Road Trip Day Nine: On our way home

In the morning we had breakfast in our hotel and then we decided to head back over to the Naval base to visit the exchange.

Abi's Pinkie Pie at our hotel. 

On the base...

Apparently this tree area has a very important part of my parent's relationship as it is where they got back together after breaking up once... my dad was stationed here and my mom drove down with her sister. 

The desert....

Of course today's drive took a long time because it was the last day and there wasn't anything to do but drive.
Hello Utah!

Salt Flats...

Maddy wanted Pizza Hut the entire trip so we finally got it for lunch today. 

I let her have a diet pepsi. I don't know what I was thinking- her first caffeinated drink!

Of course she loved the taste but only drank a few tablespoons of it. So I wasn't too worried. Of course she had to act silly. 

More desert...

We drove straight to my house from here and were so happy to be home!

These are the souvenirs I picked up...

Lewis and Clark book, Cape Blanco lighthouse ornament made from myrtle wood that only grew in that area and Jerusalem, a cow ornament from Tillamook (I also got an ice cream scoop from there and Maddy got a cow stuffed animal but they are not in the picture), a Washington keychain to use as a Christmas ornament, Maddy got a cat ornament from the highway 101 Christmas shop, and I got two bookmarks- one New Moon one from Forks and the Redwoods one. 

They also got the stuffed animals from the animal reserve we stopped at.

It was overall a really fun trip.
There was a little bit of a shadow over it after the way it started but I think we did a really good job of finding the good and having a lot of fun anyway.
I was happy to have been able to take the girls to four states that they hadn't been to yet. Five for Maddy as only Abi had been to Idaho before.
We love traveling.

Road Trip Day Eight: California to Nevada

We woke up and packed up. Then we had breakfast at our hotel.

We then got back on the road. As we were leaving town we saw a better looking beach on the side of the road. There were people gathering shells so we figured maybe this was the beach that had been recommended to us.
My dad pulled over and the girls and I ran down to the beach.
Almost immediately Abi found a sand dollar half buried in the sand!
After that we kept looking for them but didn't find anymore. We did collect a few shells though.

We then got back on the road. 

We were going to be heading East toward Nevada but the road we were going to take was closed because of a road slide due to weather. 

So we decided to go south to some more redwoods before going east. 

We came across these guys. 

The girls kept hiding under blankets.

Abi took a bit of a nap along the way. 

Then we found ourselves in another Redwoods forest. 

We stopped in at the visitor's center which was really nice. 

We grabbed a cool bookmark in the gift shop and then the girls took some time finding all of the listed animals in this display.

Then we drove to one of the drive-thru trees. It wasn't drive through at the moment because the road was broken behind it... but we walked through. 

Looking up from inside the tree...

The girls and I went back up to the car while my parents went through and I took this picture from above in the parking lot... my parents look so tiny! That is a big tree!

From here we continued our trek east toward Nevada. 

Soon we were crossing the mountain. It was snowy and as it got darker a little bit scary. 

Into Nevada..

It was so dark that I made the girls wait until we stopped in Reno for dinner to open their Nevada prizes.

After this we continued on to Fallon. 

We had reservations on the naval base there. 

We realized earlier in the day that we should call to check on the reservation so I did and everything was good. 

Then later we realized we should have told them about the credit card in case they tried to run it like the other naval base did. But when I called back I couldn't get through to them. 

So we just hoped everything would work out. 

By the time we got there it was really late, we were all exhausted. 

It took a long time to find the base in the dark and then to find a gate that was open. 

When we found it we asked the gate guard for our keys since they leave them there if you arrive after 4pm. They didn't have any keys left. 

So we had to drive back into Fallon and find a hotel. 

It was super stressful. 

Of course we realized this was our last snafu caused by the dumb jerk robbers... and I was especially grumpy as we made our way into the room but we ended up being able to have a pretty decent room and getting a good night sleep. Everything would feel better in the morning.