Welcome to Colorado

Hello, Friends!
I finally made it to Colorado - a few weeks ago, actually.
After making the decision to move halfway across the country, I realized how totally awesome Michigan is: the Mitten is surrounded by fresh water lakes, covered in mile after mile of gorgeous trees, and filled with woodland creatures.  During our last month, we squeezed in as much outdoor time as possible (which, unfortunately, didn't amount to much with work and packing).

Colorado has an entirely new terrain filled with new wildlife (including black widows and rattle snakes - yikes), but I love my forest friends so I found this fantastically ugly raccoon sweatshirt at Goodwill and a wolf tee before I left.  As far as I know, t shirts with wolves on them are kind of a Michigan thing.   My good friend Molly and I decided that from now on, we'll buy a new piece of jewelry each time we get together.  Before I left, we found this set of charming woodland creature necklaces: a deer and a fox.

similar: deer necklace | fox necklace | wolf tee | raccoon sweatshirt

On the first day of our eighteen hour trip, we traveled through Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.

The little guy on our windshield was our trip mascot.  It is a felted Catbug, a birthday gift to Patrick from his buddy Justin.  If you are not familiar with Catbug, its an adorable character from the show Bravest Warriors.  I highly recommend that you check it out.

(image from Bravest Warriors Wikipedia)

Kansas City was the halfway point - and the home of a really great friend from high school named Kyle and his awesome girlfriend, Shutchi. The four of us shared a delicious dinner at Cafe Gratitude, a fantastic vegan restaurant.  Their menu has titles like 'I Am Happy' and 'I Am Satisfied.'  I loved it - everything about it - especially that amazing Key Lime Pie.

On the next day, we drove through Kansas.  After Kansas City, there isn't much to see, just a lot of corn.  You may remember from my North Carolina road trip that I absolutely love weird, kitch-y road side attractions, so when I saw a sign for the Wizard of Oz Museum, we had to go.  That highway is actually called the Road to Oz, and happened to be under construction at the time.

We also stopped by the Oz Winery (because, why not? when in Oz...), where the bottles had silly names like 'Drunken Munchkin' and 'Lion's Courage'.

And now we are finally here, in our new home! Every morning I wake up to this stunning view - I traded beaches for mountains. We take family hikes on the weekends with baby Charlie in her hiking backpack and walk as much as possible (it seems like everyone walks or rides their bikes around here).

I'm looking forward to new adventures, like finding all the fun places to visit and quirky shops.  See you later!