21 Day Summer Challenge Day 16

Day 16: Road Trips

We just so happen to be prepping for our next summer road trip, in July we are driving to Colorado (the greatest state ever!) to go see my family and see Soundgarden at Red Rocks Amphitheater.  I went to Red Rocks several times as a kid to attend Easter Sunrise Service, but have never been there for a concert, so I am way stoked!!!

Thinking back to past summer road trips I remember in February of 2003 I started dating a pretty incredible guy who happened to be from Iowa.  When our spring semester ended that year my sister and I were thinking about road tripping to Iowa to visit our relatives, so we invited my incredible guy along and promised that we would drop him off at my future in-laws house on our way to our relatives.  Who knew at the time that I would be meeting my future in-laws that trip! 

See that was part of the revelation during our first real conversation that got this relationship going, my now husband told me the name of little town in Iowa that he was from and I actually knew where it was because it is on the little highway that we take to visit our relatives who are in the far south east corner of the state.  In fact we had stopped there on a couple of our trips to eat at Hardees.  Now if you have ever met someone from Iowa, you ask them where they are from and they say some little town that no one has ever heard of, and that is the norm because Iowa has about a billion little towns.  So when someone actually knows the highway that bisects your little town, then they actually know something and are alright.  Now here we are over 8 years later with our perfect little family living our happily ever after!

Of course I have to qualify that trip as it was not all fairy tale, if you ask my Mother-in-law about our first meeting, she will laugh and tell you about how on that trip I had my first experience with ticks.  Oh yes, those little bugs of the devil!   When we were visiting my relatives we went out morel mushroom hunting.  Morel mushrooms are so incredibly, wonderfully flavored edible mushrooms that grow wild in the forests of the Midwest.  We went out tromping through the trees and found some mushrooms, so it was quite the experience, until that is, we got back to my Aunt's house and I went to shower.  I noticed a little black dot just in front of my right arm-pit, right in the bra line.  I yelled through the two-story farm house for my sister.  She came up and upon inspection we realized it was in fact a nasty tick.  We looked around and found a couple more on my ankles.  I must have stepped right through a nest of the little buggers.  So I thought we got them all accounted for and went on with the rest of our visit.  We left a couple days later and went to pick up Dustin and spent a night at his parents house.  That evening we were visiting and somehow I realized there was a lump on my ankle, I look and sure enough another tick!  I freaked out, come to find out I really hate ticks!!!  Dustin helped pick off a couple more ticks on my ankles, now there is romance for you!  They must have been too small to see when they latched on and after three days of gorging made their presence known.  As if this whole story wasn't the highlight of my life, when we had my bridal shower a year and a half later my Mother-in-law traveled from Iowa to Colorado to attend it, and one of the activities was to share a memory of a special time spent with me.  Does she share some sweet bonding memory, NO, she recounts how at our first meeting I was picking ticks in her living room!