This has taken me forever to write for a multitude of reasons...laziness, adjusting, moving, sleeping, grumpy kids, sickness, and playing at the beach...Either way...here it is! Better late than never!
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So we have finally completed our little adventure! Only to
begin another one, here in beautiful Hawaii!
We began this little adventure of ours in North Carolina.
From North Carolina, we drove all the way to Sacramento, California. John and I
decided to leave the night before our original departure day. We loaded up the
trailer, the car, and the girls and we were on our way! When it started getting
late, I crawled into the back seat next to the girls and lay down to sleep. We
loaded everything into the trailer so the trunk was completely open and most of
the seats were folded down. I was able to lay down and stretch out without a
problem!
John was a champion and drove all night long. He woke me up
at about 6am so he could get some rest. He had driven all the way to Nashville,
TN. Originally, we were going to stay and spend a day touring Nashville, but,
when we arrive, we took a look around and decided to press forward to St Louis,
MO. I picked up the driving while John rested his head. I’m not too sure he slept,
but he got to close his eyes for a bit.
We arrived in St Louis and spent the rest of the day at the
Magic House, a children’s discovery museum. This is by far the best children’s
museum I have ever stepped foot in. The girls had way too much fun…and,
honestly, we did too! This is a MUST if you are going to St Louis with kids.
That night was the first of many awesome dinner selections (by yours truly). We
went into the city and ate at a little dive restaurant called Sauce on the
Side. It was decorated with the classic
chalkboard feel, which I loved. It turned out to be delicious. Freshly
made-to-order Calzones! Also a MUST if traveling through the area.
The next morning we packed up and headed out. On the way out we made a quick last minute
decision to stop by the Gateway Arch. Now, obviously, if you are going to St
Louis, you have to stop at this. But, as it was, both John and I had already
been there and stopped at it. But, in the end, we decided that we wanted to go
see it with each other and create that memory with us as a family. This turned
out to be a really good idea and also a really COLD idea. St Louis was by far
the coldest place we visited on our trip. We parked the car and trailer and
jumped out to load the girls into the stroller. It was 27 degrees out and none
of us were prepared for cold weather. So, we sprinted down to the Gateway Arch,
snapped a couple family photos, and headed back to the car! Let’s put a CHECK
in that box!
From St Louis, we headed to Kansas City to meet up with HS
friend of mine, Danyle, and her husband and son. I picked out another restaurant called
Fiorella’s Jack Stack BBQ. It had some pretty good reviews, but driving through
the city area to get to it, you wouldn’t have guessed. As we wandered around
the city trying to find it, John looks at me suspiciously, thinking I had
picked a restaurant in the ghetto! I think that just may be from neither of us
being used to the city. Either way, we arrived at Steak House, and, to our
surprise, the place was gorgeous! It was huge inside and decorated beautifully
with large cathedral ceilings. It had an upscale log cabin feel to it. It
turned out to be a bit on the expensive side. But, it was delicious, and so
worth it! Especially the time we got to spend with Danyle and her little
family! We spent that night at their house and headed out the next morning to
Colorado Springs.
Let’s just say that I don’t think I will ever elect to drive
through Kansas again, if given the choice. It was awful. A whole lot of
nothing! It was flat and brown and really windy. Thankfully, John being the
amazing man he was, battled the back and forth of the trailer the whole way. I
picked out a couple sights along the way which turned out to be complete busts.
The first was to see the world’s largest gopher. I think it was supposed to be
a wood carving. We got to the location and John so wonderfully pointed out,
“This looks like a trailer park that was hit by a tornado.” Honestly, it
probably was. The next was a litte café in some obscure town along Hwy 70. The
town was quiet and desolate. We arrived
at the café, and sure enough, it was boarded up and closed, its sign blowing
furiously in the wind. It was a bit creepy, kind of like a scene in a horror
flick right before the serial killer pops out. We resorted to eating at a truck
stop that happened to have Quiznos. I, personally, really like Quiznos;
however, this was the worst Quiznos I had ever been to. The lady helping me
literally sighed and rolled her eyes as I ordered my simple Caesar wrap. She
reluctantly reached for each ingredient and ended up piling the wrap so high
that she didn’t even bother wrapping it up. And it was disgusting. John gently reminded me that we weren’t
allowed to have a bad experience on the trip as I stared regrettably at my meal
that I didn’t end up eating. Well, there goes $18.
