We've Arrived!

Well, we're back where we started from! I'm trying to unpack and figure out blogging at the same time so we'll see how this goes. The trip out here was really good. My dad came with us and he helped us by driving the jeep most of the time while I helped Madison and Celina in the back seat. They were so well behaved the whole time which for almost a full 7 days worth of driving was nothing short of miraculous for any child I think! I had to be prepared for them though and it paid off - whew! I made little "Happy Dollars" that they earned if they were good for every half hour. Madison asked after being on the road on the first day of the trip if it had been a half hour yet.....uh, no, we were only heading down Hannegan, but after that neither of them asked again. Amazing! At intervals along the way I pulled out "Mommy's Store" and they could go shopping with their money. They earned a lot of things and even earned $10 items by Tuesday! I must also say that DVD players are the best inventions for children on road trips like this one!

The first night we spent in Misoula, Montana. We saw lots of corn, potatoes, and so much wheat growing on rolling hills on either side that day that my dad declared he felt like he was driving through a loaf of bread. :o) We saw lots of dust devils too which the girls thought were pretty funny.

The next day we drove through to Cody, WY. It is a really neat western style town that I wish we could have spent some time in. Wyoming is beautiful and was my favorite part of the drive. Before Yellowstone Park we drove through some really beautiful mountains called.... Madison Range. There were rapids on our right and lots of fishermen out enjoying the day too. Madison had never heard of rubber pants for fishing before and thought they were pretty funny. We had lunch in the parking lot by Old Faithful (of all places!) that day and had no idea when it was set to go off. We dawdled over lunch, wondered where Scott had gotten to and when we decided to just walk over there to find out when the geyser would go off, Scott reappeared but had to run back for the camera. So we waited till he got back, then stood by the lodge behind the crowds when about 2 minutes later Old Faithful erupted! We were all quite impressed by this except Madison who after 5 seconds of watching suddenly announced she could see a black puppy. I guess it was an exciting moment for all of us!
The drive through the park was good though I was surprised that the park is still so scarred by the fires from 20 years ago. We saw one buffalo and that was cool. That night dinner was exciting because a storm suddenly showed up and we had to move the picnic table onto the porch right against the front door. The skies continued to be black that evening and the threat of a tornado did cross our minds but it just stayed blustery and nothing really happened.

So the third day was more driving through Wyoming and we stopped that night in Rapid City, South Dekota. Okay so it was this day that was really my favorite. The drive that day looked pretty straight through according to the map however we failed to look closely and see the Big Horn mountains. We were driving along the plains when suddenly, we entered a red canyon with incredible rock formations, trees and a river running through it. We were taken completely by surprise and just for that experience the trip was worth it. We continued on and climbed over 9,000 feet until we were suddenly stopped by a flagger. Now on I-90 it was really nice because there was hardly a vehicle on the road. There might be someone in front of you a couple of miles away, no one behind you and a car or truck pass on the opposing side once in a while but that was it, so to see a flagger up on this mountain range with nothing (literally!) nearby was a surprise. He kept flicking the air which we all thought was amusing until we decided to roll down the windows to let in the fresh mountain air and discovered the air was thick with mosquitos. The flagger was even spraying the air around himself. Blech! We stayed parked there for a while.....for no reason it seemed and then a truck with lights leading 6 other cars came from the opposite direction. The truck turned around and we saw that it was a pilot car with instructions on the back that said "Follow Me". (A good story for a talk I'm sure) So we followed a few moments and suddenly there were hundreds upon hundreds of sheep all over the road! Scott was right behind the pilot car and it looked the parting of a very wooly and white Red Sea. We rolled down the windows and heard a choir of "baa"'s from all those sheep. Celina LOVED this! "Look! A baby sheep! Look! A mommy sheep! Look! A daddy sheep! Baa! Baa!"

These mountains were so beautiful. We drove through free range country most of that time with nothing around - not even a gas station or an out house until we came to a trailer that advertised elk and buffalo jerky and the word "restrooms" in giant lettering. This was also the day we saw red paved roads which were pretty cool.
That afternoon we drove to Mt. Rushmore and that was so cool. Madison and Celina were taken aback by these faces on the Mountain but thought it was pretty neat too. We had the privilege of meeting a gentleman who worked on the drilling of the mountain and that was awesome. Later Celina got restless so we went out to the little plaza there and she requested to sit on Papa's shoulders. She got up there and then began to sing the chorus from a Newfie song we have: "Donkey ride! Donkey ride!" Papa was the donkey?

