I’ve been away from the blog for a while – trips to the cabin, visiting relatives, taxi service for the kids, and we just returned from a two week family journey and road trip!

The first thing that I want to recommend to you and your families, is to plan a road trip together.  OK, I say that after the fact, because, to be perfectly honest, I was a little worried how the two weeks would go.  I kept having flashbacks to my own childhood family road trips, fighting with my little sister in the back seat of the station wagon.  There were good memories, of course, but I also remember the seemingly endless hours gazing out the window watching the world go by, not being able to read for fear of throwing up from car sickness.  Then there were the sing-a-longs, the alphabet game, the licenses of the states game (which we played this time too), and fighting with my sister again.  ”He touched my side of the seat!”  ”No I did not.”  ”Stay on your side!”  ”Stop touching me!”  ”If I have to stop this car…!”  Well, fill in the rest with your own happy memories.

Anyway, thank goodness for books on tape, or in our case, books on CD.  19 hours, yes, that’s 19 hours of “Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince.”  Can you say quiet and peace all across South Dakota?  Then more peace and bliss in the back seat across Wyoming into Montana, then Montana all across Wyoming into central Colorado.  And then, just as the reader finished the series, and my fears of unrest and growing hostilities from the back seat began to arise, the portable DVD player came to the rescue!  Thank you Pixar and Disney, you’re the best.

Now before you think, wouldn’t it have been cheaper and easier just to stay home and listen to a book and watch movies, think about driving by all of those Wall Drug signs for miles and miles before finally arriving at this temple of Americana!  Can you say, “over priced trinkets and food?”  Well, I can!  And so can the kids!!!  Then there was the excitement of driving into the Black Hills.  Rounding each corner with glimpses of Mount Rushmore in the distance.  Driving through the Wildlife Loop in Custer, through the Needle and up and down the switch backs.  Getting caught in a Bison traffic jam and being faced down by a huge bull Bison, who, in the words of Melissa, “snorted and snotted all over the road at us!”  Then there was the slow and bumpy two hour drive up the dirt road and mountain valley to Christikon.  Every turn opening up a new vista of beautiful mountain views, with the roaring Boulder river always close by, seething down the mountains to the valley from which we came.  ”Oh give me a home, where the Buffalo roam, and the deer and the antelope play….”  We lived it, baby!

 

 

 

Now don’t get me started on the Sunday traffic jam on I-80 heading out of the Colorado Rockies toward Denver.  And, no offense to my Husker friends, but Nebraska isn’t the most titillating drive I’ve ever been on.  But all in all, a great road trip, and that’s only the time we spent in the vehicle.  Stay tuned for the Claussen Gubrud, “Diners, Chuckwagons, and BBQ too!”