This week's experiment? Driving cross-country with two young children! Sounds kinda crazy, huh? We are actually currently on day 3 (everyone is still asleep - I, for some reason, woke up at 6:30am). Day one saw us driving from the North Bay area of California down to San Luis Obispo, CA. We got a hotel there, saw some friends, did some rather necessary shopping for things (books on cd, drinks for the car, etc) and then headed out at around 1:00 pm. This set us back a bit - we were actually suppose to drive down to SLO, visit, and then head on to Bakersfield with the intention of making Flagstaff, AZ on day 2. But, que sera sera, we are taking this trip as it comes. Day 2 saw us make it to Kingman, AZ - which is where I blog to you from now. We got a hotel at about 9 at night and thank goodness we did! I don't think the kids could have survived in the car another minute at that point!
For the most part, the kids have been well behaved. We got an in-the-car dvd player with a split screen so they can watch movies. Our eldest just had her birthday (as previously blogged about) and we bought her a Leapster handheld game thing and her Grandmother got her an mp3 player. They also have lap trays and coloring things and soe stuffed animals to keep them company. We have a cd player and got them some books on cd as well. So, you know, we have a large pool of items back there to keep them from going stir crazy.
We are also stopping relatively frequently to get out, stretch our legs, get snacks and what-have-you. I believe that this is key to keeping our sanity in the car. The husband and I are listening to the second book of the Codex of Aleria series by Jim Butcher. It's pretty awesome, though I worry that we'll run out of book either today or tomorrow and then what will we do? I know we don't want to buy another book - those things are darned expensive! But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
It is now 7am here, and I think that I need to wake the family so that we can get on the road at a decent time today - we have some miles to make up if we're going to arrive in Ohio at anywhere near our original planned date, and we can't do that sleeping in hotel beds! Will try to get on and blog at each hotel that has free wi-fi for updates.
Update: Saw the Grand Canyon. The girls were... well, let's just say that the little "museum" there was more interesting to them than looking out at the canyon. I thought it was pretty cool though. We're still doing okay on keeping the kids from going stir crazy - at least until just before we stop for the night, when they tend to get cranky. We have now not only made up all the time that we lost on our first two days, but have even gone further than originally posited for our 3rd day! We are now about 2 hours or so ahead of the game - which is awesome because I kinda didn't really think about the fact that we'd be losing an hour here in New Mexico. I mean, I realized it in a kind of vague way, but until we got to the hotel with the little alarm clock that said "10:00" instead of "9:00" it hadn't really hit me what that would mean for us in our travels. Well, luckily we're going to spend the majority of the rest of our trip in Central, and only the last day or so in Eastern, so it shouldn't cut into anything too badly - especially if we can keep making time like we've been! Did you know the I40 is 75mph most of the way (with a minimum of 65)? How awesome is that?!?
Update: We are now in Ohio! The first few days have been spent in trying to get acclimated and generally arranging things in the happy anticipation of the arrival of our things. The girls were well behaved for basically the entire trip - though being in the house with little to do seems to be wearing on them more than the car trip did. All-in-all our methods of keeping them happy seem to have worked and we all got here without wanting to kill each other too much. So, this was a Success.
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