Day 40: On the Way Home

When Daddy-o and looked at our schedule for the last week of the trip, and decided that we weren't making any detours, we realized that it also wasn't practical to drive almost 17 hours in one day. So, with plans to take 2 days and pretty much drive straight back, I looked for what we could do that wasn't a detour, just to break up the drive a little bit.

And a random Route 66 stop just off the freeway claimed to have some of the best Indian Frybread ever. So we stopped, even though it was early for lunch. More of a brunch. And even though Peanut has only barely stopped throwing up. At first, he wasn't going to get one, but after smelling Daddy-o's taco, he changed his mind. So they got tacos, I got a plain bread with honey, and they were so good. And Peanut kept his down, so it was all good.

Made it to Aruzona! I picked our later lunch stop at a Picture Canyon, where there was a little nature

and I could sneak in one last hike. While the boys made lunch and ate, I opted to do a longer loop than either of them felt up to.

I found lichen and went bird watching,

and got to see the petroglyphs I'd read about on this trail.

The boys came up the other, shorter direction,

to meet me at what is claimed to be Flagstaff's only waterfall. It seems like they must at least have seasonal waterfalls in other places considering it snows there and there are some hills, but maybe not? 

And then we finished driving and FINALLY got to do some real boondocking. It is so much easier to find wild camping spots in the west--we just have a lot more national forest and BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land where you are allowed to park overnight. This spot just before the CA border was perfect for the evening. Daddy-o and I went for a little walk and then we fixed dinner.

Peanut was doing a lot better, but still excited to get home. Hard to believe that this is our last night in the van for awhile.

It hasn't been perfect. For every cozy moment, we've had really hard times. For every success, we've had things go wrong. So many things have been magical and amazing, and so many things have been challenging, too. But I'm so glad we did it!

 

Day 38 & 39: Christmas Chiles

Peanut's good day yesterday may have been too much, or the eye of the storm, or something. Whatever it was, he woke up feeling pretty poor again. We made some breakfast and took care of our morning chores (filling water bottles with ice, which we do at any convenience store, getting ready for the day, using the bathroom. . . )and then started to drive.

This has definitely been a test the past few days. We've got to stay strong!

We let Peanut have the front seat, hoping to not trigger his motion sickness on top of whatever else is going on.

Made it to Santa Fe, land of the Chile Ristras. We'd decided to book a hotel as soon as we came into town and were so happy that we were able to get in right away. We thought Peanut could use a more comfortable place to hang out for a day while he hopefully recovered. So we left Peanut with the Food Network and Daddy-o and I went out for a date.

We walked into the historic section of Santa Fe. It's such a unique city.

Visited the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi.

It was beautiful inside.

And enjoyed all of the sculptures.

And the Christmas decorations--it's fun to see something so distinct from this particular place.

We got lunch at The Shed and had amazing tacos and enchiladas. It's in a cool old hacienda.

We were looking for an ornament and found these beautiful hand-crafted ornaments. This woman has been making sand art for 44 years and her designs are so intricate.

The Hilton Club Vacation Villas was the perfect place for a little recovery time. It was a great price for a one bedroom with a kitchen. 

We went to the hot tub, used the free laundry facilities, and played a few games of pool. After Peanut continued to randomly throw up through the day, we extended for another night and started reshaping the last few days of the trip. We were at the point that we just needed to be home as soon as we could get Peanut in the van again.

So, on the second day, the boys opted to stay at the hotel and watch TV (Daddy-o may have had a touch of what Peanut was suffering from because he was pretty low energy for a couple of days.) I ran to the grocery store first, to get us some food for the day.

And then, I went for a long walk and stopped by the big market, looking for Christmas gifts. Decided to get my mom a chile ristra and found a couple other small things. We didn't make it to some of the other historical places that I would have liked to visit, but we did get a taste of the southwest.

The Big 1-0

Bug had a big birthday while we were on the road. We wanted to make sure his birthday was special because he wasn't very excited when he realized we'd be in the middle of moving when his birthday came around. I spent a long time researching what we could do in TX or NM for his big day, and we promised him he could pick where we ate our meals that day. We also let him have a small party back in Charlotte a couple weeks ago. We'd done everything we could to make turning 10 a positive experience in the middle of a not exactly welcomed big change.

