road tripping in the usa

  Alright!  We are ALMOST done, people!  Let's put this road trip recap to rest.  ;) After our Bear Lake reunion (and after being away from home for over 2 weeks), we were all ready to just get ourselves home.  We had initially planned on breaking the drive down into 2 days, with a stop in Denver for the night, but after doing some thinking and figuring, we decided to just push through and knock out the drive in one go. So, on Saturday morning (Day 16 of our trip) we loaded everyone and everything up and hit the road. Other than a necessary middle-of-the-night stop at a rest area in middle-of-nowhere Kansas, it was a pretty uneventful drive.   {I could tell Scott was starting to fade around the 2 AM mark (and I have terrible night vision especially while wearing my glasses, so I wasn't fit to take the wheel), so we pulled over and let him sleep in the car for about an hour, while I hung out with Alex and Isaac outside in the dark.  It was an experience...

Fun fact: Bear Lake "has been called the Caribbean of the Rockies" for its unique turquoise-blue color, which is due to the refraction of calcium carbonate (limestone) deposits suspended in the lake.  Also fun fact: Bear Lake is awesome!  I think I can safely say that everyone in our family loved every second of our time up there.    :) The occasion for our epic family gathering this summer was Scott's parents' 50th anniversary.  Gordon and Janice looked into a few different locations to hold our epic bash, but Bear Lake is what they ultimately decided on and I'd say it was an excellent choice.  I think the thing that made it so much fun was that we ALL stayed together in one giant house.  The kids were in heaven essentially having sleepovers every night with their cousins and it made it really nice for us adults to also have plenty of time for visiting and catching up while the kids were doing their own thing.   {Spoiler alert -- one of those "th...