Okay, so now that I am feeling better, I am going to tell you about our Road Trip! It was truly a wonderful experience, except right there at the end. I do wish I could back in time and urge my family to WEAR MASKS even though we would be the only! people! doing so! but I cannot. 

The best thing about the trip, by far, was spending so much time with my husband. He was so relaxed and cheerful and fun – all the things I love about him. All the things that the stress of his work chips away at on a normal basis. 

We had planned to take turns driving – we had six consecutive days of five- to seven-hour drives there, and five consecutive days of pretty-close-to-seven-hour drives on the way back. That’s a lot of driving for one person. And I DID drive. But my husband admitted that he spent the entire two hours I was in the driver’s seat staring at the speedometer, willing it to rise to the level HE is comfortable going. And we had multiple tense conversations where I expressed fear at passing someone and he would say that I should only pass when I was comfortable! and neither of us enjoyed that. So! From then on, he did nearly all of the remainder of the driving. 

We used pretty much every single thing I told you I bought in this post, and a few of the things that I was considering at the time and ended up buying. PLUS we also bought a fidget snake that mbmom11 recommended. Used and LOVED, I should say. The only thing that went unopened was the game of Loaded Questions, which my husband put into his backpack and then wouldn’t allow us to remove. So none of us even knows if we would have liked it. 

The one thing that I wished we had but didn’t was a travel laundry bag. We kept stuffing our dirty clothes into random shopping bags or those dry-cleaning bags that hotels clip to the hangers in the closet, and the bags filled up more quickly than I would have thought and the handles kept breaking and it would have been very nice to have a dedicated bag for it. (I am really weird about NOT mixing dirty clothes with clean clothes, so I recognize this wouldn’t be at the top of everyone’s list.) We were able to wash laundry at my parents’ house, for which I am VERY grateful.

Carla loved the road trip journal and the travel atlas. I’d say that she loved the atlas a little more than the journal – it seemed to have more easy breezy activities and fewer essay assignments. If I were a better planner, I would have allowed Carla to open the journal a day or so in advance of our trip, and talk it through with her. But oh well. 

Even though we didn’t play Loaded Questions, we did try to find license plates from all 50 states. My husband made the rule early on that semi-trucks do NOT count, which made it really tough. (One of the last states we got was Maine, and SO MANY trucks seemed to be from Maine!) In the end, the only two states we didn’t get were Delaware and Hawaii.

We DID get a cooler and we did USE the cooler, but only because we had it, not because we really needed it. In fact, for the first few days we didn’t use it at all and I kept asking my husband WHY we’d bought it. On the way home, though, we stopped at a little bakery and got some cute little cakes and put those in the cooler for two days before we had a chance to eat them, so it did come in handy in the end. 

Speaking of food: I didn’t try to stick to the keto diet. Not even a little. (Note: It would have been fairly easy to do so if I had wanted to, I think. Most of the gas stations had Quest products and Whisps and little packages of meat-and-cheese and sometimes even Keto cookies. The reason I didn’t try was that I didn’t WANT to.) (Also, I weighed myself when I got home and I weighed EXACTLY THE SAME as I had when we left, which was highly disheartening.) I found that I often opted for the little veggie snacks when we stopped at gas stations – I ate carrots and ranch as well as a little tray of carrots, celery, and spinach dip with great gusto. But I also ate lots of chips. I unintentionally went on a Ruffles kick and tried several of their new (or new-to-me) flavors: Spicy Dill Pickle, Lime & Jalapeno, Flamin’ Hot BBQ. I don’t know that I LIKED any of them, but nary a chip crumb was left in any of the bags, so… I didn’t NOT like them. I drank a LOT of Diet Mountain Dew. One day, on a whim, I got a bottle of regular, full-sugar Squirt which was MUCH too sugary and only tasted of childhood for the first few sips. Yuck. I ate at my all-time favorite fast food place THREE times (I get a large potato oles with a side of nacho cheese, and I ask for a second little empty nacho-cheese cup to fill with hot sauce, and then I dip the oles into the hot sauce and then the nacho cheese. HEAVEN.) and ate fries from multiple McDonald’ses and Arby’ses. I would be okay if I never see a Subway Spicy Italian sandwich again. My husband found THREE Super Mega Candy Stores on our route, and he and my daughter had so much fun ogling all the candy and choosing what they wanted to buy. I forced Carla to eat some lettuce one night and tried to get tomatoes and fruit into her at least a few times, but mostly she subsisted on chicken nuggets and fries for two straight weeks. Her favorite gas station food stuff (besides morrrrrrrre candddyyyyyyy) was Babybel cheese. Oh! The Trader Joe’s popcorn I got before our trip was… not my favorite. No one really loved it, sadly. And I had bought a second bag in a fit of panic about not having enough if it turned out to be the best thing ever. Oh well. Fun to try.

