First Week Recap

Saturday September 1st.: We finally left our house at 3pm and drove the 5 hours to Roy's parent's house in Kennewick, WA.  We saw Roy's parents John and Karen, his sister Mary, and Uncle Harry and Aunt Joanne. We slept there for the night. We drove for a total of 242 miles.  Roy and the kids went to church Sunday morning with Roy's parents.  Ellie and Hollie stayed home and packed up to leave.

Sunday September 2nd: We left Kennewick, WA and headed to Spokane, WA.  Only 167 miles today.  This was supposed to be our original first stop.  We couldn't miss seeing our friends the Fix Family.

The Boys rode bikes.

The girls talked and laughed.

Kim and Hollie creamed Roy and Bryan in a perfect hand of pinochle. A double run in spades and two jacks of diamonds.  None of us have ever seen this dealt before!

We love the Fix family and can't wait to go back.

Monday September 3rd: We traveled 278 miles from Spokane, WA to Garrison, MT.  We stopped for lunch along the way and discovered that the awesome new slide out drawers that Roy made me were a bit overloaded and heavy and the door catches didn't quite hold them closed.

That top drawer had 3 gallon size glass jars in it with rice and oatmeal.

The oatmeal spilled all over the place.

The rice jar actually broke.  Roy spent the next hour cleaning up rice and glass and oatmeal.  We were really thankful for our mini shop vac!

This is also the park where Roy and the kids played in the river in Idaho.

We saw a beautiful Montana Sunset through the smoke filled sky and had our first dinner together around the trailer table.

Tuesday September 4th: We went from Garrison, MT to Sheridan, WY for a total of 414 miles.  This was a very smoky drive.  We did some shopping at the Butte, MT Walmart and saw the "Lady of the Rockies" as we drove by. And we now know why they are called the Rocky mountains: Lots of rocks! This was also Ruthie's birthday.  I am glad we celebrated before we left, as today was nothing special.  We also plan to celebrate with family in October. No pictures taken today.

Wednesday September 5th: We traveled from Sheridan, WY to Wall, SD home of the famous Wall Drug for a total of 307 miles.  We stayed at a campground that was walking distance from Wall Drug and went there both evening and the next morning.  Along the way was the park where the kids went fishing in the stream.

Driving is a lot of hard work for Roy.  It makes him stressed and tired.  Especially since the entire time he is driving his brain is trying to figure out the best speed to drive to optimize gas mileage.  Our van has the ability to shift into manual transmission mode,which is very handy when you are towing.  It also has lots of gadget info like what your tachometer is reading, what your current gas mileage is and so on.  This makes Roy's brain do weird things like constantly shifting between automatic and manual and between the tach reading and the gas mileage reading, and makes his mouth yell out lots of numbers like "45 miles per hour in 4th gear at 1400 rpm gets 9 miles per gallon".  Of course he expects me to write all these numbers down as he is yelling them out.  Let's just say that I am very grateful for Rudyard Kipling's story "The Jungle Book" on audio tape; that distracted him for a while. :o)

[As a side note, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle book is NOTHING like Disney's Jungle book.  That is one of my least favorite Disnay movies and we all enjoyed listening to the book.  If you have never heard it, I recommend it. Disney does it such a disservice,]

Thursday September 6th: We went back to Wall Drug the next morning and spent lots of money on tourist trap items.  The kids had fun looking at all of the crazy statues, pretending to ride on stage coaches and jack-a-lopes, shooting guns in the shooting gallery, and asking if they could buy everything there.

Next we drove through the Badlands of South Dakota, which is kind of like a minature Grand Canyon.

Then we found the old sod home for which I already blogged about and posted lots of pictures. But here are some more.

Then Ellie needed to figure out where we should go next.

She chose the corn palace, even though it was already closed.  She still felt the kids should see it.

Now came the hard part of a long day.  We have a dear friend who lives near Sioux Falls, SD.  We really wanted to see her, but it was getting late.  Usually we would have found a campground by now and settled in for the night.  But she was willing to meet us at the camp ground, and we hadn't seen her in a while, so we decided to push through.  We were so glad we did.  Kim Bucher is the type of friend where you can just pick up where you left off as if you see each other every day. All the kids had fun playing uno and we had fun catching up and encouraging each other.  As always, I wish we had had more time to spend.  Life is all about relationships.

 Roy tried to take our picture.  Caleb thought he would help.

She has two girls that are close in age to Jackie and Mary Anne, and she is in the process of adopting 3 more girls.  She said, "I feel like a Swart!"

We drove a total of 346 miles this day.

Friday September 7th.  The days are all starting to blur together now.  Everyone is tired and tired of driving. Ellie hasn't been sleeping well.  Caleb has frequent night mares.  Katie Marie keeps falling out of bed, or something that makes her up in the middle of the night.  Mary Anne's constantly interrupted sleep makes her tearful.  She feels like she is getting sick.  Never the mind!  Get up, pack up, and get on the road!

We traveled from Sioux Falls, SD to Cedar Rapids, Iowa today for a total of 408 miles.  Today is the day that God gave us a double blessing.  We have friends that moved from Arizona to Cedar Rapids named Jeremy and Brooke.  We were looking forward to catching up with them.  When I called Jeremy and told him we would be in the area, and could we see them, they said we could stay at there house, and by the way, his parents were visiting too.  WHAT??  His dad is the pastor of the Calvary Chapel that we went to in Arizona.  This is the church where I started the preschool. This is the church where we adopted Steven from.  This is the man that was instrumental in Roy's love of the Word of God.  We have deep respect and love for John Higgins.  This was a huge treat for both of us, but especially Roy.  It was great to have both John and Shauna love on our kids like they were their own grand-kids.  John prayed over each one of them.  He told Jackie that he remembers dedicating her to the Lord.  That was an amazing tearful day.  The whole church had prayed for us during that horrible pregnancy and there was not a dry eye in the place during her dedication. God is so good to bless us in so many ways, then and now.

 Jeremy, Roy, & John

Jackie, Shauna, & Ellie

And this brings us back to Saturday again.  One full week of traveling.

Saturday September 8th:  Roy somehow gets us all up and out the door by 8:30 am, despite another late night of visiting by everyone. We are behind schedule and he is bound and determined to get us to our first destination tonight so that we can rest on Sunday. We traveled from Cedar Rapids, IA to Rising Sun, Indiana for a total of 502 miles. Our first 500 mile day!  We are camping in a camp ground that has a pool, and a pond for fishing, and grocery stores near by.  Time to rest up, restock, and play.  Next up is the Creation museum and Niagara Falls. Stay Tuned.

~Hollie