Vacation Update

Well, we made it to California! We left on Wednesday morning around 8 (we had planned to leave around 4 but our early riser (Faron) stayed up talking computers with Gabe way too late for that early of a start!) and started driving. We headed up toward Nebraska and the all the way across Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada, then into California, according to our trips program, it is about a 26 hour drive.

On the first day we drove all the way through Nebraska and into Wyoming. Between the 5 of us, somebody needed to stop for something at least every 2 hours, and when we did stop we tried to stop long enough to let the kids run around a little. Somewhere in Nebraska we stopped at a nice park and had lunch. The kids ran around on the playground and we ate some sandwiches, all total it was about an hour and a half stop. Those stops made the trip a tad bit longer! All the rest stops in Nebraska have a little sand pit and a sculpture-ish looking thing for the kids to play on, so we took advantage of that once too.

In Wyoming we discovered that only cows populate that state. We almost never saw houses or stores, or buildings of any sort except for the occasional gas station, and even these were tough to find sometimes. When it started to get close to dark, we decided to look for a place to set up camp. We found one “campground” right off the highway with plots just big enough to set up a tent, however the ground was swampy, so we decided to drive further and keep looking. A few more exits down the highway we found a KOA campground and pulled over there. When Faron got out of the car he discovered that it was FREEZING! So we ended up staying in one of their tiny cabins that they have for rent. It was cute, and much better than a tent. I froze half to death sleeping in there (with the little heater cranking all night) because I got kicked out of my bed by some little girls in the middle of the night, so that put me on the floor on a mattress, but without my covers. I had some off cast kid’s sleeping bags, and a very very cold nose! It rained all night too, so we were very happy to be inside.

When we headed out the next morning around 7 it was about 29 degrees, and within a few miles we started seeing snow covered ground. About half an hour of driving and all the sudden we were completely encased in fog. We could barley see anything but the car right in front of us, then the snow started! It was a little crazy for a while. At one point Faron tried to wash off the windshield and the wash froze on the wipers and left the whole windshield covered in wiper fluid/ice. Faron’s heart was racing for several minutes. After about 15 minutes we drove out of the fog as quickly as we had driven into it, and then discovered that we now had some mountains.

We got into Utah and had some pretty sights to see. This was the view from a rest stop in Utah. We walked up a very steep path and got to look out from there. It was beautiful.

Once we passed through Salt Lake City, we found that they really do have salt lakes. They were lining a stretch of the highway and we kept looking at them and saying “what is that? Is that water? Is that sand?” When we stopped for lunch we asked the waitress and found out that is was really salt.

As soon as we got into Nevada it was casino city! That was all we ever saw, every hotel was also a casino, gas stations had slot machines, even the grocery store had electric slots. It is pretty crazy, there was complete poverty right next to these super big expensive casinos.

We decided to keep driving after the kids fell asleep so that we wouldn’t have to make them drive for another day. So we drove and drove until about 3am (5 according to our own time zone) and we were finally in Lake Tahoe California.

We got a hotel and all the kids woke up for about an hour before we got all settled and back to sleep. They all went to sleep though and we got to sleep for about 5 hours, then just lay around the hotel room and take showers before check out time.

Later that afternoon we found a park and played and explored for a couple hours before checking into our hotel that we will be at for as long as we are in Tahoe.