The next day we drove through the rest of South Dakota, Minnesota to Lacrosse, Wisconsin. We saw lots of corn and we began to see lots and lots of wind turbines. We saw a trailer truck carrying something so unusual and huge we couldn't figure it out until we realized it was two of those blades from a turbine. Amazing! At a rest stop in Minnesota Madison finally mastered pumping herself on the swings! It was a great day for her! It was around this day or so that we realized that the BMW was a great tool in getting the girls to have a nap if they needed one because of the droning sound inside. Celina had a hard time getting to sleep at night so we would plunk her in the BMW in the morning with her "stolen" pooh blanket and a pillow and within 10 minutes she'd be sawing logs again. That night we stayed in a motel in Lacrosse. It was the only night we did. The rest of the time we stayed in kamping kabins at KOA's and it worked out great.

The next day, Wednesday, we drove through Madison, WI and took Madison's picture downtown at the capital building. That is a very clean city and another one I would have like to have spent more time in. Through most of the trip we saw lots of things called "Madison". Madison River, Madison, Avenue, Madison JCT, Madisonville and we even saw Scottsville and Scottsburg. We kept pointing these things out and then on the 6th day the trip Celina finally asked "Where's my name?" Uh...well, Celina is one name that will never be found on barrettes and keychains. Madison, however, will probably be known as "Madison H." for many years in school.

We drove on to Chicago and this was the part of the journey that I was worried about. The night before I went over our route and realized that the way we intended to go would take us 13 hours not including lunch, gas ups, or potty breaks. There was no way we could do it but we never intended to drive through the mess called traffic in Chicago that we would hit during the lunch hour. What could we do? We were in trouble if we did and we were in trouble if we didn't. We decided to chance Chicago and it wasn't as bad as we thought though it took about two hours from one end the city to the other on the beltway. Upon arriving there, Celina suddenly announced "I want to go home," Like enough with driving all day for days already let's go home!

It was here that we were truly dumbfounded by all the truck trailers coming into the city in the opposing traffic! There were caravans and caravans of them! I have never in my life seen so many at one time and in one day. I took Dad's camera and snapped a pic of a caravan of them and there are so many you just see mainly the their trailers because there were so many in so many lanes.

Just barely out of Chicago, Scott hit a giant crater of a pot hole and we didn't recognize what it was I guess till it was too late. (How could there be such a ditch in the middle of the interstate?) Well, the left rear wheel of the BMW got very slightly flattened and was making the car jiggle in the rear a bit. We continued on and luckily it never developed into a problem. The only real problem that day was that the two-way we had in the jeep decided to go on the fritz in the middle of all that traffic with highways to get on and change on to. Luckily we didn't get so separated we couldn't see Scott up ahead.

That ditch that nearly took the wheel of the BMW off is just one shining example of how awful and decrepit the country's infrastructure is! Some states are making great strides to improve and there were lots of nicely completed sections of interstate and then there were some that were crumbling and looked like Lightening McQueen had paved them and then scraped them off. Washington has some bad roads too (though none were actually crumbling) and we should know having done this drive cross country drive twice now!

That night we stayed in Louisville almost Kentucky but we were technically still in Indiana. On this day the humidity hit. We were definitely heading south now! There is a building in Louisville that looks like Batman's head. It looked a little like Portland with the river running alongside downtown. It was very pretty and another place I would have like to have spent more time. That day we headed to Atlanta, Georgia. Kentucky is very pretty and Tennessee is beautiful! In Nashville I think it was, we saw a big paddleboat and that was neat. In Nashville Celina said she wanted to go have supper at Nana's house. Uh, not for a while....:o)

