Michigan Trip, Part 1

Our family returned late Saturday night after spending 2 weeks on vacation in Michigan! This trip has been planned for close to a year, so we were filled with anticipation!

We left on August 10^th. The strange part about the trip was we were traveling without Dad! Yes, the rest of us trekked 1,200+ miles by ourselves. It was a little too difficult for him to take two full weeks off work, so he flew up later in the week to join us. Mom and I shared the driving load, and boy did we have no idea how long of a drive it is!

We left early that morning, and it took us about 11.5 hours to make it to St. Louis. Thankfully, our hotel was right next to a Cracker Barrel, so we didn’t have to go far for dinner that night.

I don’t think that where we parked our car and where our hotel room was, could possibly have been farther apart. We had to park in the back lot, tote all of our stuff over to the ground entrance, take it up the ramp to the lobby, catch the elevator up to the 14^th floor, and then walk to the opposite side of that floor. Yes, it was tiring!

Photo Credit: Roma.

Once we had finally unloaded what we needed for that night, we went next door to Cracker Barrel for dinner. Hot food always tastes *wonderful* after a long day of driving!

The next morning, we got up early, had our breakfast, went on a wild goose-chase looking for somebody’s lost sunglasses, and loaded up the car to go. As you can see, we packed our little minivan to the gills. Everyone had about 2 inches of wiggle room each. J

Part of our motivation for getting out early, was so that we could get in town in time to see our dear adopted Michigan family (Uncle Paul and Aunt Noelle.) But a couple hours into our trip, we received a text that they had another commitment that evening. Quite disappointed, we pressed on.

We arrived even later that night, to discover that yet again, our hotel room was in the farthest place possible from our car. *Sigh.* We unloaded everything this time, and made it over to Bob Evans in time for dinner just after 8 p.m. We felt a bit bad, as they were officially open until 9, but had already started cleaning things up. We kind of wrecked that. J

We were eating and chatting about our plans for the week. The boys got up to go to the restroom. Josiah came running back and said, “the B’s are here!” I thought for sure he was kidding, and was almost mad at him for playing such a mean joke. But I got up with the twins and went over to the front door anyway.

Turns out, they WERE there!! We were ecstatic!! It’s been a long 8 months since we last saw them.

We gathered around and finished our dinner while we talked a mile-a-minute, catching up with everyone. We all had huge smiles plastered on our faces that evening. J

Once we finished, we carpooled back over to our hotel so we could visit some more. It was a pretty late night for us, but so very sweet because it was spent with friends!

To be continued . . .