Thursday, June 20, 2013

Road Tripping

It’s been a while since we’ve been on a road trip as long as the one we just finished. The last few times we have been to California, we have managed to find super cheap tickets, so it ended up being almost the same price to fly as it would have to drive…same for our Southwest trip a couple years ago. In fact, the last time we drove to SoCal, Elise was 17 months old.

I anticipated that things would be different this time.

And I was right! We made the trip in 2 days instead of 3, and we had to stop more for me to use a rest area than for the children! They kept themselves pretty entertained (and why wouldn’t they, what with all the electronics and such?!)

We left shortly after school ended on Wednesday, June 5. We knew we wanted to get to Grants Pass, OR (since there was a hotel that slept 6 there that I had made reservations at), which is normally about an 8 hour trip. The day before we left, the cruise control quit working on the van, so I had to get that fixed, plus I had a migraine. THANKFULLY the mechanic was able to fix it and we didn’t have to wait for a part and a little sleep and a bunch of ibuprofen and caffeine kicked my migraine, so on the last day of school, we were ready to go!

One hiccup in the trip was the fact that the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River had collapsed just 10 days prior and there were detours and we anticipated some heavy traffic due to that. We got a little inside information from a friend (about using parking lots and a ‘back way’ to avoid most of the regular freeway detour traffic) and so our slowdown there was minimal. But then we hit Northgate. And we were stop and go until Olympia. Which, in normal traffic, is about a 90 minute drive. It took us at least 3 hours. We intended to get to our hotel about 9:00 pm. We got there just a bit before 11:00. Ugh.

We had to make one rest stop in the twilight hours and I saw this:

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That, my friends, is what my future “empty nest” road tripping vehicle will be. Me and my honey, driving all the great highways across America. Sightseeing, thrifting, visiting flea markets, and doing some service projects along the way. It’s a simple dream and it’s my dream, corny as it may be.

On Day 2, we left around 7 from our hotel and we were excited because if we made really good time, we might get to see the boys in SoCal (& maybe the baby girl!) before bed…

We did make really good time and we even had some fun along the way!

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We saw this mountain and Ed said, “It’s Mt. McKinley!” Hm. Really? That seemed weird, but he claimed he learned all about it in CA State History. Okay.

Yeah, it’s not Mt. McKinley. That’s in Alaska.

It’s Mt. Shasta, in case you’re wondering.

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I attempted to figure out how to crochet around a hanger. I finished it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not “right”. I already know how to wrap the hangers with yarn the way my Great-Grandma used to, but I wanted to try using a crochet hook. It works, and it was a fast project. I should have brought about 347 more hangers to pass the time…

My sweet friend Amy put together some little embroidery kits for the little girls. They thought it was a hoot! Becca said, “I feel like I am Felicity!” Felicity is an American Girl doll from 1774, in case you found yourself confused at that comment.

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They each started another embroidery project, but those were a bit more complicated and I’m pretty sure we lost about 4 needles in the seats of the van, so we will be working on those more on a rainy summer day.

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After some classic In-N-Out for dinner near Magic Mountain north of LA, we headed east to Redlands, arriving around 9:00 pm (NO traffic and we made good time, thanks to my functioning cruise control which Ed used freely) and in time to see the boys before they went to bed. The baby was asleep, but we got to peek at her quietly before heading to bed ourselves.

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