This summer has been remarkable. We drove across America to visit many church historic sites and famous landmarks. Apparently Abbey has been thinking about this trip for many years and she felt this year is about right where the kids are now old enough where they can understand the places we will visit and remember it. They can also sit in the car for long periods of time and are pretty self maintained as we travel AMERICANA.
We were brave and decided to drive our 13 year old 2004 Toyota Sienna over 7,000 miles across 17 states in 27 days. The van's odometer was over 197,000 miles when we arrived home. The trip went without a hitch! The most important part was that the Air Conditioner worked the entire time.
For this trip, Abbey planned various places where we will be sleeping in: places like camping grounds, cabins, friends' homes, and hotels. We would bring our car top to haul the camping/sleeping gear, a cooler to store food to eat on the road and at camping sites and enough water to keep us going, and our reliable Garmin GPS. She also planned where we would stop for gas, grocery stores like Walmart, and pit stops so we can rest or stretch our legs.
As Abbey was making final plans the last week before departure, it was also end of school too where there were lots of ceremonies and parties to attend. One of them was Brennan's Honor Society induction banquet since he did so well in his grades. As a reward, Abbey bought him a Nintendo 3DS XL Galaxy special edition. Well when he got it, he played all day long with Clayton. Abbey made a bold move and told the kids there will be no electronics on this trip. She was truly disappointed at the amount of time the boys are spending on their portable game console, so the last day before we left for the trip, so she made that decision and the kids didn't dare to whine or complain. That was a shocker to everyone, however it truly was a blessing. Instead, Da brought a lot of books and magazines in the car for the trip. So during the entire journey, the kids read the books, magazines, played card games, actually had conversations with each other, and took lots of naps. And when we arrive at places they would explorer and learn about the exhibits and ask tour guide questions too! (instead of wanting to go back to the car, hotel, camp to play their games)
It has taken Da over three weeks to clean up all the nearly 10,000 photos he took during the trip and finally has time to start posting them.
Below are the photos to our first stop: Kirtland Temple. For the most part, that's the scenerio in the car: they're either sleeping or reading or actually talking to each other.
Crossing through Pennsylvania and Ohio, we encountered large Amish communities still traveling with horses pulling buggies. Then we had to stop by a Sheetz for their yummy shakes.
We finally stopped by Kirtland Visitors' Center and Temple. There's definitely a lot of history at this site.
John Johnson Home. The senior missionary was not only very knowledgeable but also very entertaining to the kids!
Dairy Queen was one of the stops we ate since there's not a whole lot of places we can eat. Their ice cream and shakes are really yummy; their food, not so much.
