Our Epic Road Trip

We drove across the United States of America!  It was awesome and horrible all at the same time.  Randy's new job gave us money toward moving expenses so we could've shipped both cars and flown but we figured this would be the last time we ever have to do a drive like this and wanted to check off a few things on our bucket list.  I already gave a brief rundown of our trip in an earlier post but here are the pics of our adventures.

We arrived at Niagara Falls just before dark, thanks to the horrible traffic delays that put us 3 hours behind schedule

O Canada!

The next morning was spent at Splash Lagoon in Erie, PA

A morning on the water slides guaranteed a great nap for Parker

We changed the seating assignments around to break up the monotony  This was taken somewhere in Illinois

Eating breakfast at our hotel restaurant.  We love the Hilton Garden Hotel!

A week of hotel rooms.  We always had 2 connecting rooms which is pricey!  Thank goodness for travel reimbursements!

We finally took a break from driving on Sunday afternoon and Monday.  We crashed with the Beus family in Minnesota and had such a great time with them.  The boys got a long great and we are sad that Minnesota is a solid 20 hours from WA because we'd love to visit more often.

The boys got their wiggles out in the Beus' beautiful backyard

We need a hammock like this.  And a sword like that.

Darcy helped the boys make some sweet paper airplanes

Monday morning we spent out on the lake

King of the Tube was a popular game

Marcus got pretty good at wake boarding

Chris, the captain of the ship and endodontist extraordinaire

Yummy pizza for lunch

The bounce house in the basement was my personal favorite.  Wish we had room for one in our new house!  I miss having a basement.

Boys looking for "bad guys"

The youngest eating cheese and looking cute

That's a lot of boys!

When we first met we didn't have any kids and we looked a lot like this except I was thinner and Randy didn't have gray hair

The next morning we left early in the pouring rain and drove through Minnesota and South Dakota, heading towards Mt. Rushmore.  Randy and I were excited to see the mountain and the boys were excited to find license plates in our quest to find all 50 States.

We saw a lot of corn fields

At a rest stop in South Dakota

For hundreds of miles we saw cornfields and billboard signs for Wall Drug.  We didn't go in but drove past to see what all the hype was about

Mt. Rushmore!

We took a little nature walk to stretch our legs

This is as close as you can get to the monument

The boys climbed on every boulder they could find along the way

"Hooray, we aren't driving right now!"

Looking back at the visitors center/entrance where everyone views the mountain for the first time

Looking up George Washington's nose

More climbing.  My boys were the ONLY kids doing this.  Thankfully no one seemed to mind.

Our hotel in Wyoming had a sweet room for the boys.  They ate pizza in bed because why not.

Driving through Montana was so boring and made for such a long day

Arriving in Sammamish, Washington.  Hooray!!!!!

We stayed at a Marriott for two more days waiting for the truck to arrive with our stuff.

So that's what our 3,500 mile road trip looked like.  The boys loved all the hotels and swimming in the pools and have asked when they can stay in another hotel again without all the driving.  They are easy to please.   I managed to lose 2 pounds during the week of driving which was the best part of all. Sitting all day put a major damper on my appetite and I ordered salads every chance I could.  Other than our flat tire in Wyoming, the drive was very uneventful.  But I really hope we never do it again.  If we do, I'm going to do the driving while Randy sits in back with the kids!