Road Trip!

My family's reunion was held this year in New Mexico. Since we were driving so far, we decided to go big and do a real road trip. I was a little nervous about how the kids (mostly Ellie) would do spending several days in the car and sleeping in different hotels every single night for several nights. In the end, I really had nothing to worry about. They were great...much better than I ever expected and we had a really great trip. Jon and I both have a lot of memories of road trips from when we were growing up and we have always wanted to be able to do a lot of travelling with our kids...let them see different places and really experience the world outside of our little bubble. We've already got next summer's road trip in the works and I can't wait!

So, for our sake, here is our little trip log from our first real family road trip. (We do the drive to Idaho at least once a year...so I say this is our first real one because it's the first time we've traveled somewhere else).

Day 1:  We spent the morning packing up while the kids had their last day of summer camp. Got on the road around noon and drove down to Orange County to visit our friends, the Kings. They were kind enough to let us come crash at their house for the night despite the fact that they were leaving out of town the next day too. I'm so glad we were able to squeeze a few hours in with them. We've missed them!

Day 2:  What a day! We headed off into the desert to Arizona.

Since we were so close, we went a few miles out of the way to see the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City, AZ. It might have been more impressive if it hadn't been 105 degrees outside. It was a quick stop though...we got out, saw the bridge, and then spent the rest of our time waiting in line with everyone else in the city to get some shaved ice to cool us down. Then it was back on the road.

We had planned our day so we would get to our hotel by 5 or 6 pm and could go swimming before bed. Instead, we ran into monsoons (who knew there were monsoons in Arizona???). We spent the entire day driving through crazy rainstorm and crazy rainstorm. There was flooding, landslides, hail...all sorts of crazy weather. We trucked on until we came upon stopped traffic 20 minutes from our hotel.

Miles and miles of traffic at a complete standstill. Turns out the road had washed out. So, we let the kids out to run off some energy and waited. It felt like a scene from a movie. People were camping out, talking to anyone and everyone, kids running in the median. The first hour was kind of fun. Then it got dark, it was past dinner time and bed time, my 6 month pregnant self needed a bathroom, and all of our electronics just happened to be dead. We finally piled the kids back in and turned the car on so they could watch a dvd. Two hours later (10 pm) we were finally on the move again and made it to our hotel shortly after that. I dropped Jon and the kids off and headed to Denny's to grab some dinner. It was the ONLY place open in the entire town that late at night. So, everybody else that had been stuck with us stopped there too. It was insane! Sometime after 11 pm I finally got our food, we ate, and then crashed in bed.

Day 3:  Sunday....we went to church for the first little bit and then headed to the Grand Canyon in another round of monsoons. We were a little worried as we drove in, but we got lucky and the monster hail storm we were driving through ended as we pulled up to the visitors center. There was so much hail on the ground that the kids thought it was snowing. They were SO excited. (And clearly you can tell by the kids clothes we were completely unprepared for this kind of weather!) 

We were finally able to drag the kids away from the "snow" and check out some of the views. It was so cloudy and there were so many storms in the distance. I'm sure the views we got that day were very different from the sunny day views. But it was still very impressive and beautiful.

We stopped at all of the pullouts along the southern rim. We were literally racing another big storm that was right behind us and headed the same direction as us. We managed to stay ahead of it until the last stop, which was the Watch Tower. We RAN from the car to the tower in pouring rain...I'm sure we were quite the sight. 

After our whirlwind trip through the Grand Canyon, we were greeted with double full rainbows later that afternoon. So cool!

We made it to the middle of nowhere New Mexico that night and crashed for the night again.

Day 4:  We passed through Alamogordo...did you know the largest pistachio in the world is there? We had big plans to also stop at the space museum there, but had gotten a late start and were getting antsy to just be out of the car, so we continued on.

One of the stops Jon was most looking forward to...White Sands. I'd been several times as a kid, but coming back as an adult, I have to say it really is impressive. It was hot, we were all tired, and the kids were anxious to get to our hotel so they could swim. So, we didn't stay as long as we had planned, but it was a fun stop anyway.

That evening we met up with my sisters, Rachel and Esther, in El Paso. We grew up there, but moved about 20 years ago. Since we were going all the way to New Mexico, we wanted to take the little detour down to El Paso to visit our old stomping grounds. We met up for dinner at Peter Piper Pizza, one of our favorite childhood restaurants. After that we finished the night off with a swim at our hotel pool and called it a night.

Day 5 was spent driving around the city. We stopped by our old house, which looked surprisingly similar to how I remembered it. 

On a whim, we decided to see if our neighbors still lived there. Mr. and Mrs. Gross were our El Paso "grandparents". We were more than surprised to find out that Mrs. Gross is still there. We had a fun little visit with her.

We stopped by the swimming pool down the street from our house, where we pretty much lived every summer.

One of our last stops was the elementary school we all attended. We couldn't go inside, and it was well over 100 degrees outside, so we cut our trip down memory lane short, drove by our old church building, and then headed back to the hotel for some more swimming. 

I'm so glad we were able to spend those days in El Paso, and that it worked out to meet up with some of my family there. 

Day 6: Yep....STILL on the road! Our family reunion started this day, so we made a couple stops on our way to the ranch. 

We loved going to Hueco Tanks growing up and so this was a necessary stop. And it really is a cool place...except that it was over 100 degrees again...yuck! The kids loved exploring and climbing all over the rocks.

And there was no shortage of lizards, insanely large bugs, snakes, and other animals. The kids (and Jon) were in heaven!

After Hueco Tanks we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. I had been once as a kid and still remember it vividly. This was also somewhere Jon really wanted to go. It really is so impressive...the pictures just don't do it justice.

This road trip ended up being a lot more fun than I had anticipated (mostly because I was 30 weeks pregnant!). We thought we had planned it out pretty well, but of course things always take longer than you think. Every single stop we made, we commented that we really wanted to come back and spend more time. So, we may need to redo this whole road trip someday. :)