Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Road Trip Week 5: Heading home

Since we took such a late road trip this year, we had to hustle home in time for the kids to start school. No fun detours along the way, but we still made our quick fun stops.

Wyoming is really boring. Or at least the route along I-80 is. Not a single science center or zoo for us to visit. Boo. The only think I found online was an old frontier jail that we could do. The girls were not excited about that. I think Caroline's exact words were, "I'd rather have NO fun stop than stop at a jail." Alrighty then. We decided to stop at Target in Cheyenne instead.

My kids are good shoppers and good window shoppers when they need to be, so going to Target actually IS fun for us. But the Target in Cheyenne is even funner than usual.Check out the cool Barbie dress-up screen they had:

Nurse Caroline

Nurse Brandon (ha!)

Princess Whitney.

We stayed our first night in Sidney, NE. Our next fun stop was the Lincoln Children's Zoo in Nebraska.

Where Brandon found a panda mask that he HAD to have.

We loved this zoo. Very entertaining.
We got there in time for a penguin feeding.
They played a game where you got a paddle with a penguin's name on it.
You counted the number of fish your penguin ate.
If you counted correctly, you got a free ride on the train.

Yippee! We had the train all to ourselves.

They also had a butterfly pavilion.

Those butterflies were tricky to catch,
but we had fun trying.

They also had a little petting zoo area.
We fed the llama.

And cute baby goats.

That night we stayed outside of Kansas City in Independence, MO. The next day we stopped at the St. Louis Science Center. That last couple of times we've driven through St. Louis, we visited the Arch. It's so huge that it demands attention! But since we'd done it before and Whit is not fond of heights, we decided to try this instead. 

It was fantastic.
We want to go back and spend more time!

This was called Mindball.
You put electrodes on your head and supposedly
whoever is the most calm will move the ball 
to the opponents goal. It was fun.

Awesome giant ball-moving contraption behind the kid.

The kids could even help power the machine.

The night we made it to Louisville,
where we stayed with Uncle Alex and Aunt Stephanie.
It was Uncle Alex's birthday!
So fun to celebrate with him.

The next day, we headed HOME. Yippee!

That evening was Brandon's open house at school, so we were on a tight schedule. We wanted to stop at the Clay Center in Charleston, WV, but I was afraid we were going to miss the open house. So we had NO FUN STOP. Blah. I hate that. Driving seven hours without a real break is no fun. Luckily, we were really excited about getting back to our own house and beds and toys. That made it easier.
Home sweet home!
And we even made it in time for the open house.

A couple of random comments.

We pulled up to a rest area and right as I was getting ready to park, a man was walking by, took his keys out of his pocket and I saw money fall to the ground. We hurried to park, got his attention, and gave him his money (all ONE dollar of it!). When we came out of the restroom we found this under the wiper:
"Please give this to your daughter. Thanks for being so honest!"
Isn't that nice?


The cheapest gas we bought on the trip: $3.19.

We actually saw gas for $2.99 (!) in southern Virginia, but didn't need to fill up right then.
Most of the trip, gas was around $3.49 or so.

Whoa! That was a road trip! Over 6000 miles in a little over a month.
The van did GREAT. Not a single issue. We hit the 150k mile mark
since we've been home and it's still going strong. My van rocks!

1 comment:

  1. Next time you pass through St Louis you need to go to City Museum. It is wild!

    ReplyDelete