My Fun Friend Laurie!

Laurie loves to go go go! She made a goal to visit all 50 states before she turned 50. She still has North Dakota and then 3 together of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. She threw out the idea of going some of her last states in mid-December. I couldn't make it happen and neither could any of my other breakfast besties. Her husband, Jeremy, took her to North Dakota at the beginning of January so now she only had 3 left. She asked if anyone could go the weekend of Nicole's funeral and I had to pass again. Plus, there was a major storm on the east coast that weekend that caused a lot of power outages. After the funeral, I was thinking about Laurie and said that I didn't have anything going on for the next 2 weeks and if she still wanted to try and get her last 3 states. She asked if I was joking and I said that if she needed a crazy friend to finish up those states, I was her gal! Turns out, she has 2 other crazy friends that could leave almost immediately. Kerry Dorius and Diane Kent. I've chaperoned with Kerry and been on some hikes with Diane and Laurie, so it was great! I got up at 3 a.m. and drove us down to Vegas and we flew to Birmingham, Alabama.

First stop: Lunch at Buc-ee's. That place is wild.

Then we went to the Birmingham Alabama Temple.

We went sightseeing around downtown.

Then we drove through the night to Louisiana. We stopped at a gas station and ate McDonald's. In order for the state to count, you have to eat there. We got to the hotel in Baton Rouge and crashed at 1 a.m. We were up and at 'em again at 7 a.m. to make it to the Baton Rouge Louisiana Temple. It's almost identical to Birmingham's Temple and also Nashville.

We drove to New Orleans to get beignets. Yummy deep fried dough! 

We walked around and saw some of the beautiful balconies that New Orleans is know for and ate lunch at the Red Slipper Cafe.

And that's all the time we have for today folks! We raced to the airport and got there an hour and 15 minutes before our flight. We ran to TSA and it was completely empty! We breezed through and had enough time to grab snacks before we boarded our flight home. We were gone less that 48 hours but we got it all done so now Laurie can cross her last 3 states off her list! Yay! Her 50th birthday is February 2nd. We were cutting it close!

It was a great trip! I drove the rental car some as well and everyone was super easy to travel with.