2 Mutts and a Map: The End and the Beginning

Here it is, seven months since we finished traveling and returned from our year and a half adventure back to North Carolina. A lot has happened since we began a new chapter in our lives in Chapel Hill. This final blog post should have been written months ago, but better now then never! So, a look back on the end of one adventure and the start of a new one....

Katy and I spent our last week in Colorado trying to soak up some of our favorite aspects of living in Boulder...we went hiking a couple of evenings at our favorite spot, Chautaugua Park, we enjoyed dinner on the outdoor mall, we took the dogs running around the wonderful trails throughout the city, and most importantly we spent our final weekend with Aunt Cyndi where we helped her do some painting, enjoyed her cooking (we will definitely miss that), and spent one final day in downtown Denver going to the People's Fair and to an amazing dinner at a restaurant called Cholan.

Chautaugua Park

People's Fair

Downtown Denver

We left Denver the morning of Sunday, June 3rd, and took a northern route to start our trek back East as we wanted to pass through South Dakota so we could visit the Crazy Horse Memorial, Mount Rushmore, and Badlands National Park. After six hours of driving we arrived at the Crazy Horse Memorial, which is still under construction, but an amazing sight to behold none the less. After spending some time at Crazy Horse we drove the short distance over to Mount Rushmore and spent an hour walking around and enjoying the sights. We had a great time, but were worn out from the drive (each of us had a car we were driving) and wanted to push on farther before calling it a day. We drove another couple hours, stopping in Wall, South Dakota, the closest town we could find to the entrance of Badlands National Park.

Crazy Horse Memorial

On Monday morning we were up early again and drove to the Badlands National Park to start off our morning doing some exploring. Since we had a long day of driving ahead of us we only staid in the park for a couple of hours, stopping at several overlooks to enjoy the scenery. The Badlands is the largest protected grass prairie in the United States and is full of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires....it is unlike any terrain we had seen before.

Another National Park the dogs can cross off their list!

Barlow decided to get in!

After leaving the Park we started another long day of driving. We stopped for a quick lunch at a subway, and then finally after eight and a half hours we stopped in Cedar Falls, Iowa where we grabbed dinner at a small diner that sits right on the Cedar River. We ate outside and after dinner took the dogs on a walk around the city, walking alongside the river for most of our stroll.

After dinner and some exercise we decided we wanted to push on a little farther, so we drove another hour and a half to Iowa City before calling it a day. Tuesday was yet another long day, but we had dinner plans in Lexington, Kentucky so were motivated to get up early and hit the road. After nine hours of driving we arrived at Katy's cousin's house around 5pm. We spent the rest of the evening eating bar-b-que, playing some basketball, and just enjoying being with family. Wednesday we were up and at it again, and this time our final destination was back home to North Carolina!

The summer was a busy fun packed summer with time spent at Smith Mountain Lake, Emerald Isle, I worked two weeks at the Massanetta Middle School Conference as Recreation Leader, Katy attended a two week continuing education course in Raleigh to become certified in Neuro-IFRAH (a type of rehabilitative treatment for stroke patients), we moved in to our new house in Chapel Hill, we spent lots of time swimming with the dogs at Jordan Lake and exploring our new area. The biggest event of the summer happened on August 20th when we both officially began our new adventures. I started graduate school to earn a Master's in Public Health and Nutrition at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill and also began a research assistantship working with the Children's Healthy Weight Research Team at the University's Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Also on the 20th Katy began a new job working at the University Hospital in Inpatient Rehab where she works primarily with spinal cord patients. I want to emphasize, this is not just some job, this is the ONLY job Katy had her sights set on since I found out I got into graduate school and we would be living in Chapel Hill. This is the place she wanted to be because it is the area of therapy that she is the most passionate about and she also knew that UNC had an amazing team of therapists and doctors and would be an incredible place to work. We could not be happier to both be where we are currently and to also live close enough to be able to walk to school and to work....life is good!

It is hard to believe our traveling adventure is over and that 2 Mutts and a Map is writing its final chapter. What an amazing ride it has been...some of our best memories together have come from the past 18 months and it has been a true joy to be able to share them with you!

OREGON