The longest drive ever

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Day 1:
Left Orem a little after 2pm.  Arrived in St George around 6:30.  We stopped in Beaver for a bit at the Cheese Factory.  Got some ice cream and some cheese curds.  Hunter slept most of the way.  He fell asleep on our way to get the cars weighed (we had to have a preloaded and loaded weight for the move, that way we got reimbursed for what we moved), that was around 1pm, he slept almost all the way to Beaver, so till about 4.  It was AWESOME!  Such a quiet ride as Hunter HATES the car and makes sure we all know he is not loving it and he rarely sleeps in the car.  Kids were excited to get to St George and play with friends there.  We stayed with our really good friends there, so glad we took the extra time to see them!!

Day 2:
We left St George a little later than I would have liked, due to signing papers for the house, but we were still able to make it on the road by 10am.  We drove down to AZ through Hurricane, like if you were headed to Lake Powell.  We stopped at the Navajo Bridge.  Holy cow was it hot!!  It is just a little stop on the way to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, but well worth it.  It was beautiful. I was really surprised that there really was not much between Hurricane, and Flagstaff, AZ.  At one point we where going to stop for lunch, but there was no where to stop, nothing. Another time I really had to use the bathroom and it took a long time before we found a little hole-in-the-wall gas station to stop at.  It was all back roads, no freeways, just little highways.  Not something I am used to, I as very much use to interstates, with lots of places to stop.  Most of our trip was the back roads.  Very beautiful, and not something we usually see.

After our stop at the Navajo Bridge we headed out to the South rim of the Grand Canyon.  What a sight!  We didn't spend a whole ton of time there, but we did manage to find lunch/dinner at 3pm. (good thing we had lots of snacks in the car!)  I was surprised at how many people were there, it was packed.  We walked around at two spots and then headed out to the town we were going to stop at for the night, Holbrook, AZ.  It took us almost 3 hrs to get from the Grand Canyon to a hotel and Hunter was soooo sick of the car by the time we got to the hotel.  He was tired and grumpy!  The last 30 mins of the drive was torture for him.

Day 3:
We got up at the crack of dawn, seriously, Hunter was up at 5am.  SO early in a little hotel room.  Good thing breakfast started at 6am.  Trent took him down and sat up the computer where he could watch 'monkey show' (Curious George).  I tried to get a little extra sleep, but it just didn't happen.  I headed out to eat shortly after Trent left with the kids.

 Trent's dad and step mom drove down with us.  We couldn't have done it without them!!  They drove Trent's car so that we could be together in the van.  I don't think I could have driven the whole way.  I have some sciatic issues when I'm pregnant and my right leg goes numb, and then gets the pricklies, and stings.  It's really no fun and sitting in the car with my leg in the same position is awful!  I last about 30 mins before I start having problems.  So having their help driving the other car was much appreciated.  That way I could move my leg, put it up on the dash, and stretch it (as best as I can in the car) while we are moving.  Every night I had the most awesome swollen ankles from sitting in the car all day.

We all got ready and were in the car by 8am, much sooner than I had expected!  We stopped at a little store to get more snacks for the day, and a few other items.  Then we hit the road.  Our fun stop for the day was the Petrified Forest.  I figured since the freeway runs right through it we might as well stop and have a look around.  It's not every big, as far as National Parks go, but it was interesting and well worth the stop.

There weren't many trails, we just went to the one at the visitors center.  There was a little area the kids could dig for bones, they all loved that!

Day 3 was our longest day of driving.  I originally planned to go as far as Carlsbad, NM, but we didn't quite make it.  We drove for 10hrs.  We saw a whole lot of this:

Somewhere in NM--this is what we saw for most of the drive

And not enough of this:

He seriously didn't sleep much in the car, maybe an hour each day

We stopped in Rosewell, NM for dinner and I just decided that we'd call it a day then.  We found a hotel, checked in, and let the kids go swimming.  It was a LONG day in the car and swimming was the perfect way to end the day.

Day 4:

The last day on the road!  It ended up being a pretty long day too, much longer than I had originally planned because we didn't make it as far as I was planning.  Our fun stop for that day was Carlsbad Caverns.  The highway went right through Carlsbad, and that was where I was originally planning to stop the night before, the Caverns are about 20 mins outside of Carlsbad, so I figured it would be worth the detour.  It totally was!  It was so amazing.  I've been in caves before, but NOTHING like this.  It was HUGE.  With our National Parks pass we got to go down into the cavern for free.  There was an elevator that took us down, something like 700 ft below the surface.  It was so cool (as in cold, but it was cool too:) down there.  I was in heaven, the kids were freezing.  The whole self guided tour was about 1 1/2 miles inside/around the cavern, it took about an hour.  They had guided tours that went to another part of the cavern that we didn't even see.  It really was amazing and so beautiful.  I'm so glad we took the time to stop! 

From the Caverns we headed to San Antonio!  The last of our trip.  We left the Caverns about 1pm after eating lunch. We drove, and drove, and drove....and drove some more.  We stopped about 5pm to fill up cars and got kids a snack as there really was no where to eat, we figured we just stop somewhere in about 2hrs.  Well, there was nothing for about 3hrs.  Along the way I started to call hotels to find us a place to stay once we got to San Antonio.  It seemed like everything was booked.  We needed 2 room, 1 room for 2 nights, and 1 room for 3 nights. (Blair and Rhonda were flying home on Sunday, we wouldn't get keys to our house till Monday)  I couldn't find a place that had 2 rooms for what we needed.  So frustrating!  We stopped for dinner at 8pm at a McDonalds.  I was hoping there would be a playplace for kids to unwind, but there wasn't.  Trent ate fast and then sat in the parking lot using their wifi to see where in San Antonio had hotels available, I was just calling the numbers on the GPS.  After we all ate I got kids changed into their jammies as I knew they'd probably fall asleep (Hunter never did) and we still had over 2 hrs to go.  I called a couple of places and finally found a place that didn't charge an incredibly large amount and that had what we needed. Hurray!  So off we were to our final destination.  We pulled into our hotel in San Antonio about 10:30pm.  We made it.  And it was hot, even at 11pm!!