Road Trip 2012- Part One

Most of you who have been following me and my family or who know us, know that Tom and I started a long time ago to try to visit a new state every summer.  I don't think that we have quite done that exactly how we planned it, but you know how sometimes life gets in the way and other things take higher priority over vacations.

This year we were invited to go along on a road trip with my parents to California.  My dad is from California and I was born there and spent the first 8 years of my life there.  So it was great to get the chance to go back and see some things that I remember and to also catch some things along the way.

The first big stop on our trip was to the Four Corners Monument.  None of us had been, but my husband, who is a very devout map reader saw that it was along the way and since we were ahead of schedule, he convinced us to go.  The monument is the border of the states, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona.  It really is just a cement plaque that you stand on with those states on it.  But there was some shopping involved too.  There are many Indian reservations out there, and they make lots of really neat jewelry.  We also got a T-shirt with the 4 corners states on it.  We always get T-shirts when we travel.

Tom, me, Jaycee, and my mom and dad posing at the plaque.

Jaycee was pretty much taking a nap when we got there and wasn't too into the heat and shopping for jewelry, but she was pretty good about just hanging in there even though her routine was non-existent.

There were a lot of these types of mountainous formations out there.  I thought this one looked like the Prudential symbol.

Saying cheese while cruising in the van.

We divided the trip up into 2 days and spent the night in Arizona.  Then we headed for LA.  The road to Los Angeles was long.  I think we just were anxious to get to our final destination and that part of the trip was mostly through the desert.  Not the greatest landscape for sightseeing and really hot when we made any stops.  Also gas was higher in the desert than anywhere else.  Most of the time we could find gas for a pretty comparable price to what it was before we left Kansas.

This was the first part of our road trip.  We were fortunate to have a DVD player to keep us entertained, well Jaycee at least b/c we only brought kid movies.  So even when she was asleep the adults watched the kid movies too.  We were also fortunate that we didn't run into much traffic at all.  I will get to part two as soon as I organize that part of our trips pictures and figure out which ones to weed out.  We took like over 250 pictures on the whole trip, and I am still sorting through them to decide which ones I really want to keep for my vacation book.

the Ehrlichs