Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Still not there yet.

We're not McDonald's people. But when you're in the middle of Wyoming and you need a place for kids to run around, fast, McDonald's will do.




Afterward, we found we accomplished our goal. The boys were pooped out. We brought out the portable TV for the first time in the trip. We try not to use the TV the whole trip b/c it's way too boring for Theo and I to just listen to kids shows we can't even see. But, come day two late afternoon the boys were pretty restless. They totally zoned watching TV.
See:
On our road trip last year we saw parts of these windmills being moved as "oversized loads." It took us hours and hours to figure out in the world these things were. Now we can see where many of them were placed.
A pretty train.
I scrapbooked in the car. I had to do something for hours and hours.

Meanwhile we watch Wyoming gradually turning into Utah.


Pretty, and yet, we're still not there yet.

On our way to Utah...

The goal was to make it to Nevada by night fall. In far western Nebraska we made a potty break in a rather desolate area. Across the street I found this parking lot filled with old vehicles. I thought it looked like something out of Ben's "Car's" movie.





Theo joked we should take this plane and we'd be done with this trip. Haha.
Can't drive through Nebraska without seeing tons of corn.

Southern Wyoming isn't all that different than Nebraska, for the most part, but there are a few special things you see signifying terrain changing. Here, you can see some large rock mountains.
The hills in Wyoming have large snow fences running along them. You can see the Rockies in the distance also.

On the I-70 you do pass through a little bit of mountains; the change of scenery is refreshing, and I love pines, so I always get excited. In these mountains we saw some real cowboy's rounding up their cows. The dust was flying up from the ground, and they were swinging a lasso. I could not have been more excited to see these folks on the side of the road, right there, in real life, but I did not get to the camera in time to share it with you.
More pictures of the Rocky Mountains truck on towards Utah.
Wyoming has a huge population of antelope. Theo and I, the nature buffs we are, love seeing these creatures roaming out in the middle of no-where. This one seems to have spotted me:
More to come...

Motel Hopping

These boys had some serious energy trapped up inside them. They immediately began hopping from bed to bed in the hotel room. We thought, you know what? We're going to need them to get to sleep real soon here, why not let them get wild.


Ben pretended he needed Hunter's help to get up out of this "hole."
Hunter copies everything Ben does, so he had to have Ben help him.
I tried to get them to show me how they'd sleep in the bed.

Now, this will crack you up. This is actually how they slept! When we woke up we found them both like this:

Oh, and Theo thought it was hilarious they had an ashtray with a no-smoking sticker on it. LOL!
Much more to come...

Off on our road trip!

What could have possibly kept me from blogging for almost a month? A lengthy extended vacation to California, of course. We dropped our beloved Laura Lu Jane off at her auntie's house in Chicago, and the nest day we headed west, bound first for Sacramento. We left in the wee hours of the morning, and our first pee stop was at the Iowa-80, World's Largest Truckstop. Daddy took Ben in to pee, and momma and Hunter snacked, and people watched.

They renovated the WLT, and we were impressed. So clean, and they have everything a roadie could need. My bathroom stall had dog trivia painted on the walls artistically. They had Iowa artifacts on display inside, and souveniors galore.
Hunter begins to mess up the once clean car; he's covered in crumbs.
Here I'm watching the boys in the rear view mirror as they tire for their afternoon nap.
Iowa road:
Mid afternoon I sample a food I normally pass-up: Combos. I was so hungry at the time, I decided combos were good enough to count as a balanced meal.
Dad clears bugs from the windshield, and I snap a picture b/c I love him.
We stopped for the night in Lincoln, Nebraska, and are dinner at the speechie-stop, Great Scott's. It's a little cafeteria that sells a few different types of food. We slept at the country's cleanest Motel 6. Seriously, this place is immaculate, colorful, and brimming with hospitality. When we're only stopping for the night to sleep it doesn't matter too much where we're crashing.

I'm trying to do these posts with as few pictures as possible, so many, many more to come. :)