Michael Goes West: On Our Way

We left Iowa the day after Christmas. Sadly, we didn't have a lot of time to spare. We had to get to Arizona by Saturday at the latest because we knew Clark had to go back to work the first or second, and we needed plenty of time to unpack and attempt to settle in.

This was probably the longest stretch. We were "hung over" from Christmas and family time and I wanted nothing more than to just curl up and go to sleep, but we kept goin'. I'm actually rather proud of myself for this. If you remember from the first post, we were both driving. While Clark's job entails lots of driving and he's pretty accustomed to it, I am not. I used to love road trips, but six hours was usually my max of driving. Having a ten hour day with our two year old in the car... it was definitely a challenge. Here was our route.

I think the days of driving before weren't that bad because we were going to family. Knowing we were driving into the unknown afterwards was a little intimidating. It's not that I wasn't excited... I was just all nerves. The funny thing was Michael woke up the morning of the 26th and said, "Ready to go. Dada drive the big truck, Mama drive the car." It's like he knew that we were going somewhere important. He was ready... or he was just used to our routine of two days to stay, and then hitting the road again.

But before we made any hotel stops, we made our way to Lawrence, KS to visit my grandparents. I'm lucky if I get to see them once a year, so it was so wonderful that it worked out for us to see them. Although Michael was a bit of a grumpy gils, he managed to enjoy spending time with them after settling in a little bit.

(Please excuse the quality of the pictures, they were taken with my phone.)

Afterwards, he was pretty much done for the day...

until we had to stop for dinner and McDonald's was the only food option. Let me tell you, traveling is rough. I know you can make healthier options, but it seemed almost impossible with the route we took. Needless to say I'm making up for it now!

He didn't eat anything except the fries. Our child has yet to venture into trying chicken nuggets... or, really, any meat other than tuna.We made it to Ponca City, OK. It wasn't quite our goal. We had hoped to make it to Oklahoma City... but I was just too tired. I needed to stop, and so we did.

But I made up for it. The next day we drove all the way to Albuquerque, NM. Which, by the way, isn't exactly a party. It seemed like we hit so many stretches of nothing. It was beautiful, but definitely different than what I'm used to. Michael, bless him, did a little better the next day. We kept telling him, "We're going to the big house!"

It really seemed to be catching. Just wait until you see where we finally landed!