Another 2268 miles

This is the year for big trips. We just got back from our Great Eastern Adventure. Be prepared for picture overload! All good long roadtrips need to have plenty of reading material on hand. This is Ana's pile for the trip. She finished them during the eight days that we were gone.

Our journey began in Ohio with celebrating Aaron's grandma's 85th birthday over the Fourth of July. Abby had fun making clover crowns for all relatives who wanted one. 

Keilah and I stayed busy hauling potatoes and carrots in her pickup truck. 

Keilah was delighted to find out that she fit perfectly in the cornhole circle. 

Grandma Jean and our family 

Aaron is a much better player than me. :( 

Grandpa Tom, Grandma Kay, their ten grandkids, and Grandma Jean 

Since it was the 4th of July, Grandma Jean gave everyone a flag and told them to march around in a parade. 

She then threw candy at the parade marchers - kind of a reverse parade. 

Aaron and his grandma. She is laughing at something he said. 

My lovely Ana. 

My fun-loving Abby. 

My sweet-toothed Keilah. 

Some dear friends blessed us with a hotel room that night so we wouldn't need to find a campsite on the 4th of July. It was lovely. The girls slept sideways on the bed. David had an air mattress on the floor. We were delighted. 

Keilah was happy to find a friend to play with. 

We got to our hotel with about 25 minutes to spare before the town fireworks started. So we wandered over to the next parking lot for a nice view of the evening's show. 

We spent the following day driving to Gettysburg, PA. Due to some nasty traffic snarls, we spent way more time driving than we had wanted and ended up getting to our campsite in the evening, unable to do anything at Gettysburg that day. The following day, we spent much time exploring the military park and learning all there was to learn about the place. Keilah continued to be enamored with all the cannons and had fun loading her jacket into them. 

David had to help her reach the tall ones. 

If you ever go to Gettysburg, I suggest taking your own personal knowledgable tour guide. I took one who also happened to be my husband. You can learn so much more that way than what the military park has to offer on self-guided tours. Here my tour guide is in his element. 

Keilah did well with exploring the various monuments and enjoyed sitting and resting in the shade. 

We happened upon these four re-enactors. They aren't paid to do this, but just like to come during the weekends and talk to people and retrace various routes that various regiments took. We talked with them for awhile and they showed us all their various time-period things. It was awesome. 

Keilah liked to ride the cannons and tell them to "giddy-up" 

It began to rain hard in the afternoon of our first day of exploring. 

I stayed in the van with Keilah. 

Everyone else ran to the top of this observation tower (covered) to see a better layout of the land and battlefields. 

It stopped raining and Keilah fell asleep in the van, so I stayed in there with her while the rest of the family got out to explore a rocky patch on the battlefield called Devi'ls Den. 

We didn't get through everything we wanted to see, as we ran out of time the first day there. So we extended our stay by half a day the following morning to see the rest of the park. 

Keilah really did well with all the stopping and getting out to read and look at things. She entertained herself quite well. 

We then took the rest of the afternoon to drive to Arlington to stay with Aaron's sister and family. It was fun to see where they live and get a glimpse of their life. The first night there, the grown-ups took a quick night trip into DC and stopped at the Jefferson Memorial - that's who the big guy is in the background. It was took dark out to get a good picture of him. 

The following day, we took the kids in for a day of being tourists in the capitol. The girls in front of the White House. 

Washington Memorial 

It doesn't look all that huge until you get right next to it and then you realize just how big it is. That's Ana and Keilah standing beside it. 

Lincoln Memorial 

Sometimes you just feel so tired and cranky, that you need to lay down on the floor at the Lincoln Memorial and have a good cry. 

By then, we were all hot and sweaty, so we walked down to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for some air-conditioned fun. Here is our bear beside another bear. He wasn't too thrilled by us making him stand beside the bear for a picture. 

Everyone's favorite place of the museum was the rock and gem exhibit. The girls took my camera from me and took pictures of nearly every gem in the exhibit. I waded through a huge pile of blurry pictures on my camera of things like this. 

The pictures aren't nearly as cool as everything was in real life. 

We spend a quiet relaxing evening together with lots of people reading or being read to at the same time. 

The following day, we drove a couple hours south to visit my brother and his family. They live in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. They took us on a hike up the mountain to a swimming hole with extremely cold water. Once you got numb to the cold, it wasn't so bad. The girls all had a blast with it. Aaron and David ran on the trails while we played. Aaron said he was about a foot and a half from stepping on a rattlesnake before he saw it and stopped in the nick of time. Yikes! 

They have a glass topped washing machine and that was a very fascinating thing indeed. 

Supper time was a time of lots of little girl giggles and fun. 

The next day we were blessed to be able to attend the third annual Red Wing Roots Music Festival. I've never been to a music festival, so I didn't know what to expect. This was an awfully fun one for our first time. It was especially fun to hear our all time favorite band The Steel Wheels 

Keilah loves "Uncle Brian Music" as she refers to the band and was happy to see them in person and see the real Uncle Brian live playing "Uncle Brian Music" 

Unfortunately, the excitement of the day had her tuckered out and she fell asleep almost immediately after they started playing. 

One tired little girl. 

We hung out at the festival for the entire day and got to see some really good bands play. We said our good-byes in the evening. Brian was staying overnight at the festival to lead a bike ride up the mountain in the morning. We drove it the night before and I can't imagine the torture one would feel to bike it. 

We woke up early the next morning to begin the long 15 and a half hour drive home. Everyone traveled amazingly well and we had no problems with sadness or whining from either me or Aaron. I kept myself occupied by putting together the awesome cardboard Avengers toys that came with the Subway kids meal. It helped pass about 15 minutes. Oh, and the kids did amazing too. They were cheerful (when they weren't puking from carsickness in the West Virginian mountains) and full of patience for the long trip. 

It was a fast paced trip and lots of fun. It would have been fun to have a week at each place, but we enjoyed what little time we had at each place and will hopefully head east another time.

On another fun note, we play the license plate game everytime we travel somewhere and this was a very good trip. We found a license plate from every single state with the exception of Wyoming. We are disappointed in the people of Wyoming and their lack of travel. If we can see plates from Alaska and Hawaii and five Canadian provinces, surely Wyoming should be available for us as well to complete our map. But it was not to be. An almost perfect game.