Road Trip PT 1

For our move to Boston I chose to drive myself and my kids across the country.  Dan's company was paying for our move and they offered to fly Atticus, Jonny, and me, and ship my car, but I jumped at the opportunity to drive.  When else do you get the opportunity to drive across the United States with your kids and do it on somebody else's dime??  (The company paid for my gas, hotels, food, tolls, and snacks.  And it was still cheaper than flights and shipping my car.)  It's not exactly the route I would take for a good ol' American road trip, and we didn't have a lot of time for stops (Ideally I'd get a schmancy motor home and take a year to drive around the country with my kids), plus every single person thought I was crazy, but I was so excited and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

And here's where I am going to brag.  I drove by myself with a four year old and a one year old.  We were on the road for eight days and drove approximately 2,800 miles through 15 states and three time zones.  And we did it with no electronic devices aside from the radio.  And my kids only whined and cried once (which happened on day two, in Kansas.  A particularly stressful day for all of us) (And Atticus only slept in the car the first day.) We had fun and my kids were angels.  Complete and absolute angels.

The first two days were the longest.  We drove over 500 miles each day and my kids were still rock stars.  We started out early on October 25 and drove through Wyoming to our hotel in Aurora, Colorado.  Atticus loved watching the scenery and especially watching for windmills, which there were plenty of those first two days.  We didn't really make any special stops those day either, as we were going so far each day, but we had fun hanging out, listening to music and checking out the different toys I had packed for them.  

Side note-I packed them a large box of toys and activities to keep them entertained on the road, most of them toys, books, etc that already belonged to them, but a few new dollar store items.  I kept the large box in the back of the car and a smaller box on the floor between the two of them with a few things to do.  Atticus could reach the box and he'd get things for Jonny when she wanted them because he's the sweetest boy there is.  The plan was to switch the toys out every night but I only ended up doing it twice.  They were too content playing with each other and watching the world go by.  They also each had a binder with coloring pages.  I made Atticus a coloring page for each state we drove through and he loved coloring as we went to keep track.

Our view as we started out that first morning.

Somewhere in Wyoming.  The first and only time Atticus slept in the car for the entire trip.

Our first stop was for 50 cent ice cream cones at Little America in Wyoming.  We stopped once more this first day at a park in Fort Collins before crashing at our hotel.

Made it to our first hotel and within about three minutes, Atticus had checked the whole place out and set up camp for the both of them.

Except for one hotel, we had two queen beds.  Every night I'd get them in bed, Atticus in one and Jonny with me in the other.  We'd watch a show (usually Full House) for half an hour then I'd turn off the tv until they fell asleep and then I'd veg some more or read.

The next day we basically drove through Kansas to Kansas City.  We had no special stops planned but it turned into one of the more memorable days thanks to the Kansas Highway Patrol.  I'll be the first to admit that I don't actually know how fast I was going when he clocked me, but I will say that when I saw him I was going 80 (in what I think was a 70 mph zone) And when I saw the lights behind me about two minutes later, I was going 85.  So yes, I was speeding.  However...

He pulls me over and asks me if I know why.  I said probably because I was speeding.  He then accused me of going 100 miles an hour (I have gone that fast before.  Twice.  And I can tell you exactly when they both were because that is super fast and it was kind of scary.), and for taking so long to pull over that he was about to call in for back up because I was "leading him on a chase".  He then yelled at me until I got teary about the dangers of driving so fast and how my children would be smeared across the road, then accused me of crying just to get out of the ticket.  Once we were past that, he asked me about my insurance.  Being as the car was brand new I didn't have an up-to date proof of insurance (I probably should have done that before I left, but still).  However, my insurance has a grace period when you purchase a new car and I was covered.  The cop did not like that.  So I gave him the old one with my old car still on it and he went back to his car.  In the meantime I had to calm down my kids because they were worried about this man being mean to me and yelling.  Anyway, he came back and started asking me about my plates.  As it was a brand new car, I still had the temporary plates attached.  He then implied that he thought they were fake and that I had stolen my car.  He asked what the deal with my plates was.  I explained (for about the 8th time) that it was a new car and so those were the temporary plates they put on at the dealer.  He said, "That's not what they look like.  Are you sure you are the owner of this vehicle, ma'am?"  I told him that I didn't know what else to tell him as those were the plates they put on at the dealer.  He again went back to his car forever while we sat there.  Anyway I was given a ticket for going 100 miles an hour and for having no insurance.  (I ended up paying for the speeding ticket but my insurance wrote them a letter and got that cleared up for me.)
Anyway, after that lovely experience I was fuming and stressed.  So I took the next exit and let my kids play at a park while I vented to my sisters on the phone.   We played for about 45 minutes, we left, and I stopped to get gas before we hopped back on the freeway.  It was there I discovered that all my credit cards were gone.  I have a phone wallet so I figured they'd fallen out while I was on the phone at the park.  Drive back to the park, say some prayers, retrace steps, search my car (hard to do as it was packed to the brim) look around the park some more, start to panic, pray a lot, call my sister, check the car, pray some more, call the Kansas police who I have such a great taste in my mouth for, find all my cards where I swear I'd looked a bunch of times, tell the police never mind, go fill my tank, get the heck out of Kansas (at less than 100 mph).

This is at our quick rest stop, stop.  They're showing how we feel about Kansas.

Day three we were driving from Kansas City, (Actually Independence) Missouri to Nauvoo.  So we had a lot more time to just take it easy.  Because we had time to kill on our drive that day, I pulled off a few promising exits and just drove around the country side.  And guess what?  Missouri is gorgeous.  Actually everywhere from here on out was gorgeous and it was also super warm the rest of the trip, like, up to 80 degrees (in late October).  It was great except I'd only packed long sleeves clothes and sweaters.  Also, when I saw a sign for The Walt Disney Hometown Museum I had time to pull off and take my kids.  It was mildly interesting but my kids loved it.  And they'd been in the car for two days so running around and seeing Disney things was heaven.  We also drove out to see the house he grew up in (which is privately owned, how cool would it be to live there?) and some barn on the property that he liked to hang out in, I guess?  It was a good day.

Getting lost in the countryside.

At the museum they were given papers with different animal pictures on them.  They had to find the animals around the museum and the corresponding letters to spell out a word (Dream).

Pretending to be Walt carving his initials into his school desk.

Jonny doing some teaching.

There were models of all the buildings and rides at Disneyland.
The Golden Horseshoe.  We miss you, Billy Hill.

Jonny felt carrying her paper in her mouth was more effective.

Walt's Barn.  
There was the biggest spider I've ever seen on that milk jug.

More dirt road driving.  I loved seeing his little hand out the window, too.

Another quick stop before crossing the Mississippi.  We ran around this field in stocking and bare feet (On October 27th in Iowa).  Then they posed like goofballs.

Our first sighting of the Mississippi River.  From there it was on to Nauvoo!