The drive and the value of route selection

We made it. After leaving Minnesota last Saturday afternoon (we're crazy and also did a birthday party first) we made it to Arizona. It took something like 53 total hours, 24 active driving, and involved transversing more than 1500 miles before we reached my parents summer home in the mountains Monday evening. That felt like the end of the long journey, even though it wasn't the final actual destination. Tuesday afternoon we tagged on the last couple hours and landed at last in the east valley of Phoenix. (Btw see Summer sojourn if you have no idea what I'm talking about here.) Altogether it was long. Too long. 26 hours of driving over four days transporting, in addition to my wife and me, three kids, two dogs and a ton of stuff for our temporary home in the desert. Now we, for the next couple months, live in the heat.

If you care for a breakdown, here's more details on how we got here. Saturday we left at 4pm CDT from our house in Lakeville, MN. We did 5+ hours of drive time that night and ended in Omaha, NE after 10pm CDT. Sunday morning we got up decently early considering and did a crash course at Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. It has a reputation as one of the best zoos in the country and, honestly, it lived up to it. We only got a little over two hours there but saw the aquarium, elephants, giraffes, (so many) gorillas, orangutans, aye-ayes and the Desert Dome. We started driving again after noon and pushed west down I-80 before deviating from the interstate. More on that decision in a bit. From there we cut south out of Nebraska, southwest across a chunk of Kansas and into Colorado. We ultimately stayed in the town of La Junta, CO after 8+ hours driving and getting in again after 10pm (now) MDT. The longest day was saved for last, of course, and we started right away Monday morning, around 9am. After making our way back to large highways, I-25 in Trinidad, we went all the way to Albuquerque before turning for the long haul west across New Mexico and Arizona. The west is so big. We pulled into the 'mountain house,' east of Payson, AZ, a touch after 7pm MST (remember, Arizona doesn't do daylight savings). It was 9+ hours that day. The mountains were a wonderful respite and the Tuesday trip down sure felt quick and easy.

As for packing, that went better than expected for the most part. I acquired, in the weeks prior, crossbars for my VW Atlas and a Thule topper on Marketplace. Those I learned have some lower than you might think weight restrictions, like 150 pounds or so. But I only put in suitcases with clothes inside, plus some stuffies and kids bike helmets and, though I didn't use a scale, it all worked out fine. That saved us a ton of space in the back of the car. A few days before leaving I tried to fit the two dog kennels in the back and learned they couldn't both fit. So an adjustment was needed in my mental Tetris. I decided the younger, smaller, dog was going to need to fit either at our kids feet or both dogs would go in one kennel. Those ended up as plans A and B and she did great in the middle row, where she stayed the vast majority of the time. Besides the kennel holding the other dog in the way back we had three book boxes from our last move filled with toiletries, books/sports equipment and then kids activities, all subsets of the belongings of our house to make it through the summer. Those sturdy boxes were essentially a base on which I piled backpacks, with items of the kids choosing and clothes for the trip (those suitcases would stay locked up top), a large bag with a bunch of snacks and a double tote of dog items, including cleaning supplies for our elderly, incontinent, lab. There were a few other items, like a couple coolers, stashed in the nooks and crannies but it all fit with a clear line of sight out the back, certainly ideal. The only annoying piece of this was the second kennel, which we needed at each stop. I fit it in the gap between the second row and the folded down seats in the far back and it required more unpacking than I desired, but overall was not an overwhelming problem. Put together this was a pleasing setup for a neurotic packer like myself.

You may be wondering how we occupied the kids this whole way. This is probably the most difficult piece of traveling with young kids, whether its only a few hour flight or, in this case, something much longer. Well, that wasn't all that bad either. My wife got some seat-back storage which could hold their waters and a variety of activities we'd procured in advance of the journey. Our eldest received several books, such as a new (to him) Calvin and Hobbes. Our middle got a new Pokemon book with info on 800+ species. And our youngest got a couple search and finds. We also, from previous trips, have binders with art supplies and legos, and all kinds of other stuff to keep it fresh which got rotated day by day. Then my wife had the genius idea to reward our kids for good behavior at interval. Buying a box of Pokemon cards (are you sensing a theme?), the day of departure, we gave the kids a new, random card every 50 miles if they were good (or candy for the youngest as was her preference). This turned out to be good motivation. Between the various more engaging activities and tablet time, and snacks, the kids really did do great on the whole. That doesn't mean they earned cards every 50 miles. Nor does it sound like they ever want to do it again, for which I don't blame them.

Okay. As for the heart of this post, we learned a valuable lesson on our drive to the southwest. And that was you don't necessarily want to just take the quickest route as suggested by map apps, in our case Google. This is true even on short trips, where all too frequently the app will give you some questionable or non-sensical roads, if it's a tiny bit straighter, or whatever. Well, we decided to save something like 45 minutes when we were leaving Omaha and that, as I said before, took us across the absolute nothing-ness that is rural Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado.

In one respect this was cool. We did long stretches where we saw no one at all. We witnessed the big sky of the extremely flat western plains where the world itself seems huge. We saw lots and lots of landscape where there was, just, nothing. Maybe a small seemingly dying farm town. But this, for obvious reasons, has its disadvantages. If we were to have car problems we would've been in rough shape. For a while it looked like we were headed straight for a giant thunderstorm. There are also almost no places to stop for bathrooms or food, and the whole rest of my family can get quite hangry. For multiple meals we ended up at a gas station, and in one case in particular this wasn't even a halfway decent one. I'm talking about Casey's in Oakley, KS. My wife will not have fond memories but we did manage to get the kids and dogs fed and were able to move right along. By the time we approached La Junta, CO, our planned destination for the night (roads converge there!), I was driving on a barren road with no lines painted at all, with warning signs about wildlife exceedingly alarming, and in pitch darkness. I would not recommend this.

A picture can't capture it but we had to try. The horizon was so far on all sides the sky looks massive.

Our lesson is, unsurprisingly I hope, to stick to the major highways on long roadtrips. It may take a little longer, like an hour(?) in our case, but you'll have a steady diet of places to stop, places to eat and help if, God forbid, you need it while crossing the country. For the return my dad recommended going all the way east to Oklahoma City before taking I-35 north. I'm undecided as yet but I do know one thing, we won't be taking the same route back. Admittedly, though, I'm kinda glad we can say we did it. Once.