Hello From Fort Collins

Well we made it!  We have decided on Fort Collins as a place to settle in and use as our HQ while we explore Colorado and the west a little more.

We arrived in Colorado on the 12th of August and set up shop in a hotel for a week.  The trip was long and took us four days.

We headed south and hit Lexington so that we could visit with Lori.

From there we went to Saint Louis and then to Salina (just outside of Topeka) Kansas, and from Salina into Boulder.

Once past Topeka, Kansas gets super boring.  And even the first part of Colorado is super boring.  Then you hit Denver and you start to see the mountains off in the distance.  That’s when you know you’re in the right spot!

The saving grace of going that way is that the speed limit is 75.

Surprisingly you will find radio stations to listen to that are not all spiritual or country in nature.  This becomes very helpful during the flat uninteresting travel!

I don’t do hotel reviews but I will give a shoutout to where we stayed because it was amazing.

We were at the Hyatt House Broomfield/Boulder and it was a fantastic hotel.  The rooms are suits with a kitchenette and living area along with a bedroom.  The kitchen is full size and comparable to what you would find in a small apartment.

Everything was clean and the beds were comfy.  They offered breakfast in the mornings and in the evenings they offered snacks, appetizers (that could be a meal), and drinks.  The evening social was from M-Th and they had free Fat Tire on tap!  All of this was included in the hotel stay!  I don’t want to make this into a review post so I’ll end there.  If you have questions about it though, email me and I’ll share.

During that week Scott and I drove all over looking at different areas and looking at rental houses.  We ended up being really disappointed in what we saw.  I was also getting really frustrated because contacts for rentals that we wanted to see were not calling me back.

Scott said that we should still keep Fort Collins in mind as a possibility and we took a spontaneous trip up to visit.  We loved what we saw as we drove around.  At that point we said we would give the Boulder area another go but then we were going to look at rentals in Fort Collins as well.

Boulder rentals were a bust!

Friday we drove back up to Fort Collins to look at several rental homes.  We picked one and by Sunday we were able to move in!

So we’re here and calling Fort Collins home!

I’ll have a few posts coming up on the places that we ate while we traveled around, so look for those soon!

We Be Leaving

Scott and I officially start our journey towards Colorado tomorrow afternoon.

We’ll be on the road for several days and then once we get to Colorado we are going to start looking for housing.

I have some guest posts lined up for your enjoyment covering a variety of topics, including beer (hooray!)!

I would love to say that I’m going to update along the way but whenever I try to make plans like that they never work out how I expect.

So I’m just going to say for now, I will try to update while we’re on the road but there are no guarentees!

There will be a few ways you can stay updated during our travels.

Twitter:

Follow me at FoodEmbrace or you can follow the hashtag #OH2CO

Instagram:

FoodEmbrace (just do a search and you should find me) where you can see pics of our travels and most likely most of our eats along the way.

The trip is going to be long and the goal is to drive at least 8 hours each day.  The plan is to arrive in Colorado by the weekend but we’ll see how that goes.  Both of us get tired of being in the car after awhile so while some of the trip is “planned”, we are also just going to go with the flow.  We’ll get there at some point.

So we’re off and I’ll update when I can.  See you in the west!

Cue Holy Shit Mode in 3, 2, 1

So since last we spoke, uh, yesterday, our situation has drastically changed.  What I didn’t tell you yesterday is that we were already in negoitations with a potential buyer.

Again, going back to my fear of jinxing things, I didn’t want to say anything too quickly for fear it would fall through.

I suppose that technically is still the case but I highly doubt it at this point.

We came to an agreement with those buyers and we have sold our house and are officially under contract.  The kicker is that we have to be out of the house in two weeks.  We close on July 31st.

Scott and I are pretty much in holy shit mode right now.  Our convo last night went a little something like this:

Me: Hey, do you want wine to celebrate tonight or something stronger?

Him: STRONGER.

Me: Well okay then.

Thankfully for us we’ve already packed up the majority of our belongings so there’s little packing left to do.  What’s left though are odd things like garage stuff. Fun.

Due to the timing of it all we will be displaced and staying in a hotel downtown for about a week.  If you have any suggestions for a place to stay that also has suites so we have a mini kitchen, I would love to hear them! We want to be at least within walking distance of some restaurants and stuff to do.

Shanna is our realtor and has been completely awesome to work with.  She gets her stuff done.  If you need a realtor for the Columbus area you should definitely contact her because she will get your house sold.  She sold ours in a day (no really a day) so yeah, she makes it happen.

Mountain Dreaming

Way back when, I posted about Scott and I taking a much needed vacation.

We were going to travel to Boulder and hang out for a few weeks.

I wasn’t completely honest with you in that post.  It is true that we were going to go on vacation, yes.  But that wasn’t all.

Our trip to Colorado was also going to be a scouting mission to find a new place to live.

Scott and I are moving to Colorado.

We ended up not going on vacation this year and decided to save that money for the big move.

It wasn’t a matter of “do we want to move to Colorado” because the decision is made. We are moving to Colorado.  More specifically we are looking for someplace between the Denver and Boulder area.

Since that was the case, for us it made more sense to just move verses driving out, staying, driving back, and then putting the house up for sale.

Also I’ll be honest, once we got out there I know we wouldn’t have wanted to drive back to Ohio.  That would have been a long and sad drive back!

So all the cryptic messages I’ve been posting about doing house work and big projects and so on, that was us updating the house to get it ready to put up for sale. It was a lot of work but we reached that goal!  Now we just have to sell the house.

Sorry for being cryptic, I tend to get nervous that I’m going to jinx things if I talk about it too early. That’s the only reason I kept this on the down-low for so long. Only a few people knew and that’s how I wanted it to be.

And I’m going to address this now before anyone asks about it.

Sadly, Rocky will not be making the trip with us.  He unexpectedly passed away in May. I didn’t say anything because it’s a hard thing to go through and Scott and I wanted to grieve and deal with this privately. He was our baby and we miss him very much.  Please, I ask you, let’s not focus on the past but instead look towards the future and to new adventures.

This will be the biggest move that Scott and I have ever made and I would love to hear your feedback!

If you’ve got tips for traveling long distance please share!

If you’ve moved a big distance before I would love any advice you have.

If you have a recommendation for movers, I want to hear it!

If you have any connections in Colorado, please send them my way!