We continued on through Kansas until we noticed a bunch of
flashing lights ahead of us. They closed the freeway! John pulled off angrily because,
of course, we didn’t plan on staying in some random town in Kansas. It turns
out that they closed the freeway due to high winds upwards of 70mph. That
didn’t stop John; he wandered around some back roads (which led to us seeing
the world’s largest easel…sweet!) Eventually,
he found an exit back onto 70. He drove, battling the high winds, for quite
some time. It was another creepy scene since we were literally the ONLY people
on the freeway. We got low on gas and exited to fill up. As we pulled off, we
saw a line of cops blocking the entrance back onto the freeway. Damn it. If
only we didn’t need gas. We thought for sure we would be stuck, again, but
thankfully the cops left shortly after we arrived. The freeway had opened back
up!
I can’t remember how much longer it was before we got to
Colorado Springs, but it was early enough to grab some dinner! I picked out a
place called Shuga’s. It turned out to be kind of a bar since it was so late.
So it was a little odd having the babies there. But the food was outstanding! We got up the next and went to the Garden of
the Gods. It was so gorgeous! I spend a lot of time standing up through the
sunroof taking photos. I wanted to capture everything! But, honestly,
eventually all my pictures looked the same. A bunch of rocks. And they didn’t
do the actual landscape any justice. It was an amazing natural wonder, though.
A must. The we went to a tattoo parlor called Pens and Needles where John had
his wedding ring tattooed on in the form of a Celtic cross (fitting since
John’s heritage is Scottish). It turned out really nice and he is so glad to
not have the ring on anymore. It is always bothering him at work, driving, and
whenever the weather changes and his fingers swell or get smaller. Anyway, I
wear it now, around my thumb!
We were going to try and see more in the area, but we
decided to press on to our next stop, Cortez, CO! A very obscure little town,
but it got us close enough to go see Four Corners Monument in the morning;
about a 2 min stop, by the way! All that driving in the desert for us to get
out and step on the little circle in the middle. John steps on it and says, “Okay,
I’m done. We can go!” He had been looking forward to checking off “Be in four
places at once” from his bucket list.
From Four Corners, we drove to the Grand Canyon. We ended up
entering the part through the East entrance (I RECOMMEND DOING THIS IF YOU ARE
TRAVELING EAST TO WEST!). This made things easy because we stopped at each
viewpoint and then reached the visitors center which we didn’t really care to
drag the kids into. It took all of maybe two hours to get through it. We were
supposed to stay the night there, but for $250+ a night, we kept driving to
Barstow.
“I ain’t ever going back to Barstow.” John kept quoting.
Apparently its from one of the 2Fast2Furious movies…either way. We went! We
mainly went to go to the McDonald’s at Barstow Station which was supposedly
very cool to see. It was pretty interesting, it was a little shopping area and
McDonalds was made from the inside of boxcars; pretty neat. We were going to
grab something from there, even though we avoided fast food the entire trip.
Thankfully, the line was too long and we decided to leave.
From Barstow, we drove through the nothingness of southern California,
got gas for an astounding $4.69/gallon (yikes!), and stopping in Leemore. I
think this was near Fresno, so I don’t need to elaborate on the smell…yuck! We
stayed at NAS Leemore with friends of ours dating back to our time in England!
We had a great time catching up and meeting their son who was about the girls’
age!
The next morning we took off on our final leg! Off to
Sacramento! It was another boring drive, but we redeemed it by finishing up our
Podcast Series, “The Peasant Princess”. We got into Sacramento at a pretty
decent time and finally laid our heads down, after a 7 day road trip, for a
decent nights’ sleep…
