Lessons from the road

Here are the lessons we learned and what worked well on this journey.

Good tips for road trips:

- Give each child a job. Hannah kept track of expenses. I gave her the receipt everywhere we went. James was in charge of food and had to keep track of what we needed. Beti was the postmaster. She kept stamps and had to mail postcards. Berhanu was in charge of Hank, the hedgehog given to us by our friend Beth. We were supposed to take his picture wherever we went, but poor Hank was left in the car more often than not. The older three took their jobs seriously.

- Camping breeds responsibility. The camping jobs are even more important. In teams, they started the fire, set the table, helped make dinner, then washed the dishes. They also helped set up and take down the tent.

- Personal plastic bins. They each had their own plastic bin for paper, crayons, books, journals, etc.

- Junior Ranger at National Parks. This is a great program. When we arrived at each park, we'd go to the visitor center, get the JR book and start on our way. It gave some focus to our visit, and we all learned unique details about each park. It was a lot of work for me to help each of them, but it was worth it because I learned along with them.

- Don't let the fuel go below 1/2 tank. Great advice I followed diligently. It came in handy when we saw nothing for miles or when gas was expensive

- Get AAA Plus. We didn't need it, but I was glad we had the extra towing mileage, just in case.

- Get a GPS. We named ours "Margarita" and she made the trip so much easier.

- We still need paper maps. While the GPS got us to our next destination, the good old-fashioned paper maps were important for seeing the big picture. We also used our USA map to track and highlight where we had traveled.

- Use redbox videos. We would rent a DVD at a redbox location for $1 a day, then return it at another redbox location along the way. Redboxes are located at McDonalds, grocery stores, Wal-Marts, Walgreens, etc. throughout the country. It helped a lot for the long car rides.

- McDonalds are great for travelers, and not because of the Big Macs and the redbox videos. The 99 cent ice cream cones are a great afternoon treat. No choices - one size vanilla soft serve, take it or leave it - so much easier than our usual ice cream orders. Also, I could use WiFi while they played in the playspace. When you're traveling for hours, it's a good break.

- Try to swim every day. Water melted all the bad moods away, even if it's just playing on the edge of a creek.

- Give way to some rules from home. (I let them eat Pop Tarts along the way and we listened to more rock music than we otherwise would have.)

- Don't drive past 9 pm on a trip like this. This was particularly important when I was the only adult with the kids. Everything gets more complicated at night.

- Books and stories on CD help fill up hours and hours of travel time.

- Buy your tent from LLBean. (See blog entry re: tent catastrophe.)

- Keep in touch with your second cousins and dear friends when they move away.

Interesting observations:

- It's the people, not the places, that are most important. We saw beautiful, amazing scenery and we all loved that, but the best memories are with the friends and family we met along the way.

- Lowest gas price: $2.43 in South Dakota (second lowest: $2.49 in Mississippi)

- Highest gas price: $3.49 near Yosemite National Park (another benefit of not getting below 1/2 tank - you don't have to buy the most expensive gas)

- Most interesting road kill: Armadillo in Mississippi

- Nicest grocery store: Dillons in Lawrence, KS

- Animal we saw that we'd never heard of before: Pronghorn

- Most amazing night sky: Moab, UT - incredible amount of stars and a few planets

- Most beautiful sunset: It's a tie: Yosemite - as the sun set in the West, the reflection shone on the mountains to the East, or Moab - the arches changed color as the sun set.

- Total miles driven: 10,798

- "It's not the heat, it's the humidity:" When it's above 100, it doesn't matter. We learned that we don't do well in the high heat (especially mama!)

- Snow in July is just as cold on your toes as snow in January.

- White water rafting had it all - history (Native American petroglyphs), excitement (Class II and III rapids), relaxation (lunch on the beach, floating in the river alongside the rafts), scenery (beautiful canyon walls)

-People are generally kind and helpful.

-I'm much more relaxed now that we're home.

Well, this is the end of the blog. It was fun to do this as we traveled along. Thanks for reading and for the comments and emails. It was a great trip. The bickering was a bit much, but it would be like that at home too. We have a lot of great memories that will last a long time. I am hoping that the friends we visited will now come and visit us in Maine - Vactionland.

Love to all of you,

Mary