Three Days, Thirty-one Hours, Two Thousand One Hundred Thirty-four Miles

That's how long it took for us to drive from our home in Maryland to my parents home in Utah.  The last time we attempted this cross-country trip was right before we moved to Germany in 2008. Before taking to the open road we got the car all checked out. We've been driving the same van for eight years and 185,000 miles so we don't have quite as much faith in it's abilities as we used to. Once the car was given the road trip green light we loaded up the car with suitcases and snacks and set out for our first night's stop - Champaign, Illinois.

Everything was still looking pretty orderly with just a few hours of driving under our belts. By the time we made it to our final destination the van really needed a good cleaning.
Along the way the girls learned that rest stops are pretty cool. You just can't beat clean bathrooms, picnic tables, playgrounds, and wifi after hours of driving. It was always nice to get out and run around a little before buckling back up and heading out again.  That first day we drove in six states! We started in Maryland, drove through part of West Virginia and Pennsylvania, more of West Virginia, all the way across Ohio and Indiana, and finally made it to our hotel in Illinois just in time for dinner.

Our first ever dining experience at Steak and Shake did not disappoint!
Another thing we learned on this trip is that as you travel west across the United States the individual States get bigger and bigger. On our second day of driving we only managed to hit half as many states as on our first day. We drove through the rest of Illinois, all of Iowa and most of Nebraska. We finally stopped around dinnertime in North Platte, Nebraska. Jared was amazing and did all of the boring Nebraska driving! My sister Charissa and her family were driving across as well and it was so much fun for the kids to have their cousins to play with at the hotel each evening. A hotel with a swimming pool is definitely something to look forward to but a hotel with a swimming pool and cousins is pretty amazing!

Day three was a short day for our family. Charissa and her kids finished up the trip and arrived in Utah that day but the Moran family took an extended stop in Cheyenne to visit old friends. So just three hours on the road that day and then we didn't have to be in the car together for more than ten minutes at a time for a couple of days. It was the perfect break in our cross-country trip! All the fun we had in Cheyenne will be documented in a separate post because it's just too much to share in this one.

After our lovely stop in Wyoming it was finally time to complete our drive to Utah. We drove just an hour before stopping again, this time in Laramie, so Madison could take a campus tour of the University of Wyoming. After the tour we were really on our way! We crossed the Utah border just as the sun was starting to set and made it to my parent's house about an hour later.


Our time since then has been filled with family and fun.  It's nice to be around family after being away for so long and I especially love seeing our kids having such a great time with their extended family!

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