We flew out of Idaho and through a few hours of Nevada before crossing into our 5th state: Utah, making a bee-line for the Bonneville Salt Flats!

It felt a little other-worldly being surrounded by the nearly-blinding acres of white salt crust. There wasn’t much relief from the 95-degree beating sun but we were inspired to frolick and flaunt our superhero powers. Next came stick-horse races and donning of bird and butterfly wings, and other general tom-foolery.

The frolicking fortunately only resulted in one bloody nose (Aven’s first- from the hot dry air?), but no bloody knees or elbows or other body parts amazingly (how I don’t know!). Aniya even tried out gma’s travel potty in the isolated emptiness which she seemed to enjoy.

Sorry (but not really), we couldn’t help ourselves with more perspective opportunities:

After seeing the Great Salt Lake and heading through Salt Lake City, Katie got a surprise visit to her childhood home in Sandy Utah! She was overwhelmed by the flooding happy memories of walking where she learned to ride a bike, made bike jumps in the culdesac, and remembering racing the flash thunderstorm rain across the neighborhood…flashing back nearly 30 years is quite a trip!

Road Trip Stats:

• Total Miles Driven: 1,199
• Total construction sites driven through: 16 (two times we sat for 20-25 minutes to get through).

On our 2nd day, we chopped off the corner of Oregon and ventured down the Columbia Plateau into Idaho. Following the Snake River valley at the edge of the plateau offered unbelievable scenery and a new time-zone!

We scored the unabridged “Undaunted Courage” book on CD- Lewis & Clark’s detailed journey from Gma & Gpa on our way. Do you think we can get through the 20 cd’s before we get home?

We hit the Oregon Trail interpretive center atop a desert hill near Baker City OR. The hot wind didn’t cool down the 100 degree temperature as we checked out a bunch of real covered wagons. Thank goodness we weren’t traveling at the speed of the wagons (2mph pulled by Oxen).

It was the epitome of stretching our legs as we summitted the blistering sands of Bruneau Sand Dunes in Southern Idaho. It felt & looked a bit like the Sahara desert – 105 degrees, windy, and huge piles of sand (the tallest sand dunes in N. America). It was so hot, the kids may have shrunk a little.

Note: The photo above was not photoshopped!

Finally we wrapped up the day in Twin Falls, Idaho where we visited the Shoshone Falls at sunset.

Road Trip Stats:

• Total Miles Driven: 747 (maybe we should have taken a 747).
• Liters of sand emptied from our boots: 2
• Total wind turbine propellers seen transported on the highway: 3

And it officially begins–our first day of our massive road trip adventure. The kids certainly haven’t done this before & we’ve never done it in our own country (we drove about 2k miles in Scotland w/ my mom & dad a decade ago).

I had a morning meeting with a client in downtown Seattle, so Seattle was technically our first stop. It worked out great, as Katie has been dying to take the kids for quite some time to Ye Olde’ Curiousity Shop on the Seattle Waterfront. Seeing two mummies, shrunken heads, a two-headed calf and other awesome novelties was a great start to the trip!

Our first day was a light travel day, considering our end destination was Gma cassie and gpa dick’s house in Pasco where we’d driven to a million times. Since we are in road-trip discovery mode, we decided to extend the drive and visit a place we’d never been before: the Ginkgo Petrified Forest Park where we not only saw petrified logs, but Native American petroglyphs and a saber tooth cat skull (incorrectly labeled as saber tooth “tiger”).

We also drove through the Columbia River Gorge, which was a first for the kids. Gorge-ous! Reminds us of Dave Matthews concerts!

We ended the day at gma Cassie and gpa dick’s for an amazing tostada feast with homemade tortillas! Yum! With armfuls of fresh garden veggies we are ready for days on the road.

What we forgot to bring: pillows, utensils, all our music cd’s, and travel potty (yikes!).

Stats:
miles: 269
Aniya naps: 1
Dustin coffees: 4

Not much to see here yet, but starting tomorrow, the road trip begins. We expect to share lots of cool photos and stories while on the road.

If you look at the map page, you’ll see we have a pretty aggressive road trip ahead of us!