road tripping in the usa

  { a rather fitting Pioneer Day image }  So I brought my "real" camera on our epic road trip...and quickly realized that it was going to be more hassle than it was worth to lug it out and take pictures, while keeping tabs on kids and hauling around all of our stuff.  There were less than a handful of places that I actually whipped the Rebel out, and Nauvoo was one of them.  { Spoiler alert -- by Day 3 of our "journey," I officially packed the camera away and stuck with my cell phone for the rest of the trip .} I don't usually blog on Sundays these days, but with it being the 24th of July { "Pioneer Day" -- a state holiday in Utah, because it's the day the first group of pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake valley }, I thought putting up the rest of my Nauvoo pictures was apropos.   As we set off on our own trek across the plains, I couldn't help thinking time and time again about those early church members and pioneers (some of whom were my own a...

  When last we left off, we were arriving in Nauvoo, Illinois for our first overnight pitstop of the journey.  It is here where we learned our first big lesson of the trip -- make sure the kids have eaten { preferably a real meal } before endeavoring to do any kind of activity.  Especially one that might not be seen as "fun" for certain children.  Another lesson learned on the same evening -- rigidly adhering to the planned "itinerary" is a recipe for disaster -- or at least, meltdown city.  Also?  As I've said before, framing is everything.  Here's how our time in Nauvoo played out...  { Two thumbs up for the accommodations on our first night -- Woodruff Hotel } The first thing on our itinerary in Nauvoo was to check into our hotel and then head over to the Visitor's Center to learn some church history stuff and check out what activities were there for us to do that evening.  In hindsight, if we would have driven over we MAY have had less of...

  Back in January (late at night) our family had a great idea to embark on a family road trip this coming summer.  Fast forward about 5 months later to the end of May, we finally started planning for this epic trip out west.  We had already decided our final destination would be Utah where we would spend time with friends and Family.  However, we still had to finalize are pit stops along the way.  In the end, after about a day of work we chose these places to stop at along the way till we got to Utah: The Lincoln Presidential Museum, Nauvoo, Sioux Falls, The Badlands, Mt. Rushmore (We went there on the one and only 4th of July), and Martins Cove.  MY favorite from this bunch was defiantly The Badlands.  We stayed the night there and it was really fun to play on the rocks there.  After The Badlands, our view out the window of our car was basically just rolling hills and windmills (lots of them). Once we finally got to Utah we just had too much to d...

  Alright.  Here's the deal.  I'm worried it's going to take a couple of MONTHS to recap everything that has happened over the last couple of weeks!  Since I like to go big or go home, we pretty much packed as MUCH as possible into the 17 days we were on the road.  This trip has been in the works almost since the beginning of the year, and we've been planning and prepping for it accordingly.    On the road!  Everyone was super excited to get going.  :)  Those 5 dollar headphones from Target sure were a life saver while they still worked.  ;) Ethan found almost half the states' license plates in the first 3 hours on the road! { I found this free license plate bingo printable on Pinterest .} The genesis of the idea -- for an epic, Great-American-Road-Trip-style trek -- came from an Instagram account that I follow.  I don't actually know this person in real life, but she lived in New Orleans (my hometown) for a while after I had a...