Epic Roadtrip

Ah, St. Louis. We finally had arrived and were officially at our halfway point. We had a grand ol' time with the Nash family and their plethora of pets (Shout out to Bobo!). Minus the habanero hot temps and humidity, we had a very cool visit. We did everything from peering down from the tippy top of the famous St. Louis Arch to being be-dazzled by the mosaics in the grand Basilica and to letting out our inner hillbillies at the annual Hermann Grape Stomp, where we dined and wined and watched best grape stompin' that side of the Mississippi! Our favorite team was the Hermann Grape Trotters who stomped grapes head first while spinnin' basketballs. We also learned a lot about the history and the culture of the Catholic church and Vatican at the Vatican Splendors exhibit.. Pope-tastic! And of course the Nash family couldn't let John leave without trying some buonissimo Italian food at the Hill. Can you believe he won his first game of bocce ball? It was a cruisin', boozin' good time! ... emphasis on booze.

We woke up early in Elko, NV, played round 2 of luggage Tetris, and hit the road headed for Salt Lake City, UT- the Mormon Mecca. The directions were simple: Step 1, go on Interstate 80 East. Step 2, stop when you get to Salt Lake City, UT. Along the way we passed through some mawwvolous mountains and stopped to check out the Bonneville Salt Flats. The salt covered the ground like snow and in the distance we saw a salt surfer hanging 10. With little black rocks we wrote our initials in the salt and all of a sudden we had a thirst for some margaritas so we continued to SLC.
It was only a 3 hour trip and we were through one state, one time zone, and hanging out in the Mormans. Thanks to William Shatner we scored a four star hotel right in the middle of the city. For the next 4 hours we hoofed around the city logging a total of 6 miles on the pedometer. SLC is very clean and has a very unique vibe. Could it be due to the…
Mormans!!! We couldn't wait to check out Temple Square. There we dodged about 20 brides (no exaggeration) and their massive wedding parties that were all in line to be married (marriage-a-palooza) and came to discovered a mysterious bee hive symbol that sent us on a mission to discover just what this bee-business was all about.
This mission took us through a guided tour of the bee-hive house and over to the capital building where the mission was concluded. The bee hive is a symbol for industry and has been adopted by both the state government and the Mormon religion. We concluded our evening with a trip to the posh part of town for some gourmet burgers including elk, lamb, bison, and beef.

Leaving Rocklin… It was time we flew the coup, so we packed our bags, loaded the car from floor to ceiling using some super awesome Tetris skills, and waved good-by to Rocklin. Our Journey took us through the beautiful, dense pine forests of the western Sierra Nevada mountains up to the top of Donner's Summit and back down the barren desert-like east side of the mountains. We kept chugging on through Reno but not without serious consideration about stopping by the Silver Legacy and throwing some snake-eyes. It was only us, some rocks, and some bikers on their way to Sturges for the rest of the journey to Elko. Once we arrived we could bear-ly hold in our excitement about seeing "the largest polar bear statue in the world". The next stop was the Elko City Museum where we got to see some local mastodon remains and some of the early settlers cribs the few that MTV has yet to film. From there it was over to the hotel for some quick shut-eye then off to Elko's "newest" (circa 1980) casino and their locally famous seafood buffet (with a spread of about 4 different items). Good thing we brought out bibs!

Miles Driven: 305

Jennifer and I have some more blogs ready to post but my computer caught a virus from one of these wireless hotspots and it destroyed my harddrive. I am waiting for Asus to send me a new one and until then we will be a lot slower with our updates Stay tuned for more of our adventure...

Couldn't get enough of the Martins so we went back for one last excursion, this time we headed about 5 houses down to Grandma and Grandpa's house (Everybody Loves Raymond) for a little aqua adventure.