Our Epic Adventure to the Wild West begins

Our epic adventure to the west was a huge success! This was our first trip west after moving to Florida last December and man it was a doozy. We thought the drive from Chicago back to see family in Utah and Arizona was long, in fact it was long, but this one was really something. It really is a 3 day trip to get back west, and man is that 3rd day a long one (even if it ends up being the shortest driving day)!

We headed north first going through Georgia then through Tennessee and Kentucky (another state we can now say we have been in). What gorgeous country! All these drives we have made over the years we have come up with more areas that we would love to own vacation homes in. We added more to our list this year as we drove. We even visited mounds in Kentucky, after spending the night in Paducah, KY we saw signs for the Wycliffe Mounds and stopped and spent an educational hour or so, it was really interesting to see the ruins there. Then we drove on up to Washington, Missouri to see my brother Steven and his wife Kathy and some of there kids that were still there from a family reunion that they were just wrapping up. We just visited for a while, enjoying wonderful fresh cookies from the oven along with the fun company, before heading out again, at which point Randy said he thought we should just go straight on through to Salt Lake as we had 3 drivers and it was less than 24 hours away at that time. So we all agreed (are we nuts or what?). Now it needs to be noted that there was no 3rd seat available, it was folded up and covered with luggage, cooler, boating stuff, surfboard, towels, sleeping bags, you name it, so Stephen, Lars and Madelyn were all in the middle seat. We were packed tight, but they were incredible travelers, as always. Only a minimum of arguing, and it was usually over movie choices, although they all had video i-pods so it was over the tv screen in the car, not because they didn't have other options. Back to the trip. We got to Salt Lake about mid-day the next day and the kids all showered, called friends and were gone! No delaying the fun for them, meantime Randy and I died for about 4 hours in our hotel!!