Home sweet home, almost

Well. Here we are.

The drive was remarkably nice, much better than we were expecting. There was a brief snowstorm at the beginning, despite our best efforts to avoid all snow. The weather said snow SHOWERS, and that's what we were expecting. But then there we were, at the top of a mountain in West Virginia, and the interstate was covered with snow. There was nothing to do but follow the tracks of the cars in front of us and hope that we weren't about to drive off the side of the road. The sight of two other cars in the ditch was not comforting. But Torsten was driving, and he's good in snow, and we made it without a problem.


After that small blip, the weather was clear and nice. Torsten and I shared the driving pretty equally, and didn't push ourselves too hard, and we made it 1700 miles in a total of about 27 hours, or two and a half days, with one night spent in Indiana and the other in Kansas. Driving in the midwest is so nice and stress-free: big, wide, straight roads and no traffic. And we actually liked the landscape in Kansas and were not bored at all. Behold:


I'd love to drive through there in the summer when everything is green, although the brown and orange shades we saw were intriguing in their own way. But before that, there are lots of other states near Colorado that we want to explore: Wyoming and Utah and Arizona and New Mexico. And we'd like to head up to South Dakota, too. It's nice to be located within road trip distance of so many interesting places. Torsten, especially, likes driving:


We arrived in Denver at around 3:30 yesterday afternoon, and found a hotel in a nice neighborhood for a good price. We're checked in for two days for now and will probably extend that based on how the housing search goes. We looked at two places yesterday--an ugly, overpriced apartment with a really crappy kitchen, and a really nice house that is definitely a contender. And we have six more appointments today, so hopefully we'll find something soon, and definitely this week.

It's still hard to believe that we're here. The mountains are beautiful, and once I find our mini USB cable I will upload the photos we took with our camera once we got smart enough to dig it out (all the photos here were taken with my BlackBerry). The weather was perfect when we arrived--sunny and clear and about 60 degrees, and we drove around with our windows down. We checked out a couple neighborhoods and went downtown to a brewery for dinner.

I'm still adjusting to the idea that this is where we live now, this is our home and it will really be our children's home. From what I've seen so far, I like it here. I can't wait to explore the whole town and the surrounding area. It'll be nice to have a place to live, an address and some furniture. And a dog. We might have one within a week! How awesome would THAT be?