As many of you now know, we recently moved from VA to CA. It has been quite the experience but we are finally getting settled in and I am able to share it all with you.
The first leg of our road trip consisted of my husband and I driving from Washington, DC to Arizona where the two P’s were staying at Gigi’s house. Let me tell you, there is nothing like your babies being in another state to motivate the drive! We drove through 10 states, a total of 2300 miles in just two and a half days (56 hours to be precise)!
I am not a fan of road trips, in fact, up until this point I had not been in a car longer than 12 hours and all of my roadtrippin’ had been completed in the southwest. Well that all changed with this move! Oh, and did I mention I was 23 weeks pregnant at the time???? Here is our trip in a nutshell:
Unfortunately, our drive started out with an accident that resulted in us sitting in 2 hours of traffic to make it 30 miles! Once we got out of that we were headed southwest through VA and into West Virginia.
*Did you know? (or really did you care?) that Orange County, VA is the home of James Madison-thought I’d give you a little history lesson.
Let me just tell you, the drive through VA/WV is NOT fun…it is all through the mountains and the freeway is a toll road! Yes that’s right, there you go winding your way down a steep hill when what do you find at random intervals along the way? Yep, a person in a booth wanting your money.
Next we were on to Kentucky! The plan was to make it to Louisville before we stopped for the night and we ended up staying in Corydon, IN just outside of Louisville…it was almost 3 am!
In the morning we completed the 4 hours through Indiana, Illinois and into St. Louis, MO where we would be stopping to hang out with my husband’s Grandma and Brother.
Santa Claus, Indiana-for any of you Christmas Freaks (like me) out there!
St. Louis Arch-Gateway to the West!
Busch Stadium-Yep, we are Cardinals Fans!
After chatting for a while and playing a very competitive game of ‘Phase-10′ we set out again, with the hopes of making it to Amarillo, TX before stopping for the night.
We headed southwest through Missouri where I had the pleasure of meeting a state trooper while passing through Rolla, Missoura! (hee hee, insert southern Missouri accent here). I was given a warning, made fun of by the hubs who had been sleeping in the passenger seat and we were back on our way…with Cruise Control set!
OOOOOOKlahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the planes…ya, I got a little annoying with my songs for every stage of the road trip. Anyway, just warning everyone out there who may also be driving through Oklahoma…it is another one of those ‘toll road’ states. This time it cost us $12 to make our way through! And to satisfy any of you with a dirty mind, here’s where we stopped to fill up on gas 
We made it about 100 miles from Amarillo when we decided to stop in Shamrock, TX for the night. At this point it was around 2am and the next day was the home stretch into AZ so we wanted to get some sleep. If you all are planning a road trip through the middle of no where, may I suggest one thing…stay the night at a Holiday Inn Express, they are new and clean and located right off the freeway in just about every po-dunk town along the way!
Amarillo by morning….this was it! we were on the home stretch and I got to see my P’s that evening! (and it also happened to be July 3rd which meant we got to spend the 4th with the babies swimming and grilling by the pool with all the fam!) This leg consisted of nothing but a bunch of Wide Open Spaces (yep, I sung ‘em all!) so I’ll just show you in pictures…
Stinky Cows in Texas
New Mexico State Line
New Mexico Desert
Arizona State Line
Saguaro Cactus-such a beautiful site since I new we were soooo close!
And we were there!!!! Of course we still had to drive from AZ on into CA with the P’s but we had a week of hanging out at Gigi’s and the 5 hour drive was nothing compared to what we just completed! And this is what was waiting for me in AZ:
My Little Firecrackers!