Ready. Set. Drive.

These past two days have been mostly driving. Somehow, most of our stops were towards the beginning of the trip and a few big ones at the end. Yet, we needed to get from the beginning to the end. Yesterday, we left Rollo, MO, and headed towards Stillwater, Oklahoma. (I am a dork and wanted to stop by my fraternity's national headquarters. Don't judge.) More exciting though was the scene outside of our door when we got up yesterday morning. After grabbing some free breakfast (which we actually had to grab for ourselves instead our usual hotel stays where mom grabs everything first thing in the morning), we headed back to our room to see cops outside. We aren't quite sure what happened, although we had heard a ruckus outside the night before. Either way, we were hoping for an arrest, but didn't get to see one. We did get to hear some yelling though. But thats not as cool as an arrest.

(cops through the peephole...)

Anyway, on the road we went. Oklahoma was actually a more exciting state to drive through than we expected. There were rolling hills and trees, which is not what we expected. On our way, we somehow ran into the world's largest McDonalds. Elyse and I aren't quite sure if it's actually the worlds largest, but we took a picture and bought a postcard anyway!

We made it to Stillwater around 5:30 central time, and stopped by my fraternity's national headquarters. They were obv closed and it was private property and there was a cop chillin nearby. So, instead of getting arrested, we took a couple of quick pictures and went to grab some dinner. Rumor on the street was to hit up Eskimo Joe's in town, so we did. Unfortunately, the wait was super long and we didn't have time to waste. We grabbed some souvenir cups (they are supposed to change color!!) and just grabbed something else along the way. 

And then we drove til we could drive no more. We stopped in Shamrock, TX, for the night. Apparently there are more Irish people in Texas than we thought. Or they are just wannabes...

Today was another super long day of driving. We left our Shamrock hotel at 9:30 central time, and we got to our next hotel along the way here in Page, AZ on the north side of the Grand Canyon at 11:15 Arizona time, which is 12:15 Mountain time, making it 1:15 central time. Including all of the time we stopped today, we drove for 16 hours. We made a pit stop in Santa Fe, NM, in honor of our favorite Newsie, Jack Kelly. We didn't really see why he wanted to go to that town cause the actual city was very cramped but not in a NYC type of way. But, we found the Santa Fe National Forest and Hyde Memorial State Park just outside of the city, which is where Elyse and I worked on our jumping pictures :) The area looked like it was straight out of the Adirondacks, which makes every upstate new yorker feel at home! The whole reason we stopped was, of course, the Newsies reference. However, we didn't know where to have Elyse sing in the city, so we were going to do that at the park. We forgot, so we just pulled over on the side of the road on our way out of town for the singing of "Santa Fe".

We drove a super round-about way to where we are now, but we saw some beautiful mesas today. Fun fact, we just learned what a Mesa was today. :)