We are still alive...

It all started when we left home about 4:30 a.m. Friday. We expected the kids to fall right back to sleep and sleep for several hours while we made fast time on the road. Well, we made good time, but ALL the kids stayed awake...the whole day! Ok, Natalie had a mid-morning nap and Konrad had his regular afternoon nap, and of course Dominik slept most of the time, but so much for a quiet escape...they were all so excited to be starting on our adventure!

I had thought we would have to stop for bathroom breaks more frequently than Dominik's feeding times, but it didn't really turn out that way...because when you're traveling in 110+ degree weather, you don't tend to need to use the bathroom very much, even if you're drinking water like crazy. I had packed a lunch with the plan for us to eat in the car, then stop for the kids to play somewhere. But with the weather as scorching hot as it was, plan B was a cheap lunch at a casino (when you're in southern Nevada, casinos are more common than anything else) and kids running off steam in the air conditioned banquet hallway while I fed Dominik.

It was so hot (how hot was it?) that when we got into the van again after lunch, with the air conditioning on high, we started smelling exhaust coming out of our air conditioning vents. Tom's nose was still stuffed up so he couldn't smell anything, so we were depending on my sense of smell to figure out what was going on: when the A/C was on recirculate, we smelled intense exhaust; when it was on outside air, we didn't smell much of anything.

Providentially, we were only 20 minutes from a town with a Ford dealership (after driving miles and miles with only casinos in sight, this was a definite blessing). Tom asked for a safety check on the van, and we waited in air conditioning while they checked us right away (much better service than we are used to in the big city). The conclusion was that it was so hot (how hot was it?) and we had been going up slight hills, that there was hot engine smell coming out our A/C vents, but there was no leak in our exhaust system. Praise God! So we were on our way after about a one-hour stop.

The kids were having fun with their new-for-the-trip toys: Lukas has a key-ring version of the game Simon that he keeps on his reusable water bottle; Natalie's playing alphabet games with a Leap Frog toy; and Konrad had LIghtning McQueen and Mater to play with. Lukas is also keeping a diary of our trip, writing down things that he sees each day: thermometer at Baker, cattle crossing, tunnel, gully, windmill. But the most important thing for him on this trip is seeing the different stop lights: he's swapped his old fixation of pipes for stop lights.

Our last stop before the night was historic Cove Fort in Utah: I fed Dominik on the grass while Tom took the kids to explore the fort. Then it was off for the most beautiful leg of our drive that day: eastern Utah to Green River, Utah. The landscape was especially dramatic with the setting sun (yes, we arrived at our hotel before the sun set!) and we even saw "purple mountains majesty." Tom and I both had the same thought that if we had brought portable DVDs, the kids would be missing all the beautiful countryside that they were really enjoying, along with us.

We were certain the kids would collapse in exhaustion in our hotel room, but they were still wired and ready to swim. Thankfully (!) the pool was not in service at the time, so we didn't even have to make a decision. We had obviously intended to arrive much earlier in the day, but with our unplanned stop about the van and the other stops taking just a little longer than planned, it was a very long day. And then there was a time change we forgot about when we first made our plans. We reviewed our itinerary for Saturday and decided to pick up the special activity on the way home and just make a bee-line for our friends home in Colorado.
But Saturday is another day!