Alex's 1st Sandhills Adventure: The Road Trip

320 miles and 6 hours in the car, longer than any trip we have taken before. Many miles can go by without seeing a car.  The views are spectacular, there is nothing like getting to the top of a hill and being able to see the hills roll for miles.

Both of the puppies have come to love car rides, even though much of what they do is sleep. They have managed to figure out the whole "head out of the window" thing, and now like doing that when going through small towns.

They were pretty tired after all the excitement

This was Alex's first time driving out to the Valentine area. I've made the trek a few times to visit the ranch I work for, but this time he got to go. It was definitely nice to not be driving the whole way by myself! There isn't any cell reception on many of the roads there, so the company was welcome.

The roads are scenic most of the time and we were able to capture a number of impressive landscapes while on the road. The clouds, cows, hills, and curves were very intriguing. Check out a few more of our favorites below.

This is the first blog post in the "Alex's 1st Sandhills Adventure" series. Please stay tuned for the rest of the series:

• Ranch Life
• Circle C Rodeo
• Geocaching the Sandhills
• The Cowboy Trail
• Smith Falls State Park

Story City Antique Carousel and Swinging Bridge

Me (Mak) and Alex on our noble steeds

The Swinging Bridge

Navigating the rocks

Water fight!

We went. We rode. We conquered.

(Another old draft from August 2012. One afternoon we hit a few of the highlights of Story City, IA. The old carousel is really neat and is next to a beautiful little park and across the road is another park with the swinging bridge. The bridge is definitely worth seeing! I know of at least one proposal that happened there and it is also home to our "first-look" and other wedding pictures. It is a beautiful place just to chill, but you can also fish off the bank or push your kayaks in here.)

Fast Food Picnic

Get your favorite food from different restaurants. Mix and match. We recommend less food.

(Again another draft from when we're dating and not even engaged yet. One time for our adventure we thought is would be fun to grab our favorite fast food items from their respective places and eat it picnic style. I think we ended up with McDoubles, Arby's curly fries, and mozzarella sticks. In largest too! We had entirely too much food and even though we picnicked outside right by the theater we were seeing a movie at after, we didn't feel like moving. It was fun and our metabolism must have been better in our younger days. Also, with me growing up in a rural area and Alex never eating out, fast food was much more exiting then than it is now).

Parade

We totally rode in a parade.

(This was an old post I found in our drafts. It made me laugh, this is County Fair July 2012. Zeke's first parade and Alex's as well. Duke, ridden by Alex, is a pro and I rode him in 4-H. The parade went well and was a good experience for all. In our ride back home through town we saw a hillbilly portable pool aka a truck bed lined with a tarp and filled with water. Kudos to Diane who totally ran after us to get this picture and it is impressive since the usually slow Duke was ready to go in order to avoid the Duke-eating street sweeper.)