^^ Everywhere we went, the kids were obsessed with the maps they give you.
^^ It's been a while since I've been out in the south-west, and I was constantly in awe of the beauty of the land.
^^ I'm glad we stopped at four corners. Connor in particular really enjoyed it and has talked about it numerous times since. But it was so incredibly hot. There was no shade, or breeze for that matter. And you had to wait in line to take a picture. We asked a lady to take our picture and she did a totally horrible job. Whomp, whomp, whomp.
^^ I looked up Horseshoe Bend on the internet. It is actually pretty far north of the Grand Canyon, but I kept thinking about when would we ever be over here again, so we decided to detour and go to it. It was 108 degrees out. There is no shade and huge signs warning of heat exhaustion at the trail head. But, we decided to go for it and see what happens. The way there went surprisingly well. A couple minutes after we got to the overlook, the wind picked up and before you knew it, we were in a sand storm. If we didn't have the kids, I probably would have waited it out. But, we had to make the mile trek out of there (uphill) with the sand whipping us and the kids heads covered in blankets. I wore Isla in the ergo on my back and half lead/half drug Connor, while Ian drug Callum in the stroller. It felt pretty miserable. But, it was a beautiful sight. I just wish we could have enjoyed it more.
^^ I think my hair and the kids covered faces do a good job telling about the wind!
^^ We stopped at Flintstones Bedrock City. It is about 30 minutes away from the Grand Canyon. The reviews of it online are mixed. Sure, it's a bit rundown, but it really is a fun place and the kids totally were into it.
We travelled just over 2500 miles in 10 days. Though we had our journey mostly mapped out, we did plan our stops while driving. I looked for things online that looked quirky and cool to stop at and Ian was always down for whatever.
The one thing about traveling so far with kids is bathroom breaks. Often, we would find ourselves out in the middle of nowhere with no safe place to stop for miles and a kid would say they need to use the bathroom and we would be begging them to hold it until we could stop. My personal favorite were the poop breaks that happened at least twice with us sitting on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Easy and good food was scarce, so I was particularly excited when we got back into the land of the living (i.e. California) where In-n-Out and Chipotle is all over.
I noticed in pretty much everywhere besides California, people were rather chill drivers. It was pretty funny because literally the minute we passed back into California, defensive and crazy driving was all over the road again.
The kids did really well in the car. Especially the older two. They really didn't do much complaining at all, as long as we kept them fed and stopped for them to go the bathroom. Callum, on the other hand, would max out at about 8 hours of travel a day and then nothing, I mean nothing, could keep him from letting us know his displeasure in still being in the car. Thankfully that really only happened a couple times.
This trip was really good for me. It scratched my wanderlust itch a bit. Though, me being me, I am already planning out the next big adventure I want to take. Seriously, I am a bit addicted to travel. It's just so fun for me to get out there and experience different things. Different people. Different foods. Different everything. And I really hope our kids grow up loving to travel and experience new things as well.
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