Grand Rapids Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
*Chymes* re: your trip
Welcome back!!
I'm intrigued by your trip and I bet others are as well. So humor me/us...
Related to your road trip, please name your favorite:
- State
- City
- Stretch of highway
- State welcome sign
- State capitol building
- Goofy tourist attraction
- Scenic outlook
- Road trip food that you packed
- Food that you purchased
Re: *Chymes* re: your trip
And I love the detailed questionnaire! Can't wait to see your responses, Chymes!
gvsu, that's a great idea!
Chymes, I hope you're recovering from the trip. Looking forward to your answers here.
Also, would you do a huge road trip like that again? - Definitely, with some modifications. I would want a full two weeks (we did this in 12 days) to be able to linger in some spots/have more time with the people we saw. Driving west was better than driving east because we gained an hour each day as we crossed time zones. I knew this would impact the drive home, losing an hour each day, but we didn't think it would affect things as much as it did. We felt a lot more rushed on the way home as a result.
By the numbers, in case anyone was interested, we traveled 5,417 miles through 15 unique states (crossing four of those twice), using just over 11 tanks of gas. Thanks to planning ahead/packing food, events with meals provided and the incredible generosity of friends and family, we only had to purchase nine meals throughout our 12-day trip.
GVSU, I'll cover your food question in more detail and explain how we were able to do this so cheaply...but at the moment I have to get back to work. Give me an hour or so.
I'm very impressed!
Yay! Thanks for playing! I enjoyed your responses.
In the past week, B and I have decided that we would really like to visit Oregon.
Thanks for sharing. It sounds like it was a really great trip!
That's it!!
I find it hilarious. It was enormous.
We agreed a while back that we want to do a big (Europe) trip for our 10th anniversary in two years...so from here on out we want to do trips as cheaply as possible. Since we had the car and a two coolers anyway, we figured we could take several meals with us.
We did PB&J sandwiches for many lunches. Packed the jars, a knife and a loaf of bread. When we got hungry, we made them and thus didn't have to stop driving. We finished the first loaf about halfway through the trip and bought another.
For dinners the first 3-4 days, we made a big batch of our favorite pesto chicken pasta dish. Normally we eat it hot, but it works to eat it cold as well. We portioned it out into individual Tupperwares and packed them in the cooler. Again, we could eat as we drove, without stopping. And in the interest of saving money we didn't mind having the same thing for dinner three days in a row.
For snacks and meal supplements we took Goldfish crackers (because we find that we don't shovel those into our mouths absentmindedly like potato chips), carrots and hummus, string cheese, salt & pepper cashews, dried cranberries/almond mix, a bag of snack size Snickers & Milky Ways, granola bars, dried mangoes, a couple apples and some prepackaged smoothies. I might be forgetting a few things right now, but that is most of it. We also took along plenty of water bottles and single-serving juices & lemonades (as well as a four-pack of Red Bull for emergencies).
We also utilized leftovers: For one meal we purchased, we got a larger pizza than we needed and saved the last few slices for a lunch later on. At Voodo Doughnuts we bought a half dozen and used that for all of our breakfasts in Portland.
Beyond that, we were blessed to stay with friends and family who all made us breakfasts before we took off for the day. Sometimes breakfast was hearty enough that we didn't need much of a lunch. XN's mom packed us a lunch and dinner the day we stayed with his parents. We enjoyed free food at our friend's wedding rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself. And we stayed two days with XN's brother/sister-in-law, who insisted on paying for meals. Like I said...blessed.
That statue (googled giant goose statue North Dakota) looks like a giant eye with geese in it. Weird.
I really enjoyed the photos along the way. It looked like a great trip. I'm glad you guys were able to do it.