Cross Country Road Trip (part 1)

I have a brother in North Carolina and Cory’s best friend is also out there.  I have been wanting to make a trip out there ever since they both moved out there and now that we are going to move to Australia in a couple of months, the chances of being able to make the trip were getting more slim.  So Cory finished school on August 8^th.  So on Monday, August 13^th , we started toying around with the idea of making a cross country road trip out to North Carolina.  That is 32 hours of driving!  32 hours!!!  With a 5 year old and a 3 year old and a 10 month old!  That is complete madness.  We thought about it, and it started sounding really fun!  I thought, what a good way for us to see a lot of the United States before we leave them behind for 5 years.  So Monday night we got the idea, by Wednesday morning we were on the road!  We are crazy!!!!  But it was kind of exciting to just get an idea and do it!  The spontaneity makes me feel so free!  Cory ran out and bought two Kindle Fires for the girls, we packed and tried tying up any loose ends before we left.  So far

far the trip has gone fairly well! 

We started by going through Wyoming.  Here is our first potty break, only 2 hours into it at the Little America somewhere in Wyoming. 

We're an awesome looking group!

 

Everyone on their devices in the car. 

Lily on her Kindle Fire.  She was obcessed with Angry Birds, she even said so herself.  Those exact words-no joke.

Ava on her Kindle Fire. 

Even Will had his own Super Duper Computer.  He was quite pleased with it. 

Cory had headphones in probably 90% of the entire drive time so he missed out on all the noise in the back.  And boy did he miss out! :)  I think he started the trip listening to Huck Finn and ended it with a biography of Benjamin Franklin.  Sounds like we missed out also! :)  I think he probably got sick of all the taps on his shoulder and then me saying, "Ava/Lily has to go potty." 

Party in the back! 

 

Ice cream break in Cheyenne.

Boy, it was windy!

Ava trying to balance on one foot.  So cute!

Will stretching out.

The girls having races, getting all that energy out!!  So glad they had a golf course there for us to use! :)

 

Made it to Nebraska!

Shows what an exciting day we had when this dinosaur was such a hit!

Look at all the corn!  I think the entire state is full of corn! 

 

We stayed the first night in Kearny, Nebraska.  The girls were so excited to stay in a hotel!  They were hilarious walking in!   We swam, of course, until about 11 at night!  We are party animals! 

We got up bright and early the next morning and hit the road.  We got through Nebraska and into Missouri in pretty good time. 

We decided to stop and go to Liberty Jail.  It would probably be difficult to keep little children reverent during the presentation regardless, but little children with hours of bottled up energy was a nightmare to keep reverent!  But I am still glad that we went.  Lily had lots of questions about Joseph Smith and bad men after that!  We had some good discussions.

 

We continued on to St. Louis, which was a cool city to drive past. 

I was trying to get a good shot of the arch in St. Louis.  Nice pull ups, you're probably thinking, but the arch is back there, look hard and you can see it! :)

Shortly after we pasted St. Louis a wicked rain storm came out of no where and continued for four hours!  I kept expecting us to drive out of the storm area at any time, but we never did.  I also kept expecting it to let up a little, but instead it just continued being a torrential downpour for miles!  The best part about the storm was the thunder and lightning.  I have never seen anything like it in Utah, that’s for sure!  It would take up the whole sky.  It was purple and pink!  There was one huge lightning and almost simultaneously an enormously loud thunder cracked through the sky!  It was amazing!  Even more amazing was we could smell the electricity in the air!  It was pretty cool, just not the best driving conditions!  But we made it alive to the city of Metropolis, about 5 miles from the Kentucky boarder. 

Metropolis, home of SuperMan and Wonder Woman! 

Lily as Wonder Woman

Ava as Wonder Woman

Lily as Superman

Not sure why, but this picture makes me laugh, do Cory and I not look hilarious here? It's cracking me up!

Cute little Super Will!!

The next morning we hit the road again.  We drove through Kentucky and on to Nashville.  We stopped in Nashville and visited this really weird replica of the Parthenon on Vanderbuilt University's campus. 

We decided to skip the Museum inside and hit the playground instead.  We had learned our lesson from Liberty Jail. 

Lily swinging

Will swinging

And Ava swinging, sweet look, Ava!

 Is this not the cutest thing ever?  We had to get proof of Cory being a fun dad!! 

Some sort of Liberty Bell??

Cute little children's garden

There were these weird looking benches all over, so I thought we'd get a picture in one. 

But I still couldn't get everyone looking!
 

 From here we went on to our first destination, the Kingsford's!  We thought they lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, because that is where Tyler works.  But it turns out they live in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  So what is one more state to add to our list of states?  So far we had been to Wyoming, Nebraska, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and now South Carolina.  We rolled in about 9 pm after stopping at the Taco Bell where Ava fell in love with quesadillas!  She kept begging for another one the whole trip and we didn't get her another until the last night of our long trip!  That is all for now stayed tuned for part two, our stay with the Kingsford's!