From Iowa to Mexico
Thursday, May 2, 2013. We drove from Cedar Falls, Iowa to Chicago, Illinois. We ate at a delicious Chinese restaurant on the way, and I got to see the Mississippi River for the second (maybe third) time in my life! We went to a Bulls NBA playoff game in Chicago and then spent the night at a hotel.
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| Benny the Bull |
Friday, May 3, 2013. Ben and I woke up early and took a shuttle to the Chicago O’Hare airport. We spent 3.5 hours on the flight and finally landed in Cancun. Customs was a breeze (thank goodness!) and finding our shuttle to the resort was just as easy! After a short ride, with people that had probably been drinking since the flight to Cancun, we got to our resort! If anyone is looking to vacation in Cancun, I would highly recommend the Valentin Imperial Maya. It is everything you would want from a resort, seriously such a treat. We checked in at the Main Lobby and were surprised when they told us that our room had been upgraded for free! The room was beautiful and cutely decorated since we were on a belated Honeymoon trip. Here are a few pictures of our day!
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Monday, May 6, 2013. We went to Chichen Itza! Ben had gone before, but I had never been so we decided it was a must do. We took a bus ride to an old church, another bus ride to a Mayan village where we had lunch and could swim in a sink hole, and then another bus ride to Chichen Itza. It made for a long day, but Chichen Itza was a great experience! I took tons of pictures, so I will try and limit the ones that I post. We picked up a couple souvenirs here and I, of course, managed to drop and break the one I picked out that same night (luckily it is fixable)!
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| Ben and a native at the village. |
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| An old Catholic Church we stopped at. |
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| Us at the sink hole in the Mayan village |
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| Chichen Itza |
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| Chichen Itza |
Tuesday, May 7, 2013. Our room had a king sized bed which was ah-mazing! We got to sleep in and take it easy after a long day on Monday. After sleeping in and eating breakfast, we spent the day on the beach. That is very literally all we did. We stayed on the beach alllllll day and had the resort employees bring us drinks. So nice! Ben enjoyed the Non-Alcoholic, Strawberry Daiquiris with bananas, but I stuck with Cranberry juice or Diet Coke. I couldn’t take all that sugar in the fruity drinks!
Wednesday,
May 8, 2013. We went on our second tour/trip to a place called “Indiana
Joe’s Aktun Chen, Natural Park”. This
trip consisted of zip-lines an underground walk, and swimming/snorkeling in a
cenote. National Geographic rated it Top
10 Underground Walks, on a scale from 1-10 (worst to best) we would have rated
the overall experience as a 3.5. We were
both starting to calculate how much a taxi would cost to take us home
early. We did get to snorkel in a cenote
at the end, which was the best part of the experience. After we got home we headed straight to the
beach and laughed that we ever decided to leave our all-inclusive resort.
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| Cutest little monkey! |
Thursday,
May 9, 2013. This
was our last day here so we woke up early and headed down to the beach. We were in the warm water by about 8:30 and
enjoying the waves. It was tons of fun! Ben even said “I wanted a wife that would
play in the waves with me,” which I’m sure he never actually cared about
because we didn’t talk about it before we got married, but we seriously loved
playing in the water. We spent most of
the day there and then went back to the room around 3 to take a nap before
dinner. We packed up our bags and spent
the rest of the night watching Harry Potter 7 Part 2 on tv.
Friday,
May 10, 2013. Our
shuttle came to pick us up at 10:45am and we headed to the airport. Everything went smoothly and we were on our
plane back to Chicago, Illinois. After
starting a movie and eating a snack, I quickly fell asleep and soon enough we
landed. It was such a great trip and we
talked about how we would definitely go back to Valentin Imperial Maya. We are happy to be back and are slipping into
our old routines of cell phone using, ESPN watching, blogging ways.
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| View from the airplane |
From
Here On Out. We move into our apartment
on Saturday, May 11, 2013 and Ben starts his job on Monday, May 13, 2013. I don’t have a job yet, which makes me a
little sad because I wont have anything to do.
Luckily our apartment complex has a pool or I can just drive a couple
hours and hang out with Ben’s parents while he is working…or I can job hunt. We
will be here for 13 weeks or until Ben has 500 hours of work done, and then we
will be headed back to Provo from August – December. Lots of travelling and adventures for us!
Until next trip!
Hope you enjoyed reading about our trip!
Kristen
From Utah to Iowa
After many hours of packing and cleaning we were finally ready to move. On Saturday we left Provo, Utah at 7:00am and headed to Iowa. We drove for 13 hours on Friday and stayed the night in York, Nebraska. On Sunday, we left York and drove 5.5 hours to Ben's parents' home in Iowa. So you might be thinking "this isn't very detailed" or "that's all you have to say about it?" and my answer is YES. If you have ever driven through these states you would know that there is nothing to say about them. Ben and I took separate cars so I spent the hours singing very loudly, listening to old Old OLD CDs, and every so often I would let out a loud groan because I was so bored. I took quite a few pictures while I was driving and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. Slightly dangerous! Ben was a great help and called me whenever he thought a good picture opportunity was coming up. So supportive in my endeavors ;) My favorite part of the drive was seeing the Army vehicles in the middle of nowhere Nebraska. I tried taking pictures, but by that point I had so many dead bugs on my windshield that the pictures didn't come out well. Here are some of the pictures that I took while driving through Utah, Wyoming, and Nebraska. For the record, my photography skills are not that awful, Nebraska and Wyoming are just not very pretty. Also, I didn't get any of Iowa :(. I'll post some later!
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| Utah |
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| Utah |
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| Wyoming |
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| Wyoming |
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| Nebraska |
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| Nebraska |
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| I have 70 CDs in my car! So many oldies but goodies! |
April 19, 2013
In two weeks from today, Ben and I will be on a flight from Chicago, IL to Cancun, Mexico. As a wedding present, Ben's parents are sending us to an all inclusive resort on the beach. I am more than excited. I look at the resort's website at least once a day and imagine how wonderful it will be to wake up to a view of the ocean. Even though I grew up in CA, we didn't go to the beach as often as one might expect, but living in UT for the past 4 years has created a nostalgia for the beach that I didn't expect. I will be sure to post about our vacation and about our drive from UT to IL (8 days away!) once they occur, but until then feel free to check out the where we are staying in Cancun by clicking here.
Here is a sneak peek of the resort in case you weren't sure if you really wanted to check out the website ;)
April 18, 2013
We haven't travelled very many places in our 8 months of marriage, but I will share pictures from our first honeymoon and in 3 weeks when we are back from our "real/second" honeymoon, I will post the exciting pictures from that adventure!
Before Ben and I were married, Ben was living in Arkansas for an internship and I was living in California with my parents while working. Two days before we were married, Ben left his car and all his things in Arkansas and flew to California. The day after we were married, we flew to Oklahoma and drove that night to Arkansas where we stayed at Ben's apartment. After spending a day (maybe two, it's a blur at this point) in Arkansas we made our way through Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and finally to Utah where we would be going to school. As you can imagine, this was not the experience we were expecting after being married for 1 day, but we look back on that trip in amazement at how well we handled being in the car for hours on end. Just in case you are like me and aren't too sure where some of those states are, here is a little map of our journey.
Yay!! I loved the details of your Mexico trip. You really can't beat 3.5 hours to a warm water paradise. Glad you guys had such a good time! (take us with you next time ;)
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