Photo courtesy of Always Photographic / Kim Way
Tyler:
Things are not always what they seem. Like the Montezuma Castle, it didn’t look like a castle to me. I also didn’t know we had a rainforest in the U.S.A. but we went to one in Washington. Before we went I was thinking it would look like a rainforest, rainforest (like green eyed tree frogs, and trees with huge leaves…). But it was really wet. We got drenched!
Tyler’s favorite place: Legoland
Amber:
Arizona was cool. The desert was full of a lot of kinds of cacti and was really flat with some mountains (and lots of coyotes that wake you up very early in the morning). When we left there and drove to the Grand Canyon, it got to be just plain grass with some mountains, and then rocks and mountains, and then trees with mountains, and then snow and mountains, and then the Grand Canyon. It was all in Arizona!
Amber’s favorite place: E. Roen Ranches in California
Hilary:
Even though I wasn’t with my family yet when they were in the “Wild West,” the west is very spacious. There are a lot of empty fields, rolling hills, mountains, and more fields. They seem to go on forever. Then in southern California it was very populated…then New Mexico and Texas, more fields. There is a lot of “cowboy country” out there!
Hilary’s favorite place: Oceanside California
Mom and Dad:
The technology we had was top notch. Thank you Phil at Hometown Wireless (Alltel/Verizon) in Charlevoix for getting us hooked up. There were very few places that we had no internet service. He drove, I blogged, or cooked, or blogged, or schooled, or blogged… With Skype and e-mail always available, we were able to stay close to home, and stay connected to schools…we would have been very homesick without it.
The National Parks and Monuments are either free or very cheap ($20-25 per car that’s less than one child’s admission to a Theme Park or the San Diego Zoo), and are well worth seeing…we are still awestruck!
“Eating in” saves a lot of money.
“Sleeping on the fly,” as in truck-stops (when we are driving for a couple of days) does too. We payed $17.00 per night at Cabela’s (low), $75.00 per night in San Francisco (high), and $20.00 per night at Chadrin State Park in Pheonix (favorite). We averaged close to $40 per night…but we only stayed in parks about 60% of the time. Although Wal-Mart welcomes RV travelers, we never did “anchor out” at a Wal-Mart.
This country seems so vast, but it is still such a small world. Checking out at T-shirt shop in a tiny little mountain town in Arizona, and we learn the girl spent her summers on Walloon…this happened over and over.
Driving across the United States in an RV is, “the ultimate way to see the country!” … and that is a direct quote from my boat loving, Sperry (boatshoe) wearing husband!!!!
Our kids have watched very little television for the last two months, but they are totally hooked on computers… Tyler can now help us with our technological needs.
4 of the 5 laptops on board
The first part of our Way Big Adventure is over…but we have enough memories to last a lifetime.
And finally, laughter is still good medicine…
Our WAY Big Adventure 