Even though we absolutely love our home, I am pretty sad that we are heading home. We have had the most amazing journey over the past 3 months that I honestly never thought would be possible to do with the kids. The coronavirus has destroyed businesses and the economy and interfered with the life we had but honestly it made our house slow down and look at what we do have. We learned to be happy with sitting still and having only each other. We learned to slow down and enjoy the little things.
Then we decided to go out of our comfort zone even more and buy a RV and go cross country. Guy had never been camping before and we knew absolutely nothing about a RV but we were willing to go and accept it all as an experience and make the best of it. We really only had a couple small hiccups along the way and other than that we are all so thankful for this experience.
We made sure to do something for each person along the way based on their interest. We also did some things that maybe someone was nervous about doing but we all did it despite our fears for the others. It really was fun and I know I got to cross off a lot of things on my bucket list. I have learned that I don’t need a lot of “things” to keep me happy but to keep my loved ones close. I also need to continue working on learning how to do absolutely nothing and be okay with it. I do get restless and feel like something needs to be done quite often.
The one thing we were surprised about from this trip was the people. We really expected to meet so many different people. Honestly everyone really kept to themselves and were respectful of others. There wasn’t any late night parties with obnoxious drunk people or anything.
We are already talking about how and when we can go back out to do another trip. So we will see what happens next. With the holidays all around the corner and Kaitlin’s wedding we kind of need to stay put for a little bit.
My favorite thing from this trip was just driving and enjoying the views. Guy’s favorite thing from the trip was sitting outside at night with the bon fire and looking at the stars. Aliyah’s favorite thing was the alpaca farm with all the animals. Eli’s favorite part of the trip was tubing on the lake behind the boat. I also enjoyed that we were able to see some friends and family along the way 🥰
Besides the national parks, museums, monuments, etc. some of the things the kids were able to experience for the first time were: tubing on the lake behind a boat, tubing down the river, hot air ballon ride, extreme ATVing, horseback riding, hiking, white water rafting, rodeos, and paddle boarding. They also learned how to play together and enjoy each other’s company (don’t get me wrong they still argued all the time). They were also able to explore and gain some more independence for themselves, Aliyah more than Eli.
By the time we get home we have been gone for 89 nights, driven 7500 miles and drove for 122 hours and 43 minutes (that’s RV driving time only). We stayed in 18 states and drove through 23 states. The United States is a beautiful country and we have only seen a portion of it. Some of it looks like a foreign land and hard to imagine we were still in the US.
Thanks for following us along on our trip and I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
