Road Rules 2

What a weekend! I spent about 48 hrs. trapped in a van with people I didn't really know that well and truly had a blast! The singles at my church created this competition modeled after MTV's Road Rules. My original weekend plans were to go to Lafayette, LA with my friend Claire for a Cajun festival thing. I couldn't get Friday off of work, so I figured Road Rules would be the next best thing.

Here's basically how it worked: You get split up into vans, find a clue, listen to the clue, figure out where you are headed, and drive.
The first van I was in was led by Andy. Here is a picture of some of my vanmates...
Laura, Nick and Greg. And for a fun, random fact-- they are all Aggies.

Lisa and me in the backseat. Look how happy she is to be next to me for several hours!!! ha
This is all of us in front of a random sign in who-knows-where, TX
For bonus points, we took a picture in front of the "Ghost Town Barber Shop"

We figured out that our destination was a town called Olney, TX. We arrived to a gymnasium there, had relays and played dodgeball. Our team was called "Team Unicorn". I'm not sure what started the "unicorn" thing, except that Greg was obsessed with them. I mean, obsessed. Since no one had a better idea for a theme, we just rolled with it. Greg even made a horn that we referred to as the "horn of hope". Weird.

After the games and all, we met in the fellowship hall and had a time of worship and footwashing. It was a neat time. Then it was off to bed in a Sunday school room. Here are a couple of my roommates for the night, Christy and Melissa.

The next morning started off with a delicious pancake breakfest presented by FBC-Olney. We then split up into groups for service projects. I chose to go to the Seven Oaks Nursing Home.
We painted the trim along one of the hallways there and got to talk to a few residents. Probably the funniest thing that happened was when Micah, Elizabeth and I heard music coming from one of the rooms. Typically, you might expect Tony Bennett, Sinatra, Dean Martin, etc. But instead, we heard Eminem. That's right. One of the residents was totally jamming out to perhaps the most innappropriate CD of all time. It was pretty funny, actually.
Micah made a new friend named Granny Tucker. She is 95 years old and tells a great story about how she got to hug Elvis once upon a time. We really had a great time at Seven Oaks and I enjoyed getting to serve them, even if it was just for a little while.

Micah, Elizabeth, Coley, and Rachel on the way to Seven Oaks
Micah and Granny Tucker
Some of the gang cleaning up after painting
After a wonderful lunch of taco salad, we broke off into our new vans. Coley was my 2nd driver. He is one of the most easy-going, optimistic people I have ever met. We knew each other from the running club but it was fun to hear his testimony during our many hours in the car. We left Olney and headed to Oklahoma.
Casie and me at the Welcome Center (please excuse the blinding white legs) We arrived at the Davis mountains for a time of team building and tug-of-war. Our team got completely dominated in tug-of-war and we were thoroughly embarrassed. Because we were all pretty small in stature, we decided that we were too fit to win tug-of-war. I like that theory:)

One of my favorite parts of the trip was taking a hike. It has been a couple of years since my last Colorado trip so it was great to get a little hiking in. It wasn't a 14ft-er, but it was beautiful once we reached the top.

That night we ate dinner, drove to a campsite, and had a big fire complete with S'mores. The next morning was a little outside church service. It was nice.

After church, we got into our 3rd group of new friends and drove to Arbuckle Wilderness. For those of you unfamiliar with this, it's one of those places where you feed the animals out of your vehicle. We saw lots of giraffes, a white tiger, bison, llamas, etc. After a quick lunch in the parking lot of PB&J, we snapped a group shot and headed home.
It was a great weekend and tons of fun. However, I hope to not be eligible for Road Rules 3 next year (: