Back on The Road: Days 4-6

On the 4th day of our trip, we drove from Albuquerque, NM to Moab, UT. Originally, we had planned to stop somewhere around Durango and take the time to see a few more national parks, but we decided to shorten the trip by a day instead. Before we left Albuquerque though, we wanted to make sure we were set to drive over snowy mountain passes. We called a Discount Tire, but they didn't have chains in stock. They directed us to a Pep Boys close by and not only did they have the chains in stock, they also rotated our tires for free (and we didn't even have to wait). With that taken care of, we hit the road. On the way to Moab, we stopped at Four Corners. It was almost 5pm (closing time) and it was WAY cold. I don't remember the specifics, but something like 30 degrees with 20mph winds. We were the only insane people out there and we might have stayed all of 5 minutes...just enough to take a few pictures and run.
All the girls (Secora is inside my jacket to keep her warm)
Sierra made an attempt at being in all 4 states at once, but she didn't quite understand the concept (quite possibly because between our hoods, the wind and our chattering teeth it was hard to hear)
It was so cold we didn't even take a second to realize the camera was facing the sun and turn around to take the picture the other way. Oh well, this is what we got: Josh in New Mexico, Sierra and Sedona in Colorado and Secora and me in Utah and Arizona.

The rest of the day's drive took us through plenty of open range land, so we saw plenty of this: And here I thought cattle alongside the highway was a Texas thing. I still maintain that cattle is safer than deer though, at least they usually move pretty slow.

We made it into Moab in the dark (which was a shame, we couldn't see the scenery) that night.

Day 5 we were driving from Moab to Pocatello, ID. We got an early start again and stopped by Arches National Park. (I realize Secora is covered up in every picture...it was cold! I'll be updating with actual pictures of her soon)

I definitely want to visit this park again in the relatively near future. Maybe next fall we can make it back. I would love to have the time to camp for a few days and hike around the park. We started out in the visitor's center where the girls got postcards to send to people and explored the hands on exhibits


Then we drove up to the delicate arch viewpoint and that was all we had time for

The rest of Day 5 was more driving. We headed up through Salt Lake City and then met up with a friend and her 3 kiddos for dinner in Ogden. There was a brief meltdown when Sierra had to leave the new friend she'd made, but she did okay once we got back on the road. We made it up to Pocatello that night and found a hotel room in our price range.

Day 6 we woke up to even more snow and cold weather. The parking lot of the hotel (through the car window) looked like this:
The roads were a lot more clear, thankfully. We checked out road conditions across Idaho and Montana and picked the route we thought would have the least snow/ice to travel over. We ended up only needing to cross one mountain pass with "bad" snow coverage and even it was pretty clear. We didn't need chains after all, just a slow and steady pace. As luck would have it, I was stricken with something (I've since decided a mild e. coli infection based on how the symptoms played out over the next 3 days) just about the time we got up to the pass. Of course there is no where to stop up there and you can't really go any faster than about 30mph and there aren't a whole lot of places to stop when you get down off the mountain either. The last 50 miles through the valley back to our town seemed to take forever and I think we stopped 4 times. But we did finally make it home that night. We found several inches of snow in the yard, covered in deer tracks. The girls acted like it was Christmas morning seeing all of their toys they'd forgotten they had. We had about 2 hours until the big girl's bed time and it took us that long to get the car unloaded, unpack the essentials, and for Josh to run back out to get some basics from the grocery store.

So now this Texas family is smack dab in the middle of a northwest winter. It hasn't been as bad as I expected, but then I haven't left the house all that much either...

Back on the Road: Days 1-3

After Thanksgiving, it was time to hit the road. We were sad to leave Texas again, but we needed to get back north before the weather got too bad.

The first day, we only drove to San Marcos. We stopped in San Antonio to have a late lunch with an old friend and her new hubby, then we stopped by the Columbia outlet to take advantage of the black Friday sale and get some more winter clothes at really low prices (seriously, sales plus 20% off the whole order. I got a snow suit and hat for Sedona; ski bib, fleece jacket and hat for Sierra; and two long sleeve layering shirts for me all for $90). We checked into our free room at Country Inn and Suites (still love them...and thank you gold points card for the room) fairly late that night and fed the girls mac and cheese before putting them to bed. It was actually really cold that night and Josh and I didn't want to get out again, so we decided to order pizza for us. The best option was Domino's, which we've never ordered from before. Did you know they let you track your pizza when you order online? It tells you who is making your pizza and when it is put in the oven, and when it's out for delivery and who's delivering it. We were skeptical it was real at first, until the pizza showed up and Josh asked the guy if his name was Gerry (as the order tracker had said). While a little creeped out that Josh knew his name, he confirmed it was indeed Gerry. I can't decide if this pizza tracking thing is cool or weird, but I'm leaning more towards cool because it seemed like a shorter wait when I knew exactly where my pizza was at all times.