We also ate at a LOT of restaurants. More than we have eaten in over the past two-ish years combined, I think. Part of my husband’s in-depth planning for this trip involved researching fun places to eat, and it paid off. We went to a lot of breweries. I really grew accustomed to my nightly pint of local craft beer, to be honest. By the end of our trip, I was DESPERATE for something other than brewery food. I love burgers and fish and chips and salad with grilled salmon and whatever else you get at every brewery across the country, but I started craving enchiladas smothered in hot sauce or chicken vindaloo with a side of chana masala or red curry with shrimp or Brazilian braised pork with avocado crema. FLAVOR that is not Grilled or Fried. We went out for a LOT of breakfasts. I don’t LIKE breakfast, so I got tired of that in about the time it takes to scramble an egg. The last place we went to was not my kind of place – cramped, order at the counter, bus your own table. The silverware was in big canisters in the little cramped space between the tables and kitchen, and several of the forks I pulled out had crusted food baked into them. The mug they served my husband’s coffee in had multiple chips around the rim. My husband thought it was CHARMING and had CHARACTER but I hated it and I hated my artisan avocado toast and I was kind of a brat. But it was just the one bratty morning, and I think I pulled myself out of it okay, so I am going to give myself an overall rating of Good Breakfast Sport.

We listened to two books on the drive. When Carla was watching her iPad or listening to her own collection of audiobooks (I think she was re-listening to Socks and to the Gooney Bird Greene series, both downloaded from our local library), my husband and I listened to There, There by Tommy Orange. It was, overall, a compelling and eye-opening read/listen. The audiobook was well done, with a multi-reader cast to help differentiate between the multiple narrators. But the subject matter was so very dark and sad. And there was SO MUCH cursing, which I don’t love but don’t normally mind too much – but it made me uncomfortable with Carla right there. Not that she doesn’t know most of the curse words. Not that a few overheard curse words can hurt her in any way. We FINISHED the entire book, which felt like quite an accomplishment. When Carla was taking an iPad break, we listened to the fifth Harry Potter. I wish we had listened to more of it; I don’t think we even made it halfway through. We listened to a lot less music than I thought we would. Mainly, I think, because we were so often in areas with no cell service, so our music choices were limited to a downloaded playlist on my husband’s phone. It’s a good playlist, but he’s heard it a million times, and honestly there’s only so much Drake I can deal with. Next time, I will suggest making a playlist in advance of the trip.

And there WILL be a next time. It went so well that we all agreed we want to do it again. We may not go on the road for two weeks straight again (just taking the time off is tricky for my husband), but we definitely are no longer fearful of lengthy, multi-day car trips. Maybe we’ll go to Canada, next time. 

The best days – even those that included the most time in the car – were those where we woke up early and were on the road between 7:00 and 8:00 am. That way, we could get to our day’s destination before dinner, even if we ended up stopping a couple of times along the way. I also found it most useful when we could walk around for a bit before or after dinner. Despite being in the car for up to seven hours a day, I still managed to get in 10,000+ steps most days. 

My favorite state to drive through was Wyoming. I’d only ever been to Jackson Hole before, and that was in the winter. Well, wait – I did go to Yellowstone some years ago; but I can’t remember if that was the Wyoming part or the Montana part. I think Montana. Anyway: the geology of Wyoming is stunning, and so changeable. We would be driving through plains, and then suddenly mountains would loom up around us. And then we were in a canyon surrounded by jagged rocks. And then rolling badlands. And then plains again. The Wind River Canyon was spectacular – everywhere a breathtaking view. Plus, the highways were fast and crowd-free.

We went to a rodeo. We saw Mount Rushmore. We bathed in hot springs. We fished. We spent a LOT of quality time together. I got to see my best-friend-since-sixth-grade and my brother and my niece and BOTH sisters-in-law and my parents. 

We covered nearly 4,900 miles. My poor car announced that it was due for maintenance somewhere along our journey home, and I understand exactly how it feels. But it was truly a wonderful, beautiful experience.