Road Trip

We had a very long road trip in December from Virginia to Colorado. My mom flew to Virginia and drove with me and the kids, which was wonderful. Kenny was in his car, which was loaded down with the last minute stuff and all the things we forgot to put in the moving van.

My grandmother has pictures of trips where she'd make my dad and his brothers and sister get out and stand in front of the welcome signs at each state. I thought this would be fun!

Our first stop, West Virginia, was cold and rainy and muddy. The kids were not excited about being dragged away from the DVD player for a group photo.

After that, I gave up on the group shots and just hopped out myself for a quick picture.

We spent our first night in Santa Claus, Indiana. 

 We stayed in a cottage that had a Murphy bed (pulls down from the wall). I still remember staying at Disney World when I was 8 and how cool we thought it was that the bed came down from the wall. My kids were equally impressed!

We mailed postcards at the Santa Claus post office and drove through Rudolph's outdoor light show.

There wasn't a welcome sign in Missouri, but we stopped at the arch.

You ride in this little (and I do mean little!) capsule up to the top of the arch.

At the top you can look through those tiny windows in the middle of the arch.

  Also no welcome sign in Kansas. It did have a ton of windmills. And one blizzard. We spent a long afternoon/evening at a hotel in Kansas. It did have a pool, which all the kids loved.

We finally made it to Colorado!

1616 miles with 27 hours and 43 minutes of driving time!

Let's not do that again for a long, long time.