The Schullo’s Personal Blog

Scott and I have finally found a permanent home and moved the items we had in the trailer into the new condo. Our new place is a first floor condo on the east side of Madison, what they call “Near East”. You can take a look at our new place if you want. Now, we just need our stuff to arrive from Alaska and the furniture we ordered to get in. Right now we are sleeping on a mattress on the floor and using the dining room table from the trailer for seating and eating.

Scott got the job at Madison Gas and Electric. He starts on the 5th. This is just one more sign that we have made a good decision. He also already found a place to play hockey. Things are coming together very smoothly.

As for my health, I have seen doctors here in Madison and have scheduled surgery. I will have what they say will be outpatient surgery on the 8th. My parents are coming up to help out so Scott does not need to take time off of his new job. I warned them they will need to bring their own bed as the ones we shipped might not be here by then, but they have an inflatable bed, so they are set.

Last weekend, we went to a Badgers Football game and a Badgers Hockey game both on Saturday. We had a really good time, but did an awful lot of walking. We decided that two games in the same day is probably not a good idea. On Sunday, we ventured out to enjoy the colors in my new car (oh yeah, I forgot to say Scott bought me a new Jeep Liberty!) and do some driving. At the time we were still in the trailer, so we needed to get away . Anyway, we took some good pictures of the Wisconsin countryside and the beautiful fall colors. Then we visited the House on the Rock, a tourist attraction of sort in Spring Green Wisconsin. I am uploading all the pictures we have taken since leaving Alaska into the gallery tonight. So, take a look if you are curious.

Now that I finally have wheels of my own, I am riding the bus to work, go figure! The university provides a free buss pass, but parking is really expensive. Since the buss stops right in front of our condo building and again half a block from my office. The closest I would be able to park is 6 blocks and it would cost me $1050 until next August. It is rather a no brainer.

Well, gottta get some things done, so we will write more later. We miss you all from East to West and North to South - S&S

We have been on the road now for 8 days. Today we will head from Fargo (Moorehead) to somewhere outside of ST. Paul MN. We hope to reach Wisconsin. We left Fargo after breakfast/lunch at about 1:00 pm. We drove on 94 East until we hit the 694 bypass around the twin cities. It was just starting to be rush hour, so it took us a few minutes, but we passed the cities in four hours. Just outside of St. Paul is the Wisconsin border, so we are now in Wisconsin! Woo Hoo! We drove for a bit longer and decided to stop in Eau Claire. Here we found a Red Lobster and a comfortable hotel with a good internet connection. After dinner, we took long hot showers and I used the time before I dropped to catch up on the blog, email and touch base with my students. We also talked to our realtor in Alaska today. She had an open house on Sunday and thinks that she might be getting a couple of offers in the next day or so. Scott also talked with HR at the gas company. He has an all day interview of sorts on Friday. They plan to take him out into the field and introduce him to everyone. It looks promising. We will keep you posted. Now, it is now almost 11 pm and I think our story is up to date. I hope you all enjoy the trip so far. We have! Today we drove 315 miles with a total of 3,415 miles. Tomorrow our trip will be complete. We should arrive in Madison before noon tomorrow as we have about 200 miles left to go. Good night all!

S&S

Today we plan to get to Fargo to help celebrate the turning of a half century with Scott’s little sister . We left Glendive at 8:15 am. It was a fairly uneventful day as the road from Glendive to Fargo is all interstate with a speed limit of 75 mph. We did have one small scare as we were fueling up at a truck stop. Scott had finished filling our tanks and was putting some trash in a bin near the next set of pumps over. He had to wait for a semi truck to come through the space between our pump and the one he was at. The first truck swung real wide and came through with no problems. Another truck followed the first one. Scott could see that this truck was not going to make the turn without hitting the pump island. He figured that the driver would stop. When it was evident that he did not plan to, Scott ran the other direction. I was sitting in the truck waiting with Scott’s door open. I hear a very loud bang and then saw that the semi had taken out the diesel pump. It was spewing fuel. Luckily, they shut the pump off right away and it did not explode. Needless to say, Scott got back in the truck and we left fairly quickly before any other mishaps could delay us. I am not sure what might have happened if that pump had contained regular gas. I think the only reason it did not blow up was that it was a diesel pump. Anyway, we left the town of Jamestown ND behind in a hurry and continued on to meet up with family. We set up camp in Moorehead which is just over the Minnesota state line and about 5 minutes from Scott’s sister’s. Our plans were to take the family to dinner and celebrate. Of course, Scott could not resist the chance to embarrass his sister and harass his nieces. We enjoyed the evening, but had to call it an early night as I was fading quickly. Our plans were to meet up with whoever was game for a late breakfast and then continue on our way. Today we traveled 423 miles, making our total 3,100 miles. More later…

S&S

Today we slept a bit late and took showers at the campground. We started our travel day at around 9:45 am. Our plan was to get to Glendive MT on the border before too late and setup camp again. The road was good, but narrow. We saw the most cows that I think I have ever seen. Mixed in with the cows, eating right along side them were groups of deer. They were not in captivity, because they bounded over the fences and crossed the roads. We had to watch carefully. We also saw a farm of buffalo and a camel or two in this state. Next, came the many hunters. It is hunting season of course. Where there were deer and antelope, there were hunters. The hunters camped just off the road and were out in the ranches hunting. I think that we have decided Montana is not really our thing. The mountainous areas were pretty, but the large expanses of open area were not that interesting. I think this would be a place to live if you were worried that your enemies might try to sneak up on you. You could see them coming for many miles. Our day ended in Glendive at a nice campground at about 5:00 pm. Today we drove only 348 miles. Our total for the trip is now 2,677 miles. More to come if you are still interested…

S&S

We left LeBlanc this morning around 9 am, knowing we would make it across the border into Montana today. The roads are good today and we make great time. Sometime mid day we crossed the border just out side of a small town in Montana called St. Marys. After hunting down someone to sell us some fuel, we headed off over the mountains. They had snow a few days before we got there, but overall the roads were clear. The road we took had some awesome views, but it was too narrow to allow for stopping to take pictures. Montana has a great number of deer that are near the roads. We had to take care that none ran out in front of us. Over all it was a very enjoyable day.

We stopped for the night in Great Falls MT, where we tried to get a hotel room. Seems that they were all full up and the only suggest that the woman at our first stop offered was to move on to Helena. Since that was not in our travel plans, we decided to get dinner and look for the local campground. Our waitress at Tony Roma’s found someone to give us great directions and we found it with no problems. We used the late check-in approach and were settled in by about 7:30 pm. Today we traveled 487 miles, making our current total 2,329 miles.

S&S