Adventure for the Long Run

Hom e Sweet Home...Park Sweet Park Well, now that we’ve been home a week, and I caught up on all the posts from our trip, I wanted to put together a summary post that attempts to capture the amazingness of the experience we had. I am writing this post over some wine that I bought while we were visiting Mount Rushmore 😊 Before last summer, I had never traveled in an RV and really had not had a great interest in visiting our national parks. I am 110% on board with RV and national parks life at this point—it has truly changed my outlook on vacationing and life! I have to say much of my positive experience and feelings are due to my amazing husband and his vision, planning, and execution of two trips of a lifetime—and many more to come! We are very fortunate that our chosen careers allowed for this type of trip and we do not for a minute take that for granted. We also hope that our kids are having unique and meaningful life experiences that will shape who they become and h...

Day 42: Friday, August 9, 2019 I woke up earlier than I wanted so that I could try to get a short run done in the oppressive Phoenix heat. I really love the desert (and missed it), but I did not miss running in this heat! Sean got right to work at pulling everything out of the RV storage areas and getting things ready to clean and pack. I worked on packing clothes and kitchen stuff and we had things pretty well done on the inside of the RV by 8:30 am. I did not forget to pull down our magnet collection that we’d acquired over the course of the trip! By then the kids were waking up and I had promised to take them to breakfast and some errands so we headed out and left Sean to his organizing. We had a yummy breakfast at Panera and then got a few things at Old Navy before going to Barnes and Noble, which was a highly anticipated stop on the trip. The kids had been reading and logging books all summer for two different summer reading challenges so they had earned a ...

Day 40: Wednesday, August 7, 2019 We got on the road around 8:30 am, heading back into Arizona—finally!! It was a pretty uneventful drive through some not so pretty parts of northern Arizona. We made a quick gas and food stop and arrived at the Holbrook KOA around 1:30. I had forgotten that we were going to change time zones again, so we actually gained an hour back! We got set up and settled and then had an easy lunch of leftovers. We had no major plans for the afternoon so we drove into town to see the exciting Holbrook, AZ. It actually sits on the original Route 66 and there are old motels and restaurants showing the relics of time past—a little depressing actually. We did get to see the Wigwam Motel, made famous by the Cars movie. That was fun to see! We returned to the campground and the kids spent some time at the pool with Sean while I got some work done. I joined them for an hour or so and then we got back to the RV for our evening activiti...