Indiana - Our New Home

We made it! We have now settled into our new home in West Lafayette, Indiana. We have been here for about a week now and Nick has officially started school. We unpacked pretty quickly and have really transformed our new apartment into our home.  So far things have been good here, specifically the weather. We have had lots of cool weather especially in comparison to the 100 degree weather that our old home in Cali has been having. In fact, we have had numerous storms, pretty much every other day. It has been fun experiencing the Mid West style of storms with thunder, lightning, and sheets of rain. We also celebrated Nick's birthday this past weekend, I showered him with love through food since we don't really have much else going on here so far. I made him French Toast for breakfast, then we headed to Triple X Root Beer for lunch, and ended the night with some homemade mac'n'cheese and yellow cake cupcakes.

 Our Home

 The Rain

 Happy Birthday Hubby!

 The new landscape for my runs

Plainfield/Chicago, Illinois

Sorry it's been awhile, we finally arrived safely to Indiana and I haven't had a chance to update you all on the remainder of our road trip. So here it is, after Princeton with Nick's grandparents we headed to Plainfield, IL to visit with Nick's Uncle and his family. We arrived to their house on Saturday morning and we quickly headed to Chicago for the rest of the day. We drove all over town with a stop at the house where Nick's fathers' family grew up, a stop at Navy Pier, and we took a boat tour of the city from Michigan Lake. We had a great time with Nicks family and it was great for me to finally meet them.

 Nick and his Uncle Bob in front of the old Sakamoto Abode

 Riding the trolley to Navy Pier

 From Navy Pier

 View of the city from the pier

 View from our boat tour of the end of the pier

 The City

 Old Lighthouse

 Smile!

The Fam

Princeton, Illinois

  

Our next stop was to Princeton, Illinois to visit with Nicks other grandparents from his mothers side. We had a great week visit with them in their little city of 7,700. We cooked a lot, ate a lot, relaxed a lot, and helped them out with chores. We really enjoyed our time with them and being spoiled by them. It is nice to know that we will have family as close as 200 miles away once we are settled at Purdue, our next visit with them will be for Thanksgiving. 

 

Grandma and Grandpa Huber

 

Their little country house with 2 lots of lawn and a backyard creek

Mowing the lawn

 We enjoyed some MidWest food staples already: Taco pizza (which is as common as Pepperoni), Giardiniera style peppers (great on hot dogs, pizza, and sandwiches), and we also enjoyed some fried chicken from a local family run restaurant. Lastly, another great perk of being in Illinois, you can buy Chicago Bears merchandise for cheap and from pretty much any department store, we were able to get me my own Bears jersey and Nick a new Bears hat for a total less than $30 :)

Cinnamon Sugar Doughnut Holes

  

I am overdue on posting this recipe that Grandma Sakamoto and I made when Nick and I visited her in Vegas. Grandma Saki shared this recipe with me, it was simple and delicious. I personally wanted to post it so that I could easily access it for future batches.

Badlands National Park

 

Our last big stop before arriving in Illinois to visit with Nick's grandparents was to Badlands National Park in South Dakota. It was really neat to see the different layers of sediment. So many different colors, I can't imagine how beautiful it must look in the spring when the grass is green. 

 

Mount Rushmore

 

Our visit to Mount Rushmore was quick. Not much to see but the monument itself and a few exhibits. The monument is quite small, especially because we are not allowed to get close since it is carved into a mountain top, but it was really neat to see and to read up on the history of the monument. We enjoyed our walk around the monument and the surrounding area, known as the Black Hills.

 

It looks quite small from the viewpoint

 

All 50 state flags are flown below the monument, including that of our new home state

 

A bust of the sculptor, Borglum and The History of the United States

 

The way it should be :)

Yellowstone

Our next stop was Yellowstone National Park. We arrived at Yellowstone on Tuesday and left on Friday, so we got about 2.5 days there. We managed to drive through the entire park, which is huge We made all the necessary stops to the most important sights including: Old Faithful and The Upper Geyser Basin, The Lower Geyser Basin, The Fountain Paint Pot, The West Thumb Basin, The Canyon of the Yellowstone, The Tower Falls, and The Mud Volcano. Although we wore ourselves out by jam packing our days, it was great to see all that Yellowstone has to offer. Yellowstone was not our first thermal park experience since we did visit the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal park in Rotorua, New Zealand less than 6 months ago. As a result, the thermal pools and steaming land were not as impressive as the bursting geysers and hot springs that Yellowstone had, especially the bursting of Beehive Geyser and the vivid orange colors of Mammoth Hot Springs. All in all Yellowstone was an awesome place to visit with some great landscapes and awesome thermal activity. Sadly we didn't have any bear sightings but we did spot many mule deer and bison, some from right outside our car. 

Old Faithful Geyser- Goes off every 50-120 minutes - Bursts 108 to 184 feet high for about 1 minute

 Beehive Geyser - Goes off about every 13 hours - Bursts 130 to 200 feet high for about 5 minutes

 

Thermal Pools

Us at the Fountain Paint Pot

 

Lower falls of The Canyon of the Yellowstone 

Mammoth Hot Springs

 

Mammoth Hot Springs

Bison on the roadside