The Long Drive Home

This blog post is going to cover the long drive home. Las Vegas to Green Bay. Two and a half days of driving. It was the longest part of the trip because we just wanted to get home, sleep in our own beds.

The first day we drove through some of the most beautiful scenery on the entire trip. Well, the first few hours were more desert with the mountains in a haze in the distance. The haze was so thick that it seemed that mountains just appeared out of nowhere. Later I realized the haze was probably caused by all the forest fires in the Northwest.

Does anyone know what these are for? They are like little hills that just end at a fence. They were on the sides of the roads ever mile or so just before we got to the mountains. This type of stuff intrigues me as we sit for hours and hours.  There was no cell signal anywhere near there so I couldn't look it up but I still can't think of what search terms to use anyway. 

After a couple hours, we started climbing into the mountains. We saw real trees again and lots of green besides the rocks and mountains. And it got beautiful!

We went through quite a few tunnels, the longest is called the Eisenhower tunnel. Kind of freaky that a whole mountain was above us!

I wouldn't want to have to drive this in the winter, but watching people float down the river and trains glide along the mountain was so beautiful!

That night we stayed at a Super 8 northwest of Denver. Kind of gross, we were there less than 10 hours and there wasn't an AmericInn near there (which we prefer when available).

The next day's drive wasn't nearly as exciting. Even Spencer took a nap. Something tells me that he is not going to like this photo when he's a teenager, but he did give me permission to use it now. 

That night we stayed at a nice AmericInn in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Much nicer than the previous night. 

Only 5-6 more hours to go, with a stop in Oshkosh to pick up Lego, have a delicious apple crisp that Oma made and chat a bit.

According to my fitbit, I walked 160,733 steps, 476 floors, 66.39 miles, and burned 49, 231 calories. I'm sure I ate more calories than that, but this was definitely not a sit and relax vacation, which is perfectly fine by me.

We made it home finally. 5200 miles, 100 hours of driving, 12 states, and countless memories. We had so much fun and can't wait for our next epic Kline road trip next summer!