The Long Road Trip

Laramie, Wyoming














Still in good spirits...















Dad's got pizza

Don't worry, the car is stopped.

Creepy truck stop / restaurant















After yummy mexican food

Our big adventure started on Friday, Dec. 21st - we left around 9 or 10am, and were stopped in Laramie, Wyoming because of a blizzard. Not a good sign. Laramie is only about 2 1/2 hours away from our house on a summer day! Well, we hung out at Q-Doba for a few hours and when it looked like waiting it out was a lost cause, we decided to go ahead and call it a day. On Saturday, we left Laramie, and it's freezing sub zero temperature of negative 14 degrees at 6am. The road was open and remarkably clear until we got about 30 miles west of Laramie... then we found out what all that road-closure stuff was really about - the unforgiving Wyoming Wind. After several stressful hours of blowing snow and icy roads, and a little stop at a donut shop with the Wyoming locals, we made it through Wyoming unscathed.

We stopped in Salt Lake City, Utah for lunch - Logan was in full meltdown mode at that point. So although we were looking for something familiar, we wound up eating at a fast food restaurant we'd never heard of out of desperation for a place to get the child out of the carseat. The funniest part was calling our parents at every stop - everyone was nervous about the weather and the road trip because we had the baby, so we were constantly reassuring the mothers (mine, Eric's, and my sister Jen) that we were all still alive and well and heading west.

We stopped for dinner near the Salt Flats of Nevada to give Logan a break. There was a Mexican Food restaurant there - oh my goodness - was it good food! Of course, it was the perfect setting for a Stephen King book - super creepy trucker stop and restaurant - but nothing supernatural or freaky happened - while we were there anyway.

Around 8pm, the snow picked back up. After 14 hours of being on the road, that was the last straw, and although we were only about 4 hours out from our destination, we decided to go ahead and make it a 3 day trip and we stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada at a casino for the night. The next morning, we took our time getting up and about, had a sit down breakfast and got Logan in the car just in time for a long nap. He slept all the way to Reno, where we decided to stop at See's Candy at the mall. We paused there for about an hour so the baby could have some stretch time, and finally made it to the house that afternoon around 1pm. What an adventure!