After talking over a few different routes/schedules, and looking at the weather forecasts, we ended up with an ambitious-sounding plan for our return trip back to Utah: three twelve hour days on the road. The crazy part? We did it! And it didn't even seem that bad! What the?!
We left our condo pretty early after breakfast and final packing on Friday (the 29th). We drove and drove and drove all morning with our first stop in Philadelphia, NY at a lovely little park. We needed that stretch break! We drove and drove and drove and drove after that, and stayed in Maumee, Ohio that night. I'm sure we stopped for food and gas and potties and stretches, but I don't remember much!
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| These very spaced out wind turbines (Sam hates when we call them that and always calls them windmills) were kind of a surprise in the middle of up state New York. |
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| There were tons! |
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| The park we stopped at was lined by a slow, calm river with a walking path next to it. Perfection! |
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| Looking back from the river to the playground area on the hill. |
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| There's a lot more water here than I'm used to! (The path was pretty soggy in parts.) |
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| Christine had printed off these "would you rather" questions to keep her family occupied on their drive, and since she's such a great friend she snapped some pics so we could answer them, too! |
On Saturday (the 30th), we had timed our departure from Maumee, OH to coincide almost perfectly with the opening of a deep dish pizza place outside of Chicago. We ordered our pie online and pulled into the walmart parking lot nearby to figure out how to eat the thing! What a pizza! (We ate and ate and ate that pizza the rest of the way home!) We stopped at a couple of parks during Saturday's drive since the weather was much better than Friday. And we made it to York, Nebraska by bedtime.
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| A half slice was more than enough for the kiddos. |
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| Yum!! |
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| I know my mom has read this and maybe I have too? (It felt new to me, but that doesn’t actually mean a whole lot ;) but I’m a fan of Richard Peck, and I thought the title seemed just a bit spooky for a Halloween-week read. The first chapter or two definitely delivers on the spine-tingling details, but then the rest of the book is just a fun story of an unlikely combo of early 20th century librarians plus automobiles. Clever and creative! (And I really need an author’s note to fill in the historical holes for me!) |
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| We stopped at a park in Ottowa, Illinois and witnessed some sort of dog parade happening. Maybe it was a training class? I don't know, but it made me chuckle. |
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| There was a little arboretum attached to it across a bridge, and of course I was ooohing and aaahing at the mushrooms. |
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| The kids really liked the climbing wall. |
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| And the train! |
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| We saw a lot of views like this. I think this is Illinois still? |
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| We made a drive-by of the Beetle Spider in Avoca, Iowa, on our way to the same park we stopped at last year on our way out to Vermont. It's a really great park, and it was really great that it worked out to stop there again (even if the bathrooms were closed and we had to go back to the same Casey's gas station to use them, just like last time). |
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| I didn't take any pics of the park or the kids playing on it, but, of course, here are some mushrooms. ;) |
On Sunday morning (Halloween!), we woke up in York, got our breakfast in the breakfast room (it was quite a heartily stocked breakfast room but we only took what we could eat in the car (translation: the kids got waffles without syrup!) and then we hit the road. Our main goal was to beat the winter storm forecast to hit Cheyenne Sunday afternoon/evening. So we pressed on westward. We talked to my parents on facetime to wish my mom a happy birthday, we listened to church via zoom on the phone, we listened to the whole Homer Price book, one we've read before, but quite enjoy, and it seemed fitting what with the donut machine and our many visits to Cold Hollow and all. We made it past Cheyenne with just some fog and a bit of mist to worry about and continued onward. After a quick stop in Rock Springs at the park with all the big tube slides (which Cal fearlessly conquered at last!), we hopped back in the car for our last leg. We pulled into our garage around 6:30, which was hours before we thought we'd get there originally! What a ride! What awesome kids! What a good car! Home again, home again, jiggety jog!
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| This one is just good ol' fashioned fun. Cold Hollow sells copies of the paperback book since they have a donut machine very similar to the one in the book. We've been singing "42 pounds of edible fungus" ever since (you'll just have to read/listen to it yourself to get that one!). |
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| Well, that's a mighty nice sight along I-84 almost to Mountain Green. It was like the clouds were welcoming us home. |
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| Our official Tesla Tally Chart - we kept track of every tesla we saw on our journey there and back again and broke it down by which state each was spotted in, and also which color. (Don't worry, we totally used this for a math lesson on graphs when we got back!) |
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| Home! |
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| Check out that rain gauge! 4 inches in 5 weeks! |
And that concludes my coverage of our epic fall adventure! Stay tuned for next year? (We shall see . . .)
