The Great Road Trip of 2009 (mega-post)

31 hours of actual driving time (according to the GPS - not counting stops). 3.5 days. 3 rather long nights. Countless repetitions of Sesame Street, Charlotte's Web, and . Lots of snacks. Lots of pretty sights to see. Lots of boring sights to try to sleep through. Not a lot of success in that department. 2 tired kiddos. 3 tired adults. You might have to click on that map to make any sense of it...



Well, the Great Road Trip was originally scheduled to begin at 4 am on Thursday the 18th, but I didn't know that Jeremy wasn't actually considering that time; he just didn't want to shoot down our idea. We ended up staying up late the night before with some friends, and didn't pull out of Davenport until about 9:30 the next morning. Here are some pictures of us all during the very LONG Thursday of driving. This was when we were fresh...

Our first real stop: Winter Quarters temple in Omaha, Nebraska. It was so hot and humid there - I started melting immediately. :) The temple was beautiful though, and the visitor's center was really neat. Here is the temple:

Here are Reilly and Jaina in the visitor's center (after our version of the tour):

And in the car again...

This was a very long day, though the kids did fabulously for their age. I didn't take many more pictures that day for whatever reason. We had a long stop for dinner/running around in Odowollo or something (you can see what it really is on the map) and then hoped the kids would sleep. They didn't though, until the 9-10 o'clock range (they usually go to bed between 7 and 8). It was a little rough there for a bit. We got to our hotel (via Priceline) in Cheyenne, WY at about 11 pm. Of course they hadn't managed to put the crib IN the room yet, though we had called about it 3 hours earlier. So we sat in the car for another 30 minutes (with the sleeping kids) while Jeremy tried to get it figured out. Thankfully, both kids transferred well, and we all slept. More or less.

Friday the 19th

After sleeping 4-5 hours, we left Cheyenne around 7 am local time (since Jaina had been awake since about 5) and headed for Salt Lake City. This was the shortest leg of our trip at only 6 hours. Most of Wyoming was very pretty, and a welcome change after the sameness of Iowa and Nebraska. The kids were great, especially after the super-drive of the day before. Our good friends the Frandsens (who were staying in the same Holiday Inn on their way home - the Shepros were there, too!) rescued my forgotten pillow for us a few hours later, which was hugely appreciated... We arrived in SLC about 1 pm and met up with Emily and Jason (who had come down from Rexburg, ID just to see us for the afternoon) at Olive Garden and had a yummy lunch. After that we wandered around temple square (and rested on the grass while Jeremy spent over an hour meeting up to retrieve my pillow...), took a few pictures, and visited.

Here are Reilly and Jaina somewhere between Cheyenne and Salt Lake...

Emily (and her cute tummy), David, and Jason with our munchkins. Reilly was excited to see Jason and Emily, and went to Emily immediately. Jaina wouldn't even take bites of Olive Garden pasta from her... She had a hard time with all the unfamiliar people during the whole trip...

Reilly getting a lift on the walk to Temple Square.

Here are Reilly and Jaina, posing with the temple (inside the south visitor's center).

Jaina, wondering how much I meant it when I asked her not to PICK the flowers...

Playing outside the tabernacle.
When we all got tired, and as dinner time approached, we traveled up to West Haven (Ogden), Utah, to Cindy and Dustin's house. We found it with no problem (with the GPS) but Emily, Jason, and David had some difficulties (they also had GPS). :) Their house and neighborhood were really nice, and our kids enjoyed playing outside and inside. They got to "meet" cousins Kimberlee (4) and Carter (6 months) and had a grand old time. Jeremy and Reilly slept in the guest bedroom, Jaina in the walk-in closet of that bedroom, and David and I slept down on the couches. (Jeremy didn't want the kids to wake me up - he sleeps through a lot of noises that I don't) Everyone actually slept really well, and we ended up leaving a little later than we wanted to because Jeremy and the kids were able to sleep in. Cindy and Dustin fed us a yummy dinner AND breakfast, and the kids got to play outside again for an hour or so before we took off at about 9:30 am local time.

Here is Jaina out in their front yard that evening:

And both kids at breakfast the next morning:

Saturday the 20th:

This day was another LONG one. It started out kind of fun though, because we detoured through Provo. We ate a really early lunch at Cafe Rio (Jeremy and David approved - mine was tasty, too), then drove down be my old house, and circled around campus. The Gordon B. Hinckley building looks really neat. What I saw of it, anyway. It was a beautiful, overcast, cool day in Provo. I didn't know how much I missed the mountains until we were driving through. I loved living there, right at the foot of the mountains. It felt so safe and secure, and it was so beautiful! I think it's one of the few places that could induce me away from living really close to family... I thoroughly enjoyed our short visit.

After Provo, we headed down the east side of the state, through Price, Moab (really fun little town) and Monticello. Jaina took a good nap soon after we left the Provo area.

It rained on us off and on (lightly and heavily) during most of the trip that day. We stopped off for a bit at the Monticello temple. It was actually rather cold, but you wouldn't know it with how eagerly the kids jumped out and were doing laps (in Reilly's case) around the temple.

After Monticello we drove down to Cortez, CO, where we met up with Jeremy's Grandpa Jim for a snack. We hadn't seen him in a few years, so that was nice. Reilly was good to go to him right away and give him a big hug. Jaina spilled water all over me and herself, so we spent part of that stop changing clothes.

After that we headed down through the reservation towards Snowflake - our next goal. The kids were just DONE driving most of this day, but they did do well during this last part. I think they were just worn out and resigned to living the rest of their lives in a car...

The "castle" we saw. I guess it's actually called Shiprock, but we thought it looked like a castle...

Reilly snuggled up with his blanket like this about 6 o'clock or so. Such a cute little boy.

This "rock" looked like a fortress to me. Yes, driving across the Navajo Indian reservation on a Saturday afternoon/evening doesn't hold terribly amounts of excitement. We had to take what we could get. It was pretty though, at times.

And this is how everyone ended up. If only the rest of the trip had been like this! Sadly, the kids fell asleep at "bedtime" but woke up 2 hours later when it was still light outside and thought they had taken a nap...

Here we are in Holbrook, AZ, changing Jaina (and Reilly) into pajamas after they woke up.

We had thought to make it home that night, but we wouldn't even be in Snowflake until 9, so we decided we'd better stop there. We were all worn out. We stayed with Jennifer & Reggie in Snowflake and got to see their neat house and their cute kids. All of our kids were bouncing off the walls, partially because we got there so late. For some reason I don't have any pictures there, or the next day. Maybe because we were so exhausted (Sorry Jen). Between their late late naps and their sleep-deprived state, both Reilly and Jaina had a hard time settling down. Jeremy finally had to lay by Reilly until he fell asleep in Jeremy's bed (about 11:30 AZ time) and after Much screaming, rocking, bouncing, etc, he finally got Jaina to sleep (on Reilly's little bed) a little after midnight. He then slept on the floor next to her. Super dad? Yes. (I DID help with all this, I just wasn't involved in the actual success...) Jaina woke up about 4:30, and Reilly a while after, and Jeremy and I tried to keep them quiet in Cooper's room as long as possible... Jennifer made an amazing Father's Day breakfast for all of us, and we got on the road about 7 am AZ time. No lie. We finally made it to Pima about 10:30 am. What a trip! We were all SO happy to be done driving, especially our little troopers!