! Just wanted to quickly post to let you know that I might be "MIA" for a few days as we move cross-country! I'm still planning to finish up some posts from Christmas and from our trip to DC, so I promise I'll try to get those up later this week! But FYI, our movers are coming tomorrow (Fri) and Saturday, and then we'll be cleaning up the house and heading out Tuesday (23rd) morning. We'll be stopping at various places and end up in Mountain Home on the 30th. If I have time, I'll do quick posts or update this one throughout our trip. See ya in the Mountains! ;)

UPDATE:
March 23 - We made it to Pigeon Forge, after a little detour because a rock slide closed down part of I-40! We took some very scenic, windy roads instead....which kept the drive interesting, to say the least. We passed by a Ball Corp plant and the Forbidden Caverns! My mom, brother, and I went to those caverns when we vacationed down here back in 1998 or 1999! Our hotel is awesome! Great deal for $45 (in Pigeon Forge!). Tomorrow we'll be driving to Memphis, hopefully the drive will be easier. I'll post a few pics later.

March 24 - We arrived in Memphis this evening and are now in Central time zone, putting us one hour behind Eastern. The drive today was super easy compared to yesterday. We drove on I-40 the entire time, just had to go through Nashville, and the roads were not as hilly! Let's just say North Carolina and Tennessee are looooong states to drive west through! Most exciting part of the day? We had to weigh our cars at the Loves truck stop....with lots of semis surrounding us. They probably made fun of us...two little Toyotas in the middle of a sea of semis. We could barely reach the button the scale to call the attendant to get weighed! It was entertaining. Tomorrow is another 6 hours on the road to Tulsa. At least we'll be visiting friends and staying for 2 nights there!

March 25-26 - We made it to Tulsa to visit Rob and Caitlin! Our drive was pretty easy again, but we did get into some brief periods of rain. We drove through Arkansas before getting to Oklahoma on Thursday....let's just say Arkansa=one big farm basically. It looks a lot like Ohio except dirtier, if that makes sense, haha! We did get into some hills in western Arkansas though...who knew!?! Rob and Caitlin took us downtown for pizza Thursday night, and then we had some barbeque for lunch today and grilled some yummy chicken tonight. We also watched Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, which the boys, especially, enjoyed. Rob and Caitlin have a sheltie collie named Wubba, and Wizzo loved meeting her! They had a great time running around the backyard and playing together. I'll try to get a video and pictures before we leave in the morning. It was so nice to have a little break from driving and spend the day relaxing with friends! Plus, we found out that Rob and Caitlin are expecting! They had a doctor appointment today and brought home their first pictures of their little peanut. So cute! :) Tomorrow, we are back on the road and stopping in Kansas.

March 27 - Today was a long, boring day of driving. It was rainy and very windy! We didn't go through any big cities (except Wichita early in the day) and there was hardly any traffic. It made for a very boring drive. We made good time though and arrived in Hays early enough to grab dinner, explore the town, get frozen custard (yum!), and stop at Walmart. We came back and gave Wizzo a bath and are now relaxing. I will post more details about our stay here later (dinner was great and we learned some interesting things about this town). Tomorrow we have about a 5 hour drive to Denver. I can't believe we'll actually be in Idaho in just a couple of days!

March 28 - We arrived in Denver this afternoon. We are now in the Mountain time zone, putting us another hour behind for a total of 2 hours behind Eastern time zone. We checked into our hotel and ended up having to switch rooms because our original room was gross. We don't think it was cleaned...it looked like they tidied up and made the bed (without washing the sheets...). Then their key card system wouldn't work, and we still don't have keys at 10pm at night. More on that whole deal later. We decided to drive around and headed toward Boulder since it was nice outside. We stopped at a scenic overlook and got some awesome views of the mountains! The Rocky Mountains are really amazing! Pictures definitely do not do them justice. They are huge! We stopped to pick up a pizza on our way back to the hotel and were going to watch the 3rd Harry Potter movie (since I finally finished the book!), but Grant's copy (which he had burned a while back) was of The Polar Express. Something must have messed up when he burned it. So, we watched "Go" instead. Tomorrow we have a long day of driving (8 hours) to Salt Lake City. The weather was great today, so I'm hoping it is the same tomorrow!

March 29 - Arrived in Salt Lake City around dinner time. Driving through Wyoming was interesting! The wind was gusting up to 40mph! It made for some difficult driving, but we made it. I also took some neat pictures of the scenery. We checked into our hotel and then headed to Red Robin for dinner. We went back to the hotel and enjoyed their pool and hot tub. Mountain Home tomorrow!!

