The long, long car ride

The week leading up to our road trip, Calder and I prepared a lot!  So by the time we were ready to go, Calder could hardly wait for our "long, long car ride" as he called it.  Score one for Mom!

We picked up lots of snacks, and several little games/new toys from the dollar store, and wrapped them up with wrapping paper.  Every hour or so, I was able to hand back a present for him to open.  He loved it!  I will definitely do this on all of our road trips in the future! Mix in a couple of movies, and we were good to go!

We were finally able to get on the road Friday around lunch time. We made it 9 hours that day. It looked a lot like this:

The DVD player was a huge hit

and this:

I was really so impressed with how well Calder did! I was expecting the worst, and it ended up going really smoothly. 

We made it to Limon, CO that night, about an hour outside of Denver.  

The next morning, we drove through a lot of this:

Endless flat fields.  Just what I expected Kansas to be.

It was interesting driving east and watching the landscapes change, leaving the mountains/desert of Utah and Wyoming, into eastern Colorado and Kansas where everything was just flat.  As we passed through Witchita, things began to be more green, and the landscape was a lot more interesting - a lot of rolling hills, and more trees.

But then as we came into Missouri and Arkansas, I think it got even more beautiful.  I was going to take more pictures, but I was nervous the GPS on my phone would stop working if I did.  It was being a little finicky.  There were lots of trees, everything was really green, some fields, and some rolling hills. It was interesting to see even the roadkill changed...as we got closer to Arkansas, we started seeing armadillos and turtles on the side of the road.

We actually had a great time all together in the car for 19 hours!  We made it in Saturday night.  Things like "Eat my sandwich!" became hilarious to all three of us...I think we were ready to be home.