We arrived in Atlanta around 4pm and got Papa checked into a motel as he had his plane to catch early the next morning. We took the girls to a cute playground we found by accident trying to find the motel and then we all went to Cracker Barrel for dinner. Why don't they have Cracker Barrels on the West Coast? It is so good! Well, Celina was not impressed and wouldn't eat her bowl of Chicken and Dumplins. I can't say I blamed her because even though it tasted amazing it looked like a bowl of chunky grey, gruel. Well, Dad thought it was really great food too and we took his picture outside the restaurant with us to make my brother jealous. (Tyler, when you come, we'll take you again.) So it was this night that it was very hard to say goodbye to Papa and continue on. It was so nice to have my Dad along and I don't know how I would have managed with the girls and driving on my own especially through the busy traffic we hit once we turned south. We had good talks, had fun listening to Baby Beluga and picking up all 96 crayons in the back seat occasionally.

Then Scott and I went on to Forcythe, Georgia and stayed our last night in a Kabin. We figured since it would be a short driving day that we would sleep in and then swim in the pool, go on the paddle boats and let the girls play on this huge playground before we left that day. Celina had a little accident in her seat just before we got to the camp site so we cleaned it up and left it out on the porch to dry over night......and so our troubles began. The next morning we decided to pack up the vehicles before we had our fun. Scott opened up the BMW to find ants EVERYWHERE inside the car. It was dusk when we had parked and he had parked on an anthill. He was not happy. He went to get Celina's car seat and saw that it too was crawling with tiny ants! He ripped off the seat cover and found 6 month old gold fish crackers stuck in narrow ridges of the seat. Well, now Scott began throwing the car seat on the ground and every time it crashed, dozens of ants would be swirling on the ground on that spot. Crash! "Stupid ants!" Crash! "How the heck our we going to get rid of all these things?!" Crash! He pretty much resembled a cave man to say the least! So our fun morning was now out the window as we drove to the nearest Walmart to buy Celina a new seat after chucking the ant infested one in the campsite dumpster. Maybe my Dad was somehow spared the horrors of that morning!

The drive on Friday, our last day, was uneventful until we pulled up at a gas station that had gas for $3.86 a gallon. Woohoo! The cheapest gas the whole trip. There were a couple of other places that had $3.87 gas. That was one nice thing about leaving Washington was that the gas got cheaper.

We never had rain while driving the entire trip except for a few freak random drops that seemed to happen to fall on our windshield alone until we hit Jacksonville, Fl where we lived before. Suddenly all the rain we could have had during the trip fell in about 15 minutes. Some one in front of Scott slammed on their brakes and I prayed that no one would hit me from behind. I wished the rain would stop because we were about to go over the Buckman Bridge which is 6 lanes wide and very long and curves up into a high arch. This bridge always intimidated me on a good day and now it felt like I was driving through a car wash. I seem to remember a truck or car falling off the bridge into the St. John's River below and that is something that always freaks me out! The rain eased up (after the bridge!) and then we continued on to St. Augustine where we arrived about 4pm local time. (We are 3 hours ahead here). Opa took our picture in the driveway looking tired and Celina with her Orea cookie goatee. It felt so good to stop and rest and to know the 7 days were done.

The only regrets about the trip were that we didn't have time to see the Badlands, the Mammoth caves or (sniff!) Laura Ingalls Wilder's town of De Smet, South Dekota. I saw the exit signs but we miscalculated and it would have cost us something like 300 miles when all was said and done. We also saw signs for the Corn Palace but again time was against us. Maybe next time. Some random things we saw along I-90 include the head of a metal steer and it's tail some feet away, some giant metal blue flowers "growing" out of an old cement mixer, a giant green dinosaur and a human skeleton walking a leashed skeleton of a Tryrannosaurus Rex.......things that make you go hmmm. No world's biggest ball of string though.


The neighbourhood here is a retirement community and they trend seems so be that if you are over 65 and own a small dog, you're in! Well, Opa has a small dog and we walk her twice a day and it seems that we are celebrities here. People call to us from their yards or stop us on their walk and ask "Is that John's dog?" Yes it is we say and then they say " Well! You must be his kids!" and then they compliment our girls and welcome us to the neighbourhood. Everyone is very friendly and that is nice.

Well, I hope this posts properly and I will try and get some pics up soon as soon as I figure it out again.