Saturday, July 6, 2019, was a day all about the miles. We had big plans lined up for Sunday and needed to get some serious mileage in to make those plans happen. 654 miles and nearly 10 hours of driving to get from Park City, Utah, to Burlington, Colorado. Burlington was pretty much a random dart thrown at a map. Of course it was followed by extensive research on reviews to ensure we were staying somewhere relatively nice.

Fuel Up

You really can’t travel across I-80 in Wyoming without stopping at Little America. Whether you need gas or not, it’s a requirement for this kind of trip. One can always stock up on snacks, gifts, or other roadside kitsch like the Sinclair dinosaur.

I even read on Roadside America’s website that there is a stuffed penguin named Emperor with quite a backstory. I wish I had read about that prior to the stop because we missed out on seeing him. That just means we’ll have to catch him on the next trip.

Ben thought about playing on the playground (yes they have one of those too) but opted to stock up on a plush spider and then requested a photograph, as he says, “Route 66 Style”.

Blast from the Recent Past

Still trucking along on I-80 at a good clip, we ran into an old friend at Exit 323 in Wyoming. The Lincoln Highway. If you haven’t read it yet, we headed to the Lincoln Highway as a way to warm up for our Route 66 trip and lived to blog about it. Somewhere between Laramie, Wyoming and Cheyenne, Wyoming sits the giant head of Abraham Lincoln at the Summit Rest Area.

Not just a rest area, but also a visitor center with lots of information and scenic views. We learned that this location was the highest point of the Lincoln Highway.

Not to mention there were plenty of fun photo opportunities there too.

Wouldn’t you know it? Tom even found another Lincoln Highway marker to add to his list.

Passing the Time

You must be wondering how we passed the time during our cross country drive home. Most of our Route 66 days were filled with numerous stops and we never had time to be bored while driving. We mostly listened to music and comedy albums downloaded to the phone. Ben loves comedy and there are a couple of comedians with relatively clean, fun laughs appropriate for kids like Brian Regan and Jim Gaffigan.

There have been only a few days on this trip with excessive time in the car combined with very few stops. Sure, we brought technology with us besides the music. Movies and games. We even bought a headrest holder for the tablet with the intent of turning it into a movie watching headrest theater.

We hardly ever suggested Ben watch movies on the tablet or play games on my phone. We wanted him to be present with us. That’s why I am quite happy to report that he watched only two movies and asked to play games twice over the course of the entire nineteen day trip.

That’s not to say we didn’t hear “I’m bored” from the backseat any other time on the trip. We did. And some of those times were I’m bored but don’t want the tablet or phone. What were we to do?

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and one of my favorite things ever was a little game called Mad Libs. Fill in the blanks of a provided template with words (generically prompted with cues for a verb, noun, adjective, plural noun, etc.) to make a completely nonsensical story. It’s a great head start for Ben to start learning the parts of speech.

Who knew that Ben would go crazy for Mad Libs. He was hesitant at first. He obviously needed help understanding what kind of word he needed to provide; but, once he heard the resulting story from our first one he was hooked.

Here was our very first. I warn you, there is excessive use of potty words. I’m sure you can guess who came up with those.

Throwing in another one just for fun. Because it was so much fun. Ben could do them all day.

I’m definitely going to start using our new proverb “Don’t count your mosquitoes before they flip out” as often as I can at work.

Mad Libs weren’t our only fun car games. We also started playing the License Plate game on this leg of the trip. Ben loved playing this game too. Do you know it? The objective is to see how many different license plate states you can find on the cars you drive alongside. All cars count – even those in parking lots; however, truck (18 wheeler) and truck trailer license plates are strictly excluded from the tally. Ben and I completely disagreed with Tom’s “truck” rule. Alas, Tom won out in the end.

We played it all the way home. We may have collected almost all the states had we started earlier in the trip, but all told 40 states in the return leg of the vacation is still pretty good.

As you can see from the pictures, you don’t need anything fancy to play this game. Just a pen and a used envelope will do the trick.

And let’s not forget Ben’s love of NASCAR. He spent a fair amount of time driving with his nascar wheel, HANS device (neck pillow not pictured here as I missed out on getting a shot with the neck pillow) and is that a plush spider for a helmet?

Family Movie Night

When we finally arrived in Burlington, Colorado, none of us felt like eating dinner out. What we did feel like doing was getting our pajamas on and having a family movie night. Lucky for us the hotel had HBO on demand and we were able to browse and pick a movie whenever we wanted.

Our hotel room also conveniently had a microwave. And since we packed our own popcorn we thought, “why not”. Mind you, most hotels have popcorn for sale in the lobby market when the rooms have microwaves. But we’re kind of brand loyal on certain goods and popcorn is one of them.

So we put on pajamas, popped the popcorn, and turned out the lights (for that true movie theater experience) and watched Smallfoot together.

It was a great end to a long, tough day. It was also a great rest for what turned out to be a great day on Sunday.

Carving routes