March 30 - We finally made it to Mountain Home!! I will definitely post more about this later, but really quickly, we checked into our TLF (Temporary Lodging Facility) which is really nice! After unloading our cars, we drove around base and found Grant's squadron and other things. We stopped at the commissary for groceries and dropped them off at the TLF before heading into town to explore and go to Walmart. The base is about 10 minutes from town. The town looks like it has its goods and bads, and the base is very plain and open. You can see mountains in the distance, which is pretty cool, but it's still weird not to have trees and all. It's definitely going to take some time to get used to. Let's just say (at this point...) that I wouldn't choose to live in this town. There isn't much, but it's bigger than we thought. I'm trying to have a positive outlook and hope that it will be good once I get used to being out here! :) Tomorrow we our meeting with our real estate agent to view some houses!! Hopefully we find one we like!

Washington, D.C. - Day 3

The weather was pretty awful today. Very overcast and rainy at times, but we made it work. Last night we checked out the opening times for a few museums and planned out our day. Our first stop was back at the Washington Monument to see if we could get tickets to go up to the top. We got there shortly before 9:30 and luckily they still had tickets for that time (which are free!), so we hurried over to get in line. We rode the elevator to the top, during which the guide gave us some history. We then had some time in the viewing deck to look out the windows and see the view of the city. Unfortunately, since the weather was so crappy, the clouds were very low and visibility was not as good as usual. It was still pretty neat to go up inside though. The guide said on a clear day, you can see as far as 7 miles!

 

     

There was an accident that morning too, which is why traffic is so congested in the pictures. The police were re-routing down some smaller side streets.

On the elevator ride back down, they clear the windows on each side of the doors so you can see the stones that different cities and/or states have put in during the building phase.

Later in the day, the clouds were so low, we couldn't even see the top of the monument anymore!

We then headed about a block over to the Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is also free! (That is one of the great things about DC...a majority of the museums and buildings are free to go in.) We had read on their website that military members can get a ticket for the permanent exhibition "The Holocaust" anytime, as opposed to tickets that have a scheduled time (so they can control the number of people in the exhibit). When we finally got to the front of the line, after waiting behind a HUGE line of middle-schoolers on a trip (one bad thing about DC during the school year is the massive amount of kids on school trips...), we asked the people at the front desk and they gave us our ticket right away and told us we could go into the exhibit whenever we were ready. Nice! Unfortunately, it ended up being super crowded anyway, because new groups enter every so often. There is a lot to read and it was very congested in the beginning where people were looking at the artifacts. Obviously no pictures in here, sorry!

 

I definitely recommend going to the Holocaust Museum if you are ever in Washington, D.C. I think it is part of the Smithsonian Institution, and it was really neat to see. I find it so hard to believe what happened to many of the Jews back then and how crazy Hitler was. There were 3 floors and it probably took us 2-3 hours to get through it all! It just depends how much you want to look at and read. I'm a reader, so it took me longer. I mean, if I'm going to go to a museum, I'm going to learn my history. :)

 

When we left there, we were getting hungry so we stopped in at the Smithsonian Institution's information center for some lunch. It was crowded so we had to share a table with 2 ladies who were old friends catching up. It was interesting, to say the least. We had to make boring small talk.

 

We decided to head to the National Air and Space Museum next. Like the Holocaust Museum, a million and five kids were waiting to get in, and since it was raining (and we were umbrella-less!), we decided to walk across the National Mall (big grassy area separating all the major museums) to the National Gallery of Art. We didn't spend much time in there, basically because it was boring and we didn't know what we were looking at. Haha! When we left, we saw that the line was gone at the Air & Space Museum, so we headed over there. We spent most of the rest of the afternoon in there. Grant probably enjoyed this more than I did, but I still found a few of the exhibits to be interesting.

 Replica of Amelia Earhart's plane...they were working on this exhibit at the time.

UAV! What every pilot aspires to fly. ;)

Jet Engine...who knew it was so complex?!?

Apollo 11 Command Module

A part of the Hubble Space Telescope. This piece had been in outer space just about a week ago!

We also wanted to go to the National Museum of Natural History but ran out of time. The museums are still on their "Winter" hours, so everything closed at 5 or 5:30.

 

We had plans to meet up with some friends, Joe & Barb, who live in DC for dinner. We met them when Grant started pilot training in Mississippi. Joe decided flying wasn't for him, so now he is stationed at the base in DC. Unfortunately, Barb ended up having to work late, so we didn't get to have dinner with them, but we still went. We ate at King Street Blues in Old Town Alexandria (which, by the way, I love! Reminds me of Oxford, if I haven't said that already...). It was a fun atmosphere and delicious hush puppies. :)

 

Initially, we thought we might do something tomorrow morning, but now we're thinking that we've seen everything we really wanted to see, except the Pentagon, which closed by the time we got around to seeing it...plus, I guess you have to have a ticket or special permission to get in, so we decided to skip it. We'll probably just head back to NC mid-morning.

 

Overall, we thought DC was fun to visit. We saw/did A LOT of stuff in just 3 days. I think it's a place everyone should go at least once in their life. It is, after all, our nation's capital! Not sure if I'd be begging to go back, but if the opportunity arose, I would probably go. If you ever go, be prepared to walk and learn! :)