Days Seven, Eight, & Nine On The Road

O.k., I'm finally finishing up the road trip post. I've been pulled away from the computer again the last couple days so now I'm really behind. Thursday, I was in Grandville for an Uppercase Living party, Friday I was on a cleaning mission around here, and Saturday I continued on my cleaning mission and was busy in the kitchen because I was hostessing bunco Saturday night. More details on that later along with some delicious recipes.

On to the road trip. The rest of the trip isn't all that exciting so I should be able to wrap it up. Wednesday (June 9th) we left Blanding, UT and headed for Boulder, CO. Greg did most of the driving this day because we thought there would be a lot of up and down through the Rocky Mountains to get to Boulder. I couldn't have been happier when we got out of Utah. There was a short period of the drive that was pretty around Moab, but then it was so desolate and boring. Thoughts of your car breaking down & being stranded for awhile go through your head when you're out in the middle of nowhere in these desolate towns. I swear there was absolutely NOTHING. We passed this ghost town out in the middle of nowhere which at one time people used to live there, but now just abandoned buildings, cars, etc. "decorated" the field. The drive through the Rocky Mountains in Colorado was pretty. We saw snow at the top of the mountains from time to time, we drove through tunnels in the mountains, and at one point we reached our highest elevation of 11,000+ feet. The drive actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I'm not a fan of driving on the edge of the mountains and sharp switchbacks which I thought would be most of the drive. Thankfully though most of the freeway wound through the bottom of the mountains and when it did climb up and down it wasn't too bad. We made it into Boulder around 5pm at our destination which was at Tom's who is Greg's cousin. Tom graciously opened his house up to us to stay there for two nights.

Wednesday night we went downtown Boulder and grabbed some dinner at a bike themed burger restaurant. Greg and Evan liked this as all the burgers were named after famous bike riders or bike things. After that we walked around a little and then went back to Tom's to chill for the evening. Thursday morning Tom had to work a little so we hung out at his house and took the kids to the park across the street from his house. Then we headed downtown Boulder to the Pearl Street area and had lunch with Tom and Tony (Greg's other cousin that also lives in Boulder, they are twins for those of you that don't know). We shopped around a little and the kids loved the Crocs store. They each got to pick out their own new pair of Crocs. We pretty much chilled the rest of the day and hung out with Tom & Tony and later ordered pizza and watched some of the NBA finals. Unfortunately this was the kids worst day of the vacation and we appreciate Tom putting up with the kids being so hyper and not listening very well. A big thanks to him as well for letting us stay there for two nights. It was nice not to have to be at a hotel.

Friday we got back on the road continuing to head home. It was the boring drive through all of Nebraska and part of Iowa. Nothing exciting about driving on 80 through those two states. The two highlights were finding a Taco John's for lunch (a place we used to have in Michigan that Greg loved back in the day), and listening to Omaha by the Counting Crows while going through Omaha, NE. See I told you it wasn't that exciting of a drive. We finally stopped in Grinell, IA for the night after about 10 hours on the road and about 730 miles of driving. It was a long day for both us and the kids, but we wanted to only have about an eight hour drive home on Saturday so it was worth it.

Saturday we got going fairly early and we had to start out in downpour rains for the first hour. Not how we wanted to start our last day on the road, but we didn't really want to wait it out at the hotel til it stopped. We were ready to be HOME! We made our way out of Iowa and Illinois, and made a quick stop in Michigan City to grab some lunch for in the car, and then got out of Indiana. We finally made it to Michigan and were so happy to be back in our home state! This was the part of the drive though where you just wish you could be home. We made it though and finished up our road trip reaching our FINAL destination of home at about 5pm Saturday. It was so nice to see our red house that we missed so much. We tallied a total of about 2300 miles on the way home from when we left Tucson to East Lansing.

After 18 days away from home, 4,385 miles of driving (+ an extra 547 around Tucson that week), and 12 states later home sweet home was exactly what we were ready for! We also clocked on the car about 100 hours of driving time while we were gone. HOME felt really good Saturday night. It's nice to be back in your own surroundings after being away for so long. We had a fantastic trip and are very thankful and blessed that we had a safe trip, good kids in the car, and no car trouble. My Mountaineer did us well and got us there and back! It was great to see our family in Arizona and Colorado. Our first family vacation was a success! A big thanks to my Mom for helping us out with the trip on the gas and hotels and the condo in Arizona. Thank you!!!! Also a big thanks to Greg's mom for cutting our grass a couple days before we got home (which was super long) and watching Molly the whole time we were gone. She saved us about $400 which the kennel would of cost as well as the fact that Molly would of had to been in a kennel for a really long time. So with that said, I think I've wrapped up our road trip. I hope you've enjoyed our journey and now I can post more up to date things.