The night before, I decorated the car with a bunch of old birthday banners and lanterns that we've used at various parties over the year. I was going to throw out the box when I found it during packing, but then thought that might be a fun thing to bring along, and I'm glad I did because when we went out to the car the next morning, Bug was very happy to see it.

And then, all our plans came crashing down. On our way to IHOP for breakfast, the car died. Turned out the alternator we'd had to replace while at the beach in September must have been faulty and it finally gave out. Having car problems was not part of our tightly planned schedule for the day, and we were all a little disappointed, but Bug handled it well and we told him we'd get back on track as soon as it was fixed.

We were only a few blocks from our hotel, and a few restaurants, so while Daddy-o waited for AAA, the kids and I started to walk. First, we tried Hometown Buffet, but they only do their brunch on the weekends, so we ended up eating at Waffle House, and I think Bug even liked it :)

Then, we walked back to the hotel to wait. Daddy-o got a ride from the repair shop to meet up with us and we negotiated a 1 p.m. check out from the hotel so we'd have somewhere to wait. Too bad the hotel we were at was renovating their pool, and was on the edge of town, so too far to walk to any of the artsy parts of Amarillo. The kids and I went to find a couple geocaches that were right by the hotel, and then they vegged in front of the TV. For hours. Because our car took ALL DAY.

We ended up having to move our stuff to the conference room at the hotel, which luckily wasn't being used, and we sat in that room until 5 p.m. waiting for our car to be finished. What a birthday for our Bug.

As it got later and later, I kept re-planning our next couple days, trying to figure out how to fit in everything we were supposed to do, now that we were basically an entire day behind. Every couple hours, I'd have to re-do the plans. Luckily, we hadn't booked any hotels ahead of time, so we did have a lot of flexibility with our plans.

When we finally got to leave, we had to make some decisions. It was 5 p.m., we were going to gain an hour driving into New Mexico, but Albuquerque was still 4 1/2 hours away, and there is pretty much nothing between them. Which meant that dinner was 4 1/2 hours away, and we'd promised Bug a pumpkin pie from Costco for his birthday dessert, but we'd be getting to the next Costco as they closed, assuming no one had to stop for the bathroom along the way.

What ended up happening is that we pushed most of the birthday fun to the next day. We did have Bug open a couple of his presents, which were movies for the road, so he got to watch The Good Dinosaur and How to Train Your Dragon, and we ate a very late dinner at Cracker Barrel in Albuquerque, complete with a crayon to "blow out" (that's what was going on in the picture above, haha) in his dessert. (And then we rushed back to the hotel to catch the last inning of the Cubs World Series win--woohoo!)

So, Thursday brought us Birthday Fun, Take 2. First stop, The Albuquerque Museum of Natural History.

New Mexico is full of dino dig sites and amazing prehistoric finds, so I knew this would be the perfect place to take Bug for his birthday.

It was a great museum with a lot of fun stuff to see.

Love this boy's fascination with all things dinosaur.

He still plans to be a paleontologist when he grows up and he absorbs every fact he can find.

I think the couple hours we had there made up for the previous day. And before we left town, we stopped by Costco for lunch and to get his birthday pie, so the birthday was redeemed.

Then, it was time to head west. Quick stop at the continental divide, which was chilly and windy.

Then came the drive into Arizona so we could visit the Petrified Forest National Park. We didn't get on the road quite as early as I'd hoped, so we weren't able to fit that in before closing time, which meant we were still about a day behind, but we found a place to stay in Holbrook, AZ, just on the other side of the park. 

We had some amazing looking skies that evening. Such different landscaping than the south on the other side of the country, but beautiful in its own way.

Christmas Day

 Big crowd means big piles uinder the tree.

 Gratitude--the kids did such a great job picking out gifts for each other this year and both were very appreciative of the other's efforts.

 Santa was good. . .

 which left two happy kids.

And the weather was perfect!  Bean was a little dissappointed that we didn't get a white Christmas, especially when she heard that NC was getting snow today, but we were pretty happy with the 45 degrees and warm sunshine.  It's nice to get outside with the new toys.