One of the main reasons I (Shannon) find Costa Rica so appealing is the nice hot temperatures year-round. I say all the time that I was born in the wrong state. While I love Colorado – the beauty, the cities, the beer scene – I HATE the cold. I don’t like snow, I definitely don’t participate in snow sports, and I despise temps below 60. So it was almost hilarious that – in MAY – it was snowing as we left Colorado for good.
We pulled out for day one of our drive at a little after 5 am. We had packed Chivo (the Jeep) the night before and were ready for our only super-long drive. We decided to go 14 hours all the way down to Nogales, AZ. We’ve made many 12-hour drives to visit Nikk’s family in Iowa, so 14 hours was not out of the question. With Bosco on my lap, we set out and waved goodbye.
A few hours later, we crossed from Colorado to New Mexico. As long as Nikk and I have been traveling via car together, we have always honked the car horn as we crossed a state line. This honk was hard. This beautiful state has been our home for many years. It is where we met. It is where Nikk’s son was born. It is a state we love. We both teared up a little knowing that it would be a while before we came back, and that the next time would only be to visit. I have been thinking about change a lot lately (hard not to with this move on my mind all the time!), and the notion I keep coming back to is that good change doesn’t come without hard change. A new beginning often means the end of something else. Nothing was more evident as we honked out of Colorado for the last time.
As the title of this blog suggests, we love to eat. Recently Nikk and I made the choice to go pescatarian (vegetarian but still eating fish). The choice for us was in part to be healthier and prepare ourselves to live in a country where seafood was abundant, but equally important was that the choice would lessen our impact on climate change. It has been an easy transition and we’ve enjoyed being creative with our cooking and dining choices. However, being pescatarian on the road proved to be challenging right away. Fast food choices are limited to say the least, and sitting down to a long meal with a dog in the car is out of the question. For lunch on day one we went for the old standby – McDonalds fish sandwiches. This is definitely not something we want to do throughout the trip! Hopefully fish tacos and other seafood choices are as abundant as we assume they will be along the coast of Mexico, and we’ll definitely be sharing more of the “eat” part of the blog!
The snow continued off and on – sometimes stopping all-together, sometimes switching over to rain – until just north of Albuquerque. The further south we went, the warmer the temps got, and eventually the sun was out and shining. We loved seeing vegetation that was new to us, mountains of all sizes, and all of the other natural beauty that New Mexico holds. Arizona offered much of the same and before we knew it, we were pulling into Nogales. The hours had flown by!
As we stepped out of the car to go into our first hotel room, it was comfortably in the 70’s. What a difference a day and a few hundred (921 to be exact) miles can make! We spent part of our evening sitting at a patio table by the pool while we celebrated the end of our longest day with a few Tacates and a veggie pizza from the onsite restaurant. All three of us were happy to be out of the car and away from the snow. Day one of this adventure was in the books!
Day One Stats:
- Drive time: 14.5 hours
- Miles Covered: 921
- Locations: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona
- Our Favorite Part: Getting out of the snow!
