Heading Home....

After a wonderful week in Iowa, it was time to begin our journey back home. We stopped in Mount Ayr to return our sleeping bags and say goodbye to Aunt Cinndy (and the pig! and the chickens!) and then drove way too many miles to get to Pratt, Kansas. Werner took the kids swimming and I returned eight zillion phone calls and enjoyed the internet (we had neither internet or cell phone service at our campground). At midnight, Ella and I took a trip to the local ER because she had a high fever and a very fast heartbeat. She was diagnosed with an ear infection. To add to the sleeplessness, we shared a hotel floor with a million Little Leaguers who kept waking us up -- it was not a very restful night!

On Saturday, we left at the super-early hour of 11am. We arrived in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and watched TV and goofed off all evening. Rand took a two-hour bath to make up for a week of no baths.

We drove through New Mexico on Sunday. Along the way, we stopped and saw an ice cave and a volcano (at least, where it exploded). Rand got to mine for gold. At least, he would've, but his parents were too stingy to buy a bag of sand that had little gold flecks in it. Rand didn't know the difference and had a great time playing in the water.

Rand helped us find the ice cave. It was about a half-mile hike.

Down, down, down....

It was cold down there! It never gets above 32 degrees.

Off to the volcano! This was about 1.5 miles. We had a tired little boy when we were done.

On Monday, we stopped in northeast Arizona at the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest. We took a little hike through the desert and enjoyed the gorgeous view. We also took a 26-mile drive through the Petrified Forest (the kids slept the whole time). Hopefully sometime we will go back and explore it a little more, but even just driving through it was fun and beautiful.

We hit the worst weather of our trip in Flagstaff. It started raining, and then that turned into hail. We pulled off under a freeway overpass so our poor car didn't get knocked around too much.

We made it home safe and sound -- drove a little over 3500 miles altogether. It was a great vacation and we will definitely do a road trip again.