On the road again!

We are off! 

This next planned adventure is a month-long road trip from Ohio to the Badlands to Seattle to Wisconsin and back to Ohio. 

Our goal was to have everything packed the night before, and leave our house between 6-7am. 

What actually happened is that we stayed up super late into the wee hours of the morning finishing up packing and cleaning, and then woke up early and packed and cleaned last minutes things for several more hours, and finally left the house at about 8:30am. 

Starting odometer reading: 165,771.

Oh, and then the van battery was dead, so we decided to head to Auto Zone and buy a new one before embarking on a thousands mile long cross country trip, so that set us back another hour and a couple hundred dollars. We hit up McDonald's so nobody would complain about being hungry for awhile. Then we topped off on gas at Costco where the price was $4.68 per gallon.

Finally on the road for real at about 9:45 am!

I was going to snap a pic at every state line, but I only managed to get this one of us leaving our new home state of Ohio:

Our first pit stop was around 2:15pm in Indiana. Odometer reading was 166,313 so we made it 542 miles. Not bad!

We found another Costco but the price was $5.39/gallon - unfortunate that gas is so expensive right now! The line for gas was super long, and we stopped at Burger King for lunch, (we found a deal on whoppers and all the kids agree that they were delicious) so it ended up taking about an hour for us to get back on the road.

The second pit stop of the day was at about 6pm when a bunch of us needed a bathroom break. We stopped at a Walmart in Wisconsin to grab some groceries in attempt to save money and not eat fast food at every meal. We also topped up at my favorite gas station, Kwik Trip! I have missed not having those in Ohio. The gas price was $4.79/gallon. We were back on the road again by about 6pm.

Finally made it to Gram & Pop's cabin at about 7pm. Whew! Lots of hugs!

When we reached to cabin, we all were amazed at the view we so dearly missed. We celebrated by seeing who could stick their butt out the most, and Joey was the clear winner (second on the left). 

We played some board games - Aaargh!, Candy Land, and Apples to Apples. Many laughs were had.

We ended the day at a mileage reading of 166,367 for a total of 596 miles traveled on Day 1. Tomorrow we plan to leave first thing in the morning and make it to the Badlands!

Sunset View from the Cabin Porch. Photo Credit: Mary