Day 2 on the road was long and boring. We drove from San Marcos to Whites City, NM. The highlight was stopping at the Rather Sweet Bakery in Fredericksburg. Josh's brother and sister-in-law had visited it several years ago and bought me their cookbook (which allowed me to make many a yummy kolache on my own!), and I wanted to check it out for myself. We had delicious muffins for a snack and took some scones with us for later. Then it was time to hit the big open (and empty) spaces of west Texas. Now, the last time I was in Whites City was about 15 years ago and it was during the summer. What we found was quite different than what was there last time. There was one hotel (which had horrible reviews on Expedia, but I thought it was quite worth the $70 it cost...it was clean, the room was huge, and it's a lot closer to Carlsbad Caverns than anything else), and nothing else was open. I was glad I had picked up a loaf of bread at the last gas station and that we had a jar of peanut butter and some jelly packets with us. Otherwise, we would've had to drive an extra half hour (each way) to get dinner. When we checked in, we asked if they did breakfast and the lady confirmed that they had juice and snack cakes. Okay, snack cakes---danishes and stuff, right? No.....our children actually ate Little Debbie Christmas Tree snack cakes for breakfast that next morning. Oh well.

Day 3 after the kids were all sugared up from their cake, we left the hotel early and went to visit Carlsbad Caverns. Interesting travel note...if you get to Carlsbad Caverns at 9am on a Sunday in November, you pretty much get the whole cave to yourself. It's kind of cool and also very quiet and eery. Makes you think a lot about those Chilean miners that spent so long underground. Since we were short on time, had the kids, and I was still supposed to be taking it easy, we opted to take the elevator down and just walk the Big Room Route rather than going in through the natural entrance. Our National Parks Annual Pass got us in for free and we had expected a bit of a wait because they are renovating the regular elevators and only the smaller ones are being used right now, but we got an elevator to ourselves right away and zoomed down into the cave. Sierra was a little timid at first, but she warmed up pretty quick. Sedona kept saying, "I think Secora baby is scared". Since Secora was blissfully snuggled up asleep in the wrap, I couldn't resist saying, "hmmm....is Sedona scared?", but she insisted, "No, I not scared. I think Secora baby scared." I think we spent about 2 hours in the cave. When we left, there were definitely more people there, but it was far from crowded. I'd like to go back in the summer so the kids can see the bats fly out of the cave in the evening (that was one of my favorite parts when I went as a kid), but it was nice to spend some time in the cave without anyone but the rangers around.
At the entrance to the park

The girls in the visitor's centerAt one point, the path curved around this arch, so I thought it'd be cool to take a picture through it. Very hard to take decent pictures in the dark though!My favorite feature, the lion's tail


After some sandwiches and yogurt, we hit the road again, bound for Albuquerque (which I now know how to spell!). We didn't have anymore activities planned for the day, but we did drive through Roswell. We didn't stop, but I grabbed some interesting pictures on our way through town.
Alien light post
Aliens are welcome at the Roswell Arby's
And also at the KFC, apparently (and when you put this picture on facebook, it asks you to tag the colonel!)

When we got to Albuquerque, it was darn chilly! We checked into our hotel (another Country Inn and Suites...we paid $30 for this one, thank you again gold points!) and then headed out to The Frontier for dinner. When I had mentioned our route on facebook, one of the other moms from the girl's school in Texas told me I had to check it out. I've been craving eggs, so I got a breakfast burrito and Josh ordered a Mexican plate. We figured this was about our last chance to get good, spicy Mexican food (it's non-existent in Montana). The food lived up to the expectations and for dessert we had to try out the sweet rolls, which of course are famous for a reason!



Next up, Days 4-6!

