The Tangrens

Today was a head down and drive day again. We stopped a few times to take pictures but other than gas and food we just drove. And the boys watched.

This morning while we were getting ready for the day Noah said “I want to go home!”  We said “Ok we’ll go home today.” And he said “NO!”  We were confused and asked “Is the beach house home?”   “Yes” was the reply.  I have to say I would not be opposed to that at all, as long as we could put a door on the shower. J

The day was largely uneventful until we stopped in Grand Junction for lunch. We walked into the Wendy’s and saw some family friends who live in Utah crossing over the mountains the other direction to a family reunion!  What are the odds of that in the middle of Colorado?

When we were on the home stretch of Highway 6 Hyrum needed a rest stop so we stopped. Now as you transverse the country you tend to become a connoisseur of rest stops and this is not a good one.

Little more than a port a potty. Not fabulous. A few miles down the road we found this rest stop

MUCH better. 

They even had a little museum of sorts about the trains in the canyon. 

The trains that Derek's uncle, grandfather and great grandfather all drove. Wish we would have held out for this one. Derek's favorite rests stops along the trail were the ones in South Dakota. They all had these gigantic concrete tee pees adorning them.  And wouldn't you know it that the one rest stop we stopped at in South Dakota didn't have one.  But we did get a picture.

As we finished our trip I began to think of how it went, what I thought worked well and what I wish we'd done differently. Here's what I've come up with

Of all the laminated games I made for them (those being eye-spy, road trip bingo, licence plate game  and slug bug) the the one they liked the best was by far the slug bug, which we just used as a color car game.  The problem we found with it ( which I should have noticed before I printed it) was that there were three or four shades of green car and two shades of orange car.  We were assigning other colors to these cars. :)  The other ones will be better received when they are older.

Another roadtrip winner ( at least for Noah) was the magnetic letters. Noah has been fascinated by the fridge phonics lately so a week or so before the trip I put them away and packed them with a dollar store cookie sheet.

Voila!  He loved it and it kept him busy for a good long time. Plus he's learning! BONUS!!  I also packed every magnetic thing I could think of that they might have the slightest interest in playing with because IT'S MAGNETIC and has a less chance of rolling around the car for the duration of the trip.  I saw ideas for printing copies of well known games laminating them and playing them with magnetic game pieces but I didn't feel right about the copy write laws.  This worked just fine anyway.

Another fun game that evolved during the trip ( that you heard a  bit of in the video ) was the airplane walkie talkie. One time Hyrum got upset that he wasn't getting some thing that he wanted and so Derek told him that all he needed to do was say ( "Curch  passenger to Dad, passenger to Dad, come in Dad") And it became a thing.  It made driving fun.

And as SICK as we ALL were of fast food by the end ( although the boys would NEVER admit it) getting a new toy everyday (despite their LAMENESS) did wonders for their happiness in the car.

It was really good to have a week of staying put in the middle of the three week vacation. It gave us a chance to just be and not be constantly running from one place to the next. That being said it was really fun and effective to have destinations along the way for the majority of our trip. It made it fun for all of us.

One of the best things about this vacation was that it was completely flexible. Granted had we planned ahead we may have been able to get a place to stay in Yellowstone park or at least near to it but if we'd planned ahead we couldn't have done the SS Badger car ferry which was GREAT!  I liked the rough outline of where we wanted to generally be when but none of it was set in stone and it was wonderful!  Thank HEAVEN for Derek's smart phone and a shout out to Derek's contact at Marriott who hooked us up. Holla!

But more than any of that the thing that worked the best on this vacation was being together (minus not being able to sit beside my husband while he drove) We were just completely together. No where to go no place to be. And we all loved being together. It was pure bliss.

Things I would have done differently would be to have more strings to clothes pin papers to. We had a lot of papers that we'd be referring to again and again. ( the map they colored state by state and the games we played along the way) It would have been nice to have them accessible to the boys more easily.

Something you don't think about on a vacation is fingernail clippers. but let me tell you that on a three week vacation you NEED to think about fingernail clippers and bring them

Noah had long fingernails and used them

Yeah, ouch!

But despite all of that this vacation was perfect.


As we drove past the giant windmills near the mouth of Spanish Fork canyon there was a stab of regret that it was almost over. So many people commented that we must be happy to be home, but really we would have happily gone another week. In fact we really wanted to. We were not ready to be home yet. The boys traveled SOOO well. I'd planned a lot to keep them entertained but they made their own fun too

Happen to love that. So do the boys

When we walked into our house it totally felt weird. Didn't feel like home, at all.  But here we are, home. It's going to take a good long time to adjust.