On august 1st, we began our 5,993-mile excursion across half the country.  We went to Mindy’s house in Clovis, NM for almost a week and celebrated Christmas with Amy’s family.  Kyle got a lot of toys and clothes! He’s so spoiled already, being the only grandchild on both sides!On the way to Mindy’s, we drove through the night Friday and going through Oklahoma was interesting.  there was a stretch of highway where there was road construction, and there was a concrete barrier on either side of the one lane we were driving on.  There was barely a shoulder, but there were signs that read, “NO PASSING” and, my favorite, “NO U-TURN”.  We went through Groom, Texas right at sunrise and got some beautiful pictures of the largest cross in the western hemisphere!  After we left Mindy’s on Thursday, we drove to the Grand Canyon via the Petrified Forest.  While driving through the Petrified Forest, we saw some beautiful desert (the “Painted Desert”), and that is when our camera tried to break.  The lens was making a weird “clicking” sound when it moved in and out, and sometimes it would give an error saying to turn the camera off and back on.  When we turned it off, it wouldn’t always completely close, and it often took several tries to turn it off and back on.  We called Panasonic (bought it in June), and they mailed us a loaner camera to the Bakersfield hotel where we stayed Saturday night!  Can you believe that? Fortunately, we were able to get our camera to work well enough for the Grand Canyon and Death Valley…

Thursday and Friday nights we camped in Grand Canyon National Park.  It was beautiful! Amy’s first time there — pictures CANNOT do it justice!  There is a reason why it is called “grand!”  While driving around the rim on Friday, we spotted some elk and pulled over to take pictures.  There were 2 cows and 2 calves, on still with spots.  After we pulled over, several cars pulled over to take pictures, also.  A couple of hours later, we were talking about our encounter, and started wondering if there would have been a bull nearby and we just didn’t see it?  Coincidentally, at the end of our conversation, we saw a car pulled over looking at . . . a bull elk!!  He was massive and BEAUTIFUL.  By the time we got enough pictures, there were literally 25+ people standing on the side of the road taking pictures.Kyle’s first night camping was rough.  He did not sleep well, and neither did we.  By the end of the night we realized that it was not best to keep him between us, rather, beside Amy was the best place for him.  The second night was better, but some guy pulled in around 10:30 just across the road from us.  Between 10:30pm and 3:00am, his car alarm went off like 5 times!  Finally, a guy of western Asian or Arabic descent (give me a break, it was 3am!) knocked on the offender’s car door (I guess he was sleeping in his car?) and not-so-politely told him to leave the park, that he is not welcome here, that no one can sleep, etc.  A few seconds later, we heard the car engine start and he pulled out of the campground!Saturday morning we got up bright and early and drove across the Hoover dam (where they are building a new suspension bridge to take the place of the ‘dam bridge’), then we stopped in Vegas long enough for Amy to see the strip and the Venetian.  Afterwards, we drove through Death Valley — it was HOT! 113 degrees F, actually.  There really wasn’t a lot to see there.  When we were at teh lowest point, Badwater Basin, we could look up the cliff and see a sign that said, “Sea Level” high above us!  on our way out, the sun was setting on us, but we were able to see the sand dunes in the dusk.  we drove through a lot of windy roads through mountains (scary) to get out of there.  There was one gas station on the West side of Death Valley that had gas for $5.89, so we decided to pass it up.  What we didn’t know was that it was the only gas station in a 100-mile stretch of windy mountain roads!  We were okay, though.  We found a gas station before we got too scared for under $5 a gallon. Saturday night, we stayed at a hotel in Bakersfield, California.Sunday morning, we got a late start because we had to wash diapers.  We drove through Sequoia National Forest that day.  One of our first stops we saw a bear cub, but Justin wasn’t able to get a good picture of it.  The Sequoia Trees are huge!  They grow as tall as they will get, then grow out.  Apparently, when they start growing out is when they start turning red.  We drove through “tunnel log” and saw the General Sherman Tree, the largest living thing on Earth (or so they claim).  it weighs 2.7 million pounds, stands 274.9 feet tall and is believed to be over 2300 years old!  They said that every year it adds enough mass to equal that of a large tree in a normal species.  In 2006, the second largest limb fell from this tree, and it was HUGE.  Right next to Sequoia National Park is Kings Canyon National Park and we drove into the park just before dark.  It was pretty amazing as well with dark, tall walls of rock!  Sunday evening, we drove to just south of Yosemite National Park and camped.Monday morning we got up at sunrise and left our campground before 7am and entered Yosemite National Park.  The south part of the park is mostly forest.  We took a side road that wound up to a ridge that overlooked the south side of the valley.  We spent quite a bit of time on this ridge as it offered a beautiful view of the Yosemite Valley.  We were able to see a total of three waterfalls, but the most famous waterfall in the park, Yosemite Falls, was unfortunately dry since all the snow had altready melted.Early Monday afternoon, we said goodbye to Yosemite and started our drive toward the Pacific Coast.  