Adventures of Otto and Eddie

IDAHO?? WHY IDAHO? This is the expression I received from many in North Carolina when I told them I would be moving with my husband to Idaho. In all honesty, I am moving BACK to Idaho. I am from North Carolina and I believe my heart will always be there but I went to college at Brigham Young University-Idaho where I graduated from there in 2011. Believe me, when I left, I never thought I'd be returning. My husband incidentally is going to the same school and he's never been to Idaho in his life. To answer the "why Idaho" question; we are Mormon (LDS, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints)...and this school is a predominately LDS population- but anyone can attend. Although, this actually wasn't the main reason we chose this school- it had the right price and a stupendous program for accounting. 

So we packed up our two cars Eddie the Subaru Forester and Otto the Honda Pilot and took as much stuff as we could. We drove separately- I listened to a lot of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and made phone calls to many friends. We did 10-12 hour days in the car.

Day 1:

North Carolina at 5AM

Watch the progression as we get out of the south the trees get more and more scarce.

Tennessee heading into the mountains.

Kentucky

Missouri

We stopped in St. Louis the first night and stayed in a "roach motel" according to Trevor. All we needed was a bed. 

Day 2:

Kansas before we get to the straight nothingness part for over 500 miles.

Colorado before we stopped for the night.

The next day we stopped in Colorado and stayed with Trevor's great Aunt. It was a much more comfortable stay and we slept really well- especially after a ride on a Harley. (Thanks Brad). I won't post pictures...we just look silly in our helmet and such.

Day 3:

 Colorado- that one time we were driving through a canyon.

More Colorado.

Wyoming. Many many mountains but not safe enough to get more pictures.

Of course by the time I got to Idaho I was beyond exhausted and ready to get out of the car, therefore no pictures of the Idaho terrain. Plus, we went over this huge mountain with a 10% grade and I'm afraid of heights. So my nerves were shot, my hands sweaty, and my mind frazzled. I told Trevor I'm never going that way again. So, no pictures. 

But we arrived in Rexburg around 4:oo pm. We live in a duplex; a DIY duplex. It was a house that had once been a split level home. They blocked off the stairs on both sides and added a door for the second entrance. We live in 221 B. (Sherlock fans anyone?) 

The house is spacious with a huge master bedroom (it could be a living room but we do what we want!), two hallway closets (one with the stairs in them...literally), a bathroom with Washer/Dryer hookups, an open concept kitchen, and another small room with no windows but a big storage closet (that's the room we will put our TV in once we get a stand. No windows, no glare. Truly a "cave" if you will. I refuse to call it "man cave" because let's face it- I use it too and I have do say as to what we put in there. Back to the post...). 

After we got here it was a blur! We unpacked the car, had my friend come and help when we didn't really need it- #awkward- because it only took us thirty minutes to unpack it all. We really did take a lot of stuff in just two cars. To celebrate and before we could realize we probably shouldn't spend any more money- we went to Cafe Rio! Soooo satisfying. Then we went to Super Walmart, which was new for me because they always had just a regular Walmart when I attended school here. We got a small amount of furnishings to make life easier and a couple things for our fridge so we could have breakfast.

We have these mats for camping that we can blow up (this is in now way a mattress), so we basically slept on the floor. At one point I actually did sleep on the floor because the air pad was just not doing it. There was a mixture of things that happened to wake us up-

1. we were slightly jet lagged even though we drove here, our bodies were still two hours ahead of Idaho so we went to sleep early and woke up early
2. We are literally surrounded by farms, livestock, and nothingness. We heard the rooster crow at 5:30 in the morning. Then another one joined in shortly after but that one must have been choked at some point because it sounded awful. In direct competition with the first rooster whom I'll call Chantecler this second one lost soundly. I'm just saying- we aren't used to the country life yet but we will get there.
3. By this time in the morning sleeping on the air pad/floor was not cutting it and I couldn't take it anymore.

In any case I was awake by 5:45. I turned to Trevor and said, "We should go down to Utah right now and go to IKEA!" He liked the idea but we did some calculations and we decided to hold off on furniture at this point. Instead we went to WinCo and got a ton of groceries. I turned Trevor into a Winco believer. (Think Adli on steroids.) 

We put away our food and headed out AGAIN. We got ourselves a mattress at Rexburg Mattress Outlet. It is SO comfortable...even now after sleeping on it for a a couple nights I have nothing but love for my new mattress. The cost for them to deliver it to us was ridiculous so we stuffed that baby into the trunk of Otto. 

We finally came home and unpacked and put things away as much as possible. We also looked for a washer and dryer with no luck. We will wash our clothes at a friends house for the time being and then continue our search. 

Otto and Eddie did a great job on the trip, no car troubles, for which I thank my Father in Heaven. We are looking forward to our new adventure but we realize it's going to be very different from our life back in North Carolina. We will make this home.

Passionately,

Arica Baker