Ditch your beach vacation- like now!!

Ditch your beach vacation- like now!!

As I said in my last blog post we decided to turn our drive out to Cali into a mini vacation and see all sorts of things along the way. We knew we might need that time together as a family, to reconnect and remember what it was like to be a family of 5 again, and boy were we right! It felt so good to be together, even if we were stuck in a packed car where you could barely move 🙂

What a trip it was! I have to give a HUGE shoutout to my husband, as he plotted and planned the whole thing out! We asked the kids as we were planning it what they had to see and they all said the Grand Canyon hands down, so we planned our trip out around that, but man did we see so many other things.

We took 6 days to drive from IN to CA. Our first day was driving from IN to SD. We didn’t leave till 4:30pm and had 9+ hours of driving ahead of us – but it was a must do so that we could get all of our other stops in.

We did A LOT of driving, a lot of sight seeing and not a whole lot of sleeping (we lived off my mantra, “you can sleep when you die”). Here are the amazing things we saw/did:

• The Badlands: We decided last minute to stop and it ended up being one of our family faves

• Mt. Rushmore: Very cool!

• Crazy Horse: This was probably our least favorite stop.

• Devils Tower: Another fun stop that we got in just before dark… And with just enough gas to almost run out…

• Powell & Cody, WY: Spent the day in Wyoming seeing where Daryl spent 7 years growing up, it was so fun to see it all through his eyes. And we went to the famous Cody Nite Rodeo, a first for me and the kids!

• Yellowstone/Old Faithful: Nothing like seeing wild animals walk up right next to you.

• Grand Tetons: Umm WOW!

• Sandy, UT: Did our first real family hike in Utah with my family. I had no idea how beautiful Utah was, I think we were all smitten!

• Grand Canyon: We hiked about a mile down into the canyon, pretty sure we told the kids about a hundred times to make sure they stayed next to the rocks and AWAY from the edge! 🙂

• The Hoeft’s (Phoenix, AZ): We spent our last night on the road with friends from Granger who moved to AZ, it was so good for my soul to have that time with them and their family!

It was an absolutely amazing 6 days. I found myself feeling so grateful that we got to see and experience all the things we did. You really have no idea how amazing and beautiful the “West” is until you see it first hand! Here is what I would tell you…whatever you thought your next family vacation would be (the beach, another country, etc.) don’t do it until you have seen the west

Take the time and the money to see the west, it will be worth every hour in the car and every penny spent.

I mean it…cancel the beach trip you had planned…like right now!! Remember, this is coming from the girl who LOVES the beach!!

It really is a once in a lifetime trip and I am beyond grateful that our family was able to experience all that we did!