Thank you for joining us on our Family Road Trip blog. We are excited to share with you along the way things we see, places we go and things we experience. We have been planning this road trip since Dec 2014 and our jobs have gracious enough to give us the time off and the flexibility to work on the road. I will first tell you a little of how we started our trip.
We were mostly packed and ready to live out of a borrowed 12 passenger van with a bed built in the back. We were planning to leave Friday afternoon Aug 28 however, plans changed on Thursday night when we purchased plane tickets for the next day to Cedar City, UT. We woke up Friday morning and headed to the airport. Our son Solomon did amazing on his first flight even if it was only 33 minutes. We picked up our rental and drove to Mesquite, NV to look at a travel van. A 2006 Roadtrek Adventurous RS. Around 11:00AM we arrived and what a beauty it was. We met the very nice retired couple who were selling the van and got to know them over coffee. She is originally from North England and they met in Greece where they lived on their 50' sailboat sailing all over the Mediterranean. Solomon was still doing amazing smiling and cooing at our host. After 30 minutes of chatting and getting to know each other we went to look at the beautiful van. Instantly Christopher and I were both hooked but had a little bit of uncertainty only because we had never done something like this before. The van had everything you could ever want with plenty of room to not feel crammed.
Solomon and I spent most of our time in doors with our host, because it was already 105 degrees outside, and I really enjoyed spending time with her and their really cute dog. After a good while of looking things over, calling a trusted friend and Christopher taking out all the small details with our host we told them we would leave for a little bit to talk things over and let them know within the next hour or so. We were gone for 30 minutes, looked at each other and Christopher said "yes to the van" (a little reference to the wedding dress shopping tv show "say yes to the dress" for those who might not know). We went back to the couple and told them we would love to buy the van! We were so excited we could hardly stand it! We went to the bank, sat there a really long time, and left owning the van.
Since it was Friday and we had planned to leave that day for our 5 week road trip we really wanted to make it to the closest Utah DMV in Hurricane before they closed at 5pm to get a temporary tag. Well, Solomon and I got to the DMV 7 minutes before they closed, grabbed a number in line and Christopher (with all the paperwork) got there 3 minutes before they called our number. It was looking like we were not going to be able to leave until Monday because of the tests and paperwork we would need to get a license plate. Christopher told the lady our plan and it was unbelievable.... She said "we never do this but I will give you a 60 day temporary tag". Woohoo! That meant we could leave Saturday, only one day behind schedule. We got home around 11pm, did some work and went to sleep.
We began our Saturday with cleaning out the van of all the wonderful extras the couple gave to us and started packing up our things. Some family members came over to look at the new arrival and even took it for a test drive. We unloaded the van we had already packed and loaded our new van. By 1PM we were ready to leave. We had to run a few errands and then it was official, WE WERE ON VACATION!
The full moon was so big in front of us with a blood red color the whole night. We stopped around 11:00PM in Bennett, CO, pulled in between the big purring diesel trucks at a Love's truck stop, laid down on our beds in the back and all fell right to sleep. It was a great nights sleep!
We woke up around 6AM this morning so we decided to get on the road for our next 9 hours to Tulsa, OK, our first official stop. We got ready in our van, even brushed our teeth, and after getting some coffee we were on the road. We have had a lot of one lanes so far, due to construction, but there has been no problem with still going the speed limit. The van purrs like a kitten and runs beautifully. We have a happy baby, good music and our Sunday is starting out very blessed.