Getting Ready...

The countdown is on - 14 days until we leave on our great (crazy, perhaps?) cross country adventure. I'm not sure how the blog thing will work out (or how current we will be able to keep it), but we decided to give it a shot. After all of our moves, we seem to have friends in most every time zone. We're hoping this is the best way to keep everyone in the loop as we make our way out West in June. If we have to rely on me and Steph to get post cards out to everyone during the trip, we may be in trouble...

As a little background, our family is going to attempt a driving trip to Yellowstone, the Tetons, and many points inbetween during the month of June. I made this trip several times with my family in years past, though I haven't been to Yellowstone since 1988 - the year the park burned. (Only 20 years - I'm getting old fast...). Anyway, Steph and I decided in late 2007 or so that we needed to bite the bullet and take our family out West before the kids got much older. (Trey just turned 8, Taylor will hit 10 (double digits!) in early June.) We put the last 2 weeks of June 2008 on the calendar and starting making a few reservations. In late 2007, I couldn't really see how I would be able to take 2 weeks off of work, but I figured I could find some way to make it work...

I guess things just have a way of working out if you pray about it and are patient enough. Just be careful what you ask for. I left my job at the end of March and decided to take a few months off to recharge my batteries and catch up on my family time (and a long list of unfinished projects from our last move). The ability to take several months off is a luxury that probably won't pass my way again anytime soon. When I look back on my life, I've been working at least one job (sometimes 2 or 3) since I was 16. I figured after almost 22 years of continuous employment, a few months off wouldn't be such a bad thing. It's a long story I suppose, but needless to say, it became evident that taking 2 weeks off for this trip wasn't going to be a problem at all. Our family decided to make some lemonade out of lemons and extend our trip from 2 weeks to 4.

Over the past month our so we've been pouring through travel books, the internet, and almost worn out an atlas. I guess I am my father's child - I've been working on a meticulous list of everything to take and everything to get done before we hit the road. Every day I seem to think of something else that needs to go on a list. I'm sure we'll forget something important, but there are a lot of Wal-Mart's between here and there.

Our plans seem to change a little every day, but our current plan is to leave Madison on May 30th and spend a night in St. Louis, MO and Sioux Falls, SD on our way out West. We'll spend a few days in and around Hill City, SD to see the Badlands, Mount Rushmore, Deadwood, and anything else of interest. From there, we head to Cody, WY for a few days, then on to Yellowstone. We'll spend about 2 weeks in Yellowstone and the Tetons. Our itinerary gets a little iffy after Jackson Hole, perhaps because I'm not sure if our family will still be able to be civil to one another after 3 weeks on the road. If we're all still sane (or adequately medicated), we'll head from Jackson Hole to Las Vegas, then Hoover Dam, the Grand Canyon, Roswell, NM (so Trey can photograph some aliens), Carlsbad Caverns, friends in Austin TX, then back to Jackson. Then straight into some intensive psychotherapy...

The kids will either love this trip or be scarred for life. Either way, the trip will be memorable...