Our Latest Trip--Part II

On the third morning of our trip, we woke up, ate breakfast, and hit the water park at Great Wolf Lodge as soon as it opened (9am). I am very proud of the girls--we told them we only had one hour to play and gave them a count-down throughout the hour. When it was time to leave, they weren't ecstatic, but there were no tears, no fits, no "can't we stay a little bit longer?!?". They did really well. Earlier that morning, we had packed up everything and laid out each person's dry clothes, so when we got out of the water, we went back to our room, changed, ran the swimsuits through that cool suit spinner and checked out.

It was then and only then that we made a final decision on what route we would take on our way home. We had two options: drive north, through Seattle, the way we had come; OR, drive east, through Mt. Rainier National Park. SOMEONE in the family (who may be experiencing pregnancy induced compulsiveness and irrationality along with a good dose of addiction to those National Parks Passport stamps) managed to make a good argument that the route through Mt. Rainier wouldn't really add all that much time. Hey, those years of high school debate weren't for nothing! In my defense, given our history (check out the "Trip That Started It All" link on the left-hand side when you have some time to read), Josh really should've known that my time estimates would be off.

So we headed east. We had rented movies for the girls to watch in the car and needed to return those, so we pulled into the parking lot of a well-known store. Notice anything weird about the picture? Here, maybe if I zoom in a bit for you: Ick, ick, ick, ick, ick! That's a BIG rat. And the bad thing is that it was fresh...we had just walked inside (no rat) and then came out to find it. A few employees came and stood around it and pointed and laughed and walked away again. I can only hope they went to get supplies to dispose of said rat, but we didn't leave immediately and they didn't come back out, so I'm not so sure.

We were eventually back on the road again...we ate McD's in the car for lunch so I know it was around noon. We were still roughly 600 miles (10 hours or so, for those keeping track, and we obviously weren't) from home.

We arrived at Mt. Rainier National Park sometime around 1 or 2 I was surprised how densely forested it was at the lower elevations. For a while, we were worried you never even got a good view of Mt. Rainier. If you open the windows, it's like being completely enveloped in a Christmas Tree. This was also the first time I came to a little personal realization that mountains make me feel closed in while forests don't. I think in my mind, I just assume I'm free to walk indefinitely in a certain direction if there is forest, whereas seeing a giant mountain in my path lets me know for sure I will not be easily walking anywhere. Here's a picture from the bridge that crosses over the Nisqually glacier drainage The same area from a little ways up the road (if you look closely, you can see the bridge the previous picture was taken from) We really lucked out, and the clouds cleared as soon as we got to the Paradise Visitor's Center, so we got great views of Mt. Rainier The girls enjoyed looking through the binoculars available in the visitor's center and we even spotted some climbers on their way up! This is the area the climbers are on. They would've left that morning and been on their way to Camp Muir for a rest before heading for the summit. Here is a close up shot of the climbers (all those little dots up there)And an even closer shotAfter getting a passport stamp and buying some postcards, we got back on the road and headed towards the Ohanapecosh Visitor's Center. This one was great for the kids. They had a lot of hands on things for them to explore. When we got back in the car, it was dinner time...sometime around 5pm. Again, if you're keeping score (and this was the first time we vaguely paid attention), we were still just over 500 miles (8 hours) from home. This was when we realized our estimated arrival time was somewhere around 1am. Only, we'd also cross a time zone, so it'd really be 2am. And Josh had to work the next day. Uh oh. By the time we finally got cell phone service again, we were already tired and still west of Spokane (4 hours from home), so we called the people who were dog-sitting and asked if they could tack on one more morning of dog care. With that taken care of, we pulled into Coeur D'Alene, Idaho expecting to get a hotel room no problem. We found a room pretty easily, but it was the last one left and we paid way too much for it. We also expected we'd be up early and on the road to get Josh to work by noon, but the girls actually slept in a whole hour, so we still got a late start. Next time, we definitely need to plan better and we won't be attempting to fit so many miles and activities into so few days in the future!!

Our Latest Trip--Part I

So, for our latest adventure, we decided to load up the car and drive to the west coast. This was roughly 9-10 hours each way and we only had 3 days to do it (plus squeeze in the fun stuff we had planned). It was doable, but would've been more fun with more wiggle room.

