RT2011: Driving

Yes, "driving" is worth it's own blog post. This summer our road trip took us 3,476 miles across Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah (and back again). Which equaled about 6 straight days of driving. And that's WITH five kids - ages 8,6,5,1, and 2 months. If this doesn't mean anything to you, then either you don't have kids or have never spent more than a day in the car with them.

I love road trips. I do. Ask any of my college roommates. I love driving fast. I love seeing the lay of the land - having a connection with our country in a way that is totally missed when you fly from place to place. I love maps. I love hotels.

I love visiting places - old and new. And most of all, I love seeing family. Which makes driving half-way across the country worth it.

Traveling with kids, especially a nursing baby, means lots of stops. It means changing a lot of diapers on the road, feeding kids and babies at hot, inconvenient places, and making dangerous "potty stops" on interstate highways.

But we knew that before we left and tried to make the most of it by planning stops in interesting places. But let's face it, it's a barren wasteland out there! And most of our stops looked like this.

and this.

and this.

Here are a few more (telling) glimpses of the driving portion of our trip - which when all was said and done ended up being the largest portion of our trip.

Look at our accumulated junk. Look at screaming, sweaty Eliza. Look at sleeping Lydia.

Here we are at the border.

Driving at night. . . the boys slept in the car at night. But not Lydia. She was at her loudest - doing her best to keep us drivers awake!

Buc-ee's. Our favorite gas station.

Look at this place! - it's like gas station disneyland.

Stopping in Colorado to change our oil.

Cute Eliza.

Cute Eliza again. We probably all would have voted her "Best Traveler" except she ended up getting sick on the drive and barfed all over everything.

Yeah, that was not fun. We used the last of our water rations to rinse clean out her seat, blankets, stuffed animals, clothes, hair and the interior of our car.

We used up our entire supply of hand sanitizer.

And we delayed our trip by hours waiting for everything to semi-dry on the roof.

And still the smell lingered for the next two days of driving - making us all nauseous. But at least Eliza felt better and seemed happy (proud of herself) after that.

We stopped in a town called Clayton.

Which made Clayton feel very famous.

We also got pulled over there for "coming to a complete stop slightly too close to the intersection". Lame. These people obviously have too much time on their hands.

There were moments (even hours) of completely happy driving - I have to admit. But if you want a real taste of driving with the smiths - watch this:


And guess what? We'll do it all again. . . and again. . . and again.
We've already planned our next road trip for March. Watch out Disneyworld! Here we come!

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