After many years of dreaming of going west the time has come.

We are:

–Excited

–Nervous

–Pumped

And a little …..

– SCARED

But we have chosen to seize the day. The kids aren’t getting any younger and this is the time.

A few things that we have been preparing :

•National park packs getting prepped so these kids can get their Jr. Ranger Patches.

•Nature journal packs ( the kids can get to sketching) Thank you Shay for all the tutorials on how to get these packs packed! 😊

And the obvious yet not so obvious OF RESEARCHING TONS because we have NEVER done life in an RV BEFORE. Or gone on a big trip like this before/ interviewing friends (thank you Mandy), getting camping recipes, etc.

I did go camping once with Blake the summer we got married 20 years ago-

I told Blake I am making up for it this summer. Although it’s not even that fair to call this camping- but maybe I get a little credit for glamping???

The day came on Thursday for the RV to arrive.

We packed and loaded along with having family and friends stop by for a “Let’s See The RV” Party! And “Let’s Put Some People To Work” party! (Thank you guys!). And Blake & Leslie – coolest rental RV ever!!

It might end up being more fun than the trip itself. Maybe we should just staycation out here on the farm….

3:30AM came all too soon as we finished up loading and woke sleepy heads to load up for our trip West.

Day 1

“Can you dig it? We can dig it! We can dig it!” Anyone heard of the former NBA player Dwight Howard’s, Jock Jams, Kidz Bop? Well it’s rolling in my head getting me siked for the trip!

First of many stops for gas!

Toy Story Uno!!

And last, but definitely not least-

The Man of the Day

Day one took about 6 hours longer than we thought, we missed our first hope of seeing some friends outside of St.Louis due to our delay, there were a few complaints, a little arguing, maybe some wrestling, that caused a bit of chaos –

The night brought us a Walmart stay in Salina,KS. And to our amazement we discovered that we aren’t the only ones sleeping at Walmart- we saw at least several others!

Yay! We conquered DAY ONE!

“The man who does things makes many mistakes but he never makes the biggest mistake of all- doing nothing.”

Benjamin Franklin