On our way, we were able to use Justin’s Blackberry to look up a winery in Napa Vally and made a reservation to have a private tasting (that’s the norm at Napa wineries, we’ve heard).  We really enjoyed relaxing for about an hour at the winery and taking in the view of rolling hills with millions of grape vines in site!  We were able to tell a significant difference in the taste of the wine from Napa versus the taste of Missouri wine.  But the skill of the winemaker may also come into play for the quality difference, too.  We ended up buying a 2006 Chardonnay (which is already gone) and a dessert wine (which means it is a port, but they can’t call it that since it was not made in Portugal).  We’re not sure exactly when we’ll open that baby up, but it was really good when we tasted it at the winery!!  The wineries all close between 4:30 and 5:00pm, so this day was not over yet! Our final destination for the night was the Marriott Courtyard Hotel in downtown San Francisco.  To get there, we made sure we drove over the Golden gate Bridge, which was pretty impressive, too!  Before we left, Justin had heard the phrase, ‘The coldest winter you’ll ever experience is a summer in San Francisco.” And it turned out to be true!  When we entered San Fran, the temperature dropped about 20 degrees and we encountered a thick fog that was blown in from the ocean.  It made for some cool pictures, but we really weren’t prepared for the cold ocean wind!  We drove to Pier 39 which is sort of like Navy Pier in Chicago where it is mostly a big shopping plaza.  We made reservations at the Hard Rock Cafe and while we were waiting for our table, we walked (sometimes quickly) around the pier and got Kyle a sweatshirt from the Bubba-Gump Shrimp Company (there’s one of those on Chicago’s Navy Pier, too).  After dinner, we were pooped and checked into the hotel and crashed.Tuesday started with some more driving around downtown San Fran just to see some more of it.  We eventually started down California’s State Highway 1 and we saw some amazing cliffs that led straight down into the water of the Pacific Ocean.  In Monterey, CA, we entered the Pebble Beach 17-mile drive.  Here we saw a beautiful rocky coastline and had a chance to get out and touch the cold water.  There were also quite a few seals and sea-lions on some of the big rocks just off shore.  We drove down Highway 1 until it started getting dark, then we found the quickest route back to Bakersfield adn stayed at the same hotel that we did on Saturday night.  We were very tired, but we needed to was diapers again, so we stayed up long enough to do that and while we were waiting on the diaeprs, we turned on the tube and watched some of the Olympics.Wednesday was a big drive day.  We were on Interstate most of the day and drove through Las Vegas again. Jeremy and Christina and her family were still in Vegas on their vacation, so we called Jeremy and we were able to meet up with them for a late lunch.  We then continued on and drove across southern Utah (on the beginning of Interstate 70) and eventually made it to Arches National Park around 1:30am where we ended up just camping in our car.  While we lost an hour due to the time change from Pacific Time to Mountain time, needless to say, we had a few too many miles scheduled for this day.  We woke up Thursday morning with the sun and we parked the car the previous night where we were ready to walk on a trail that brought us to a few arches in the park.  This is where we saw the arch named Landscape Arch.  We then drove back toward the entrance of the park and on the way we also made a stop to take a small walk to see Delicate Arch which is possibly the most famous arch in the park since it is on the Utah license plate.  After the Arches, we drove down to the Four Corners so Kyle could be in 4 places at once - Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona!  We were pretty surprised that it cost $3 a person to get in there.  It was just a bunch of Navajos selling their jewelry and paintings and a platform thingy marking the spot where the states meet.  A good place to say, “yeah, I’ve been there.”The same day, as we made our way to Amy’s sister Sonya’s house, we stopped at Mesa Verde for a quick looksee, which turned out to be 17 miles of switchbacks to the visitors’ center BEFORE any of the dwellings! It was neat, though, to see how the cliffdwellers lived way-back-when.  Then, it was just over the Continental Divide and on to a nice, restful night!Friday was a nice drive through the mountains.  Okay, so it was pretty disappointing.  We tried to see the Royal Gorge, but they have commercialized it so much that it costs $24 PER PERSON to get in there!  It’s nothing but a giant tourist trap anymore.  We left the Royal Gorge and drove up to Bishop’s Castle, which is this castle-thing that some guy who is angry at the government decided to build for some reason.  Justin had fun exploring it, but Amy was leery of the craftsmanship and kept her feet firmly planted on the solid flooring for the most part.  It was a neat structure, but sometimes nothing but a little piece of rope was between you and a 25+ foot plunge to a certain major owie.  That evening was nice, relaxing pizza and a movie night before our 800+ mile drive home.It was a great trip - we averaged about 43 mpg over 5,993 miles, many of those miles through the mountains.  Amy likes to say thatthis trip was ’scouting future vacations.’  We probably won’t do one quite like this again…Lots of Pictures!