The Journey to Alaska Begins!

On July 12th, we loaded up our cars and began our trek to Alaska! Derek had this trip planned to a T, and by the grace of God everything went as smoothly as possible. On the morning of the 12th, we had to finish cleaning out our house (all of our air mattresses/pillows/blankets, last minute things in the fridge/bathrooms) and load our cars. By the time we had all of that done, it was already lunchtime. So we made our last visit to our local Chick-fil-a before hitting the road to Lubbock. Hadley and I both shed a few tears as we drove away from San Antonio.

The drive to Lubbock is about 6 hours. We saw countless windmill farms and oil derricks along the way. Rice krispie treats dropped off by sweet friends from school the day before made for a great pick-me-up mid-afternoon. :)

Clean & all snuggled in at our first hotel with her new Squishmallow from her BFF. We realized quickly that nightly showers/bedtime routine took a reallllyy time with one bathroom for five people who were all ready to go to bed at the same time. ;)

Day 2 of our journey was 7 hours of driving took us from Lubbock, Texas to Colorado Springs. We crossed the New Mexico state line, and even though we've driven this stretch of the road before we were still taken aback by how instantaneously the architecture & topography changed with the state lines. So many plateaus to see in New Mexico! Then we crossed into Colorado, and all of the sudden everything was green & mountainous! Over the course of this travel day, we saw lots of farm land. One of the highlights was seeing a crop duster in action!

I almost deleted the picture below, but then I decided to keep it in the post because it was very telling of our pit stops along the way. Growing up in Georgia, almost all of our road trips were north to St. Louis or south to Florida. Along the way, there were lots of rest areas, especially Welcome Centers at the state lines. Maybe rest areas are an Eastern thing?! Over the course of our 16 travel days from Texas to Alaska, we saw not one single traditional rest area. There were definitely gas stations & fast food restaurants, but when you're traveling for that long fast food gets old quickly. So we had planned to eat the continental breakfast in our hotel each morning and then pack a cooler/bag of food to have picnic lunches along the way. What we did not account for was how hard it would be to find places to stop to eat at. This was a random picnic area off the side of the road, so we were able to eat at a table for lunch and then drove a bit afterwards to find a gas station to fill up our tanks & use the bathroom.

We were excited to see the train in the picture below. The caboose was orange, which is Brady's favorite color. We ended up seeing lots of trains with orange cabooses on this trip! 

{Hadley started crocheting this scarf on our road trip and added to it a bit each day!}

We stopped for dinner at Chili's in Colorado Springs before checking into our hotel for the night. Then we started Day #3 with a quick visit to the Air Force Academy, which was just minutes from our hotel. The grounds were beautifully maintained. We were so glad we got a chance to see it in person!

From the Air Force Academy, we headed to Denver to check into our hotel. This was a super short day of driving {only about 1.5 hours} for us because we had big plans to visit the Rocky Mountain National Park that afternoon & then take the kids to the Dude Perfect tour that evening! It was a super fun day and a great way to break up the driving. We still ended up being in the car a good bit driving back & forth from the DP Tour & in/out of the national park, but it was so nice to all be in the same car together again! And insert praise hands here, I was able to sleep in the passenger seat! Hallelujah!