Houston Trip: The Drive Home

 This was our very last day in Houston. Ross got up and left to work while I got our car all loaded up and did everything we needed to check out. We picked up Ross for lunch so that he could come back and sign some paperwork, and then we snagged a quick lunch at Sonic since they were having free kids meals for the last day of school. When we returned Ross to work for his last couple of hours, we headed over to the Garden Center to say goodbye to Sophia and her cute kids.

 They miss them already. It was so fun to get to spend so much time with them while we were there. It really made the trip something special for all of us.

 The drive home was quite the ordeal. Ross got off of work at 2:00 and we picked him up and headed off to Amarillo where we had a hotel. The plan was to be there by midnight. It took a bit longer than that and long story short, my head didn't hit my pillow until almost 3:00. This means that we got kind of a late start the next morning. This was all I needed to convince me to follow Ross's plan. He wanted to stretch the drive into an extra day so that the longest we had to drive on either day was 7 hours. I was convinced, so we booked a hotel for Farmington, New Mexico the next day. It was a smart idea. We got in with enough time to play in the pool, order a pizza and walk around. We got to bed well before we would have ended up at home.

The next day we were up and fed fairly early and we hopped in the van for the end of our trip. We stopped a few times on the way to eat and see some of the sights. The most notable was the Hole 'N the Rock Museum which used to be a home and a diner. It was built right into the side of the mountain. We stopped and got the tour, but were forbidden to take any pictures, so any here from the inside were stolen from other rebels who posted theirs on the Internet.

 Oh, and Mater was there too. Jack was pretty stoked about that.

 This is their cemetery. The guy carved this out and had it all prepared long before he died.

 Ross liked this Jeep made of license plates.

 It's a little weird for sure, but I was mesmerized by this place. What an interesting lifestyle!

 She made jewelry in this little shop and he was an amateur artist.

We also stopped at Wilson's Arch to grab some pictures. We wanted to stop in Moab for a few things, but the kids were sleeping, so we powered through. When Jack did wake up just outside of Moab he had his highlight of the trip which mostly involved peeing on the side of the road in the dirt. Oh, the joys of manhood!

We got home with time to clear out the car (which was SOOO needed), shower up, start some laundry, love on the cat who had been staying with a friend, and then head out to Melissa's house to see Ross's parents who were visiting from CA for the weekend.

It was a long trip and not one we plan on repeating very often if at all, but in the end I think it was worth it. We had some great experiences and we got to be together which was the whole idea behind our going out there, so mission accomplished.