There comes a time on every trip when you know it’s time to pull up stakes and head home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For this vacation, that point came when I had to wrestle the rhinestone-studded tweezers from Louises’ hands when I feared she was going to stab a stranger who tried to mansplain to us how to back up to the gas pump on our 177th fill up somewhere in Missouri. It didn’t end well for our unfortunate stranger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While it wasn’t our original plan, after we pulled out of Moab at 8am on Monday and had dropped two groups of people off at airports in Colorado, we just kept going. Instead of one last night at a campground outside of Denver, we figured we’d push it until the middle of Kansas. Maybe that was less of a choice and more that my right foot was fused to the gas pedal after trying to drive through the Rocky Mountains at 38 mph, but we stopped at a motel just long enough for one more puking session by our youngest traveler and a few hours of restless sleep. The thought of our own beds, showers and adequate Wi-Fi was just too much of an incentive to stop anywhere short of our driveway, so we pushed our limits and pulled in the neighborhood 3,237 miles older on Tuesday before midnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gas station mansplainer had tried to brag that he was 4 hours into their roadtrip–Louise cackled and asked him how many kids were on board and if he ever crossed Texas with no A\/C or if there was a wasp’s nest in his sewer hose bumper? Did he know how to fix the generator or start a campfire in the rain? Was he a KOA VIP member and did he have a working rearview mirror? After he slowly backed away and we heard the click of his automatic door locks, I realized the road can change a person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Or if you’re lucky, you change the clich\u00e9 road trip fiasco into great memories of family adventures that you’ll treasure always.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There comes a time on every trip when you know it’s time to pull up stakes and head home. For this vacation, that point came when I had to wrestle the rhinestone-studded tweezers from Louises’ hands when I feared she was going to stab a stranger who tried to mansplain to us how to back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[2,3,10],"tags":[55,71],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3NIOM-ge","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":908,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2020\/09\/10\/june\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":0},"title":"June","date":"September 10, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't think our particular map dot was unique during Covid in that ten miles in any given direction of our house meant a different set of rules, mandates and orders. Frankly, it was a confusing and haphazard mess, but by June we had become accustomed to living(ish) our best\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/IMG_0396-2-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":787,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2018\/06\/28\/not-the-best-travel-guide-in-the-world-but-itll-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":1},"title":"Not the best travel guide in the world, but it’ll do","date":"June 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Alright, enough messing around. We really have to get semi-serious for 6 minutes to pull this off. It's logistics day, and I'll take just a minute to provide some real details on the trip planning before we get back to our regularly scheduled nonsense just in case anyone was looking\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/robes2-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":665,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/04\/25\/faqs-about-our-upcoming-summer-plans-without-the-qs-only-the-as\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":2},"title":"FAQ\u2019s About Our Upcoming Summer Plans Without the Q\u2019s, only the A\u2019s","date":"April 25, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"~Three weeks, 3700 miles to two western National Parks through thirteen states in an RV with 9 kids and 48 bottles of vodka. ~I don\u2019t really like to use the term \u201ccrazy,\u201d I prefer \u201cinappropriately optimistic.\u201d ~Not quite \u201ccamping\u201d and certainly not \u201cglamping\u201d\u2014with that many people in a 32 foot\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":997,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2021\/07\/25\/4-corners\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":3},"title":"4 Corners","date":"July 25, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, we visited 4 Corners National Monument, and while I feel like we should talk about 4 Corners I don't think 4 Corners is comfortable with us talking about it. To refresh your elementary school history, Four Corners National Monument is located where the only place in the country that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":713,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2016\/07\/26\/18\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":4},"title":"18","date":"July 26, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Today it was Thelma and Louise vs. Day 18. Day 18 lulled us into a false sense of security during the long, smooth ride from Minneapolis across the green fields of Wisconsin on our way to our final destination of Chicago. Day 18 gave us no traffic, clear roads and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":983,"url":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/2021\/07\/20\/day-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":1006,"position":5},"title":"Day 1","date":"July 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"We usually like to leave high speed police chases and broken air conditioning units until day 11 or 12, but hey, Day 1 is fine, too, I suppose. We hadn' teven made it out of Tennessee before we really were witness to a dangerous high speed chase with State Troopers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Column"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1007,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.suburbandiva.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}