our trip west

I don't recall who took which pictures, but several of the pictures in this post are attributable to Cori. For the record. :)

Did I mention that we sold the Accord? When we swapped our lawn mower for the trailer, we were so excited but then faced the problem of how to pull it. Lola (the Ford Edge I drive) is not equipped with a towing package, and we didn't have time to fit her with one. Cori had been threatening to sell the accord to buy a truck ever since we got rid of the 4Runner last Fall, and this became the perfect opportunity. After searching high and low for a truck that fit our budget and expectations we ended up finding a 4Runner at the perfect price. Anyway, Lola got shipped out ahead of us (though we still had to wait nearly a week for her to arrive once we were in AZ) and thus explains the white getup we drove across the country.


Leaving Illinois only took a few hours. Cori planned out our course and hotel arrangements ahead of time. We paced ourselves to take it easy, not be in a rush, and take plenty of (potty) breaks. Cori was so cute with the kids. Every time we stopped, he made sure to help everyone stretch, march, and jog around.

Grace and Grant were great the whole trip. They watched movies, took naps, and were very happy enjoying their snacks, books and toys in their car seats for hours on end.

Iowa was pretty much a giant cornfield. Not unexpected, but beautiful none the less. We drove through an amazing rain/hail storm. It was the kind where one can only drive about 25 miles an hour because of poor visibility.

I slept most of the way through Missouri. But it was a lush shade of cornstalk green as well.

So. Much. Corn.

Crossing into Kansas brought only a change of crop. The flat green fields turned my favorite shade of gold. Our course took us through Atchison which is where Emilia Earhart was born. We also crossed the yellow brick road. We stayed in Witchita the first night of our journey.

The next day we passed into Oklahoma. I may or may not have broken into singing the famous broadway song. As flat as we thought Iowa and Missouri were, the pan handles of Oklahoma and Texas helped us appreciate how flat a place can be.

For most of our trip, we drove along a railroad track. We started noticing that every little town we came to had a large grain mill on the east side of town and on the north side of the road. Every-single-town. After noticing this about 50 times, we finally put it together that these are mostly agricultural towns that undoubtedly use the large mills to load freight trains for transporting their grain.

Semi to the left, grain mill straight ahead, train coming on the right. This was the scene throughout the plain states.

Our stint in OK was short, and we crossed into Texas. I called my mom- the proudest Texan I know. And we stopped at a Dairy Queen in Stanford (a.k.a. the middle of nowhere) to have lunch. We dined with lots of old people there, and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them all. You have not heard the word July pronounced properly until you have heard it from the mouth of a life-long Texan. It made me miss my Mama Jo.

Unobscured horizon as far as the eye can see.

Just before we crossed the border out of Texas into New Mexico, we came upon the largest cattle ranch I could ever imagine. We smelled it coming from miles away. And then it took us at least 10 minutes to drive through. I couldn't get a picture to do justice to the volume of livestock we witnessed. Only in Texas.

New Mexico was surprisingly beautiful. The red rock reminded me of Southern Utah. We stayed our second night in Alberquerque.

This left us with only a half day of driving to take us into Phoenix on day three. We mistakenly had our GPS set to 'shortest route' as opposed to 'fastest time' and were a bit confused when we didn't drive into Flagstaff, but turned Southwest headed for Payson and Heber. By the time we got it figured out we decided to push on through and we were glad we did. It was a beautiful, mountainous, and very un-Arizona feeling drive.

Upon reaching Phoenix, Cori made a very animated announcement to the Gracie and Grant that we were in our new hometown. Grace wanted to feel how hot it was. We let her roll down her window and she stuck her arm out. It was 110 outside. She brought her arm in quickly and rolled her window back up. "Wow. Heat." was all she said. The trip wasn't as tedious as we feared it might become. We had a great time and were grateful that the new-to-us 4Runner ran and air conditioned like a champ the whole way.