The first day, we ate breakfast and hit the road. We managed to make it to the Montana border before pulling over at a rest stop to take a break and eat some sandwiches. Apparently people like to feed the ground squirrels at this rest stop (bad idea, people). They had no human fear at all and were quite aggressive little buggers. There are 6 of them in this picture (more are outside the frame) can you spot them all? Oh, and I was just sitting at the picnic table when I took this: Shortly after our stop, we crossed into Idaho and soon after that (we were driving I-90 across the panhandle), Washington: Washington was a new experience. Aside from the weather, central Washington looked like Texas, which surprised me (in a good way....the mountains are pretty in small doses, but they make me feel closed in--my natural habitat is wide open spaces and gently rolling hills). Also, all the rest stops we saw provided free coffee and cookies to help people stay awake while driving, which was nice.

We also got our first taste of Washington weather. We stopped for gas and it was starting to rain. By the time we filled up and ran the girls in for a bathroom break, it was really windy and then it started pouring rain and pea-sized hail. We parked under an overhang to wait it out and all the while, we had a nice view of "Blustery Burger" Finally, we made it to Seattle. We had enough reward points for a cheap hotel room, so we opted to do that and have a morning in the city
On our second morning, we had about 3 hours to spend in Seattle before we needed to move on to our next destination, so we chose to go to Pike Place Market and walk around. We were lucky enough to find street parking that was free that day, so that saved us some money. I definitely don't belong in a city...too much input for me. But despite the huge crowd, Pike Place was definitely a feast for the eyes.

The girls didn't want to leave this cheese shop. They were fascinated watching the workers stir the giant vat of milk and stack huge blocks of cheeseWhen we did get them to move on, they insisted on stopping to smell the bouquets at every flower stand They were less impressed with the fish smells. Sierra would pinch her nose shut as we walked by, while Sedona just jabbed her pointer finger in one nostril and thumb in the other My favorite sights were the fruit stands And some of the handmade goods were pretty cool too Before we left, we splurged and bought a $4 chocolate bar. This factory was one of the attractions I was hoping to stop at, but they require reservations for weekend tours and we hadn't done that. Their chocolate is organic and fair trade and they handle every step of the process from roasting the cocoa beans to actually making the bars. The chocolate was totally worth $4. Even Sierra (who has no idea how much it cost) blurted out, "this is REALLY good chocolate" as soon as she tasted it. While you won't find it at every corner store, they are available in a lot of places and available for online order as well. Check them out On our way out of town, we stopped for a close-up look of the Space Needle (more free street parking) By then, it was time to hit the road again. We made some PB&J sandwiches and got going.

We made it to our big destination, Great Wolf Lodge, that afternoon
I don't really have many pictures from here because I don't want to put pictures of other people's kids in swimsuits up and also because we only have our DSLR camera (which we weren't leaving out on a table at the water park), so we had to make a choice between getting in the water and playing with the girls, or taking pictures of them. Aside from a very short break where I took a few pictures and ran the camera back to the room, actually playing with the kids won out over picture taking. Here are a few from inside the lodge though

I won't lie...Great Wolf is expensive. But we were very happy with it and the kids had a blast. We will be going again at some point. One night was not quite enough to do everything we wanted to do. Aside from the big indoor water park, there's an arcade, spa, kid's club, and so much more. I appreciated that there's a refrigerator and microwave in each room too--we purchased an "add on" to our reservation that got us a large pizza, salad, breadsticks and 2L of coke for $10, so we did that for dinner (you had to get it at lunch time, but we picked it up as late as possible and saved it for dinner), but we were able to bring in our own food and not pay for breakfast or snacks, which helped with budgeting for this trip. I also like that the adults' wristbands, but not the kids', have a built-in RFID tag that doubles as your room key. So you don't have to take anything to the water park with you or worry about losing a key. If you want, you can also link your wristband to the credit card you paid for your room with and if you buy anything (like that caramel apple we picked up for a late night treat, or arcade tokens), you can just swipe your wristband, then you sign a receipt just like you would for a credit card. It was also nice to find swimsuit spinners in the locker room. You are allowed to stay in the water park the day you check out, but you have to leave your room at 11am. It was very nice to throw the swimsuits in the spinner and get them mostly dry before we loaded up in the car. I heart you Great Wolf. And should my linking to you get you to visit my humble little blog, I'd be more than happy to visit again with some freebies thrown in so I can do a more thorough review!! ;-) (psst...my daughter's birthday is in October and we'll be in Texas, I'm sure she'd love to celebrate at the Grapevine location)

Part 2 of our trip coming up tomorrow!