The entire reason we came to Steamboat was to snowboard and its a huge bummer that Janella is so sick because we really wanted her to join us today. She insisted, however, that she stay in bed and rest up to see if it will help. So, Erik and I went out on the mountain bright and early to see if we could find some fresh tracks. It had been snowing all night and it was still going as we made our way to the top of the mountain.

The second NP on the itinerary was Great Sand Dunes in Southern Colorado. Neither of us had ever heard anything about this park so it was really cool to drive up and be completely surprised. It was hard to tell how large the dunes are as you drive up, but once you're there it's pretty impressive. The tallest dune is almost 750ft tall!

Day 18 was Easter Sunday and we spent most of it inside relaxing and recovering from our adventure to Loveland the previous day. Janella is full on sick now and needed the day off. Apparently this crud she has was starting to come on yesterday while we were riding. This probably affected how her day went so she says after she is well she will give snowboarding another try. The only picture Janella took on day 18 was of Cat and me trying to take a nap!

We woke up at 5am to make it to Loveland Ski Area early enough to enroll Janella in a snowboard lesson and beat the crowds on to the mountain. We arrived around 8:30 and it was COLD!

After our awesome day in RMNP we just needed to see some more rocks! Kayla, and a few of the sites we read, suggested Vedauwoo as one of the coolest places to see in Wyoming. Sadly we were a little early in the season to see the area in all its glory. Vedauwoo has a couple entrances and the first two we went to were completely closed. The third entrance we tried was open, but only up to the first parking lot. We parked outside the next gate blocking our way and headed to the first formation we saw on foot. We will have to come back in the summer at some point to see everything and possibly do some climbing!

We went to our first National Park today with our friend Kayla and her son, Holden. Rocky Mountain NP was designated a National Park in 1915 and covers 400 sq. miles of montane, sub-alpine, and alpine wilderness in the Colorado Rockies (thanks brochure). It was awesome!

This morning we woke up to completely different weather compared to when we arrived yesterday afternoon. When we arrived in Cheyenne it was in the 60s with clear, beautiful skies. Here is little Honu sitting in front of the Willis household while the weather was nice when we arrived.

Last night we slept great despite how cold it was. Probably because we were all bundled up in our sleeping bags.

We slept in a little and after breakfast we tried to catch up a little on our posting because service hasn't been too great on the road. Then we finally hit the road around noon and got bored fast. So I kept myself busy deleting bad pics from my phone to make room for more while Evan had fun trying to eat big trucks.

After a fun week in Lake Forest and Chicago it was time to head West to meet our friends in Wyoming! Along the way we planned on stopping in Iowa to see some awesome Dolomite caves, but before we could enjoy some more sites we had to get out of the driveway...

We spent about a week in Lake Forest with Evan's family. In addition to seeing his family we were also able to meet up with a few of his longtime friends. We went out with Andrew in Chicago on Thursday for a St. Pats celebration and met Anthony for lunch in downtown Chicago on Friday. After the festivities downtown we trained back to Lake Forest on the Metra and met his friend JT for some happy hour beers at the local bar in Lake Forest. Apparently we weren't thinking clearly those couple days because we forgot to take any pictures with his friends!

We said our thank yous and farewells and headed out at 10am to Evan's parents house for a few days. They live in Lake forest which is about 30 miles north of Chicago. We planned on stopping by the Chicago River on the way so we could see it dyed green for St. Patty's day festivities, but other than that we had nothing on the books for today except getting to his parents and relaxing.
We arrived to downtown around 4 pm and, after being cut off several times because trying to caravan in downtown Chicago doesn't work, we finally found some places to park by the river so we could snap a couple photos! So green and so awesomely beautiful!

It continued to rain all night and around 3am we woke up to find our tent was starting to flood. I wish we would've gotten a picture of it, but we kind of panicked and took care of it before that thought ever crossed our minds! Turns out that the tarp our tent was sitting on was just pooling the rain so it starting seeping in. And also our rain fly has a malfunction on one side that we need to figure out how to rig up before the next rainy night in the tent. We got hot showers and packed up camp to head to Branson for the day. Below is Evan leading the way in the nasty, cold, gray and rainy weather. We soon found out that today would not go as planned... 😕

We packed up and left camp by 8:30am to head to Kansas. There was more beautiful Oklahoma countryside and a lot more animals including deer running in front of the car but we finally reached the state line at 2:40pm!

We left Dallas after staying with our wonderful friends Nick and Sarah! First state, Oklahoma!