Part One.

Eleven, E-Lev-Ven, that is the number of days we spent on our road trip to California and back home. Most of those eleven days were spent in the car, like, basically eight were in the car, EIGHT!

Those eleven days were planned to be an adventure in the car where we would see and do things along Route 66, camp at the Grand Canyon, take in Disneyland, visit Eric’s grandma, play in the ocean, see a Hollywood site or two, and then drive home the same route to see what we didn’t see or take a different way and see new things. Also planned, a breakdown moment for each of us, car sickness, exploding diapers, whinny boys, crying baby, backseat fights, yelling…lots of yelling and low expectations. 

Let me tell you, we nailed it, almost perfectly!

The day we left…



I had a scheduled hair appointment that I could not miss. It had been four months since my last color. Which is another story where I learned that my grey hairs aren’t THAT bad. So we planned to leave after that. 

We got going around noon with Oklahoma City as our end destination for the night. We started out great.  Within the first half hour Emerson was asking how much longer and Rhys was asking to stop at a restaurant. Then, this…

Afternoon naps.

Our first planned stop…

Did you know that Tow Mater from the Cars movies is based off a real tow truck?  Yay, me neither. After hours in the car our first stop was in Galena, Kansas where there is a gas station turned ice cream shop that is home to Tow Tater. 

That’s Tow Tater. I came across this guy on Pinterest while looking up places to stop on Route 66. We couldn’t pass this up because both of the boys love the movies and what better way to make a kitschy drive a lot more fun for a 4 and 5 year old. 

We were too late to have ice cream but the kids didn’t seem to care. They ran from car to car to gas pump to window checking everything out. 

This was a great first stop that helped set the tone for the fun to come. 

We hoped back into the car and made our way to Oklahoma City for the night. We watched the sun set on the horizon while the kids fell asleep and enjoyed the sounds of the radio in silence.