I meant to post this sooner but the time would always get away from me. In fact, I started this post on the trip, thinking I'd be able to finish it along the way. Yeah right. I also lost part of the article in an error, so I had to reconstruct that part of it (mostly just image placement). Anyway, here we go.
Karen let me load a GPS Tracker application on her phone so we could get data points for the entire trip. I really appreciate her letting me record the data this way. It meant she had to leave her phone in the GPS Tracker application, due to how it's designed. Thanks, Karen.
This is more of an analysis of the road trip and the places we visited along the way.
We started our trip at about 10:00 AM on March 26th. By the time we reached Richfield, nine and a half hours later, we had traveled 528.7 miles. Well, you can see these kinds of stats in the map data. And as I mentioned to my mother, 93 MPH is likely due to the speed required to overtake, and the fact that the speed limit in Utah is 80 MPH.
I could have also blamed GPS jitter on the recorded max speed. GPS is not a reliable method for detecting speed. A variance of 15% can easily be introduced by GPS technology. But the fact is, I did indeed see the speedometer reach about 90+ MPH.
Of course, the "average speed" is incorrect. This average is robotically calculated using the "portal-to-portal" method, not taking into account any stops along the way.
This route took us right through Las Vegas. Hannah was impressed with the buildings, especially the ones with the gold windows. The land forms gradually got more and more interesting as we briefly drove through Arizona then into Utah. It really did look painted. And in Utah, the land was just as colorful, but with the added detail of snow to top it off.
By the time we reached Richfield, the kids really had enough. It really was "drive until you puke." And it was a good thing we stopped when we did because there were no services for a very long time after that.
We stayed at the Comfort Inn, Richfield, at which Hannah was very impressed with the luggage cart she got to ride in. Hannah also discovered a few constants. She finds constants comforting, as many children do. She is a self-saving princess when it comes to these details. I guess it's a coping skill. One constant she noticed was that each hotel has individually wrapped plastic cups. They also usually have a pad of paper and a pen stashed somewhere for her to write with.
Also, come to find out, the room had quite a view, which the kids didn't notice until the next morning. On your left was the indoor pool, in basically a greenhouse thing. And directly in front was a giant pile of dirt. If you know our kids, this view was absolutely mind-blowing. Both Hannah and Benjamin were frantically working out their spacial reasoning to find a path to these attractions. Didn't work.
We had our complementary breakfast and we were off again like a herd of elephants.
The snow was still high above us in Utah. Notice the purple line along the 50, above. This is a gap in the cellular signal for data (voice apparently worked alright, if you like that feature). That purple line is also about the distance we saw "no services" signs, if I recall correctly. There is really not a lot going on along the 50 in Utah.
Again the average speed was extremely low, this time because we stopped for lunch just after reaching the Colorado border. We reached our first planned stop of the trip: Uncle Roddy & Aunt Heather in Eagle. Or, as Benjamin and TJ would recall, if you asked them: The Place With the Working DVD Player!
The next morning, it snowed.
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Bruce Snow?! I'll bet he's excited to see it. We've got some here in Colorado this morning too, poor little wet flurries trying so hard. They don't stand a chance on the warm spring ground.March 28 at 11:07am -
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- Anthony It appears we are two or three hours away, and we're going in that direction. We'll bring the PB&J!March 28 at 2:08pm
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The drive out of Eagle seemed rather daunting due to all this new snow. But the plows had already done their first passes, so we had asphalt most of the way. Only commercial vehicles were "advised" to use chains. Even so, all vehicles were expected (under threat of violence) to have chains just in case things got worse.
When we came down 5,000 feet, we were past most of the snow, for the moment. It was a lovely visit Stormy and Bruce in Lakewood (except for the part where Benjamin threw a huge rock down the stairs). We watched a Barney video, had PB&J, and talked.
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Enjoyed our visit with Anthony Martin and family. Quote of the day: Hannah, on our porch, looking at the trees and the mountains - "Wow! Wow, this is so NICE! Wow! And in heaven it'll be even NICER!"
We found another Comfort Inn in Burlington just before entering Kansas. The luggage cart was totally beyond Hannah's expectations. It was gold and had a gold ball on top. She thought it was simply lovely. And Benjamin spotted a Doritos truck in the inn's parking lot and yelled "CHIPS!!"
The next day, it snowed. Again. And it rained the whole time we were driving in Kansas. In fact, this part of our journey has the best travel stats of all legs going in that direction ...
One state. One day. Did you know Kansas has about fifty Oz Museums? We did stop for Burger King in Kansas City. We stated at the Econo Lodge, Chillicothe, which is a type of Best Western (according to a traceroute I ran out of their WiFi). It was probably the best of all on this trip, except that they had no luggage cart. There was no need for one since we parked right in front of our room.
Missouri is the state I got pulled over for driving too fast on the wrong lane (that's only the passing lane, I guess). After presenting our papers, the trooper let us go with a wink and sort-of a verbal warning. I didn't have to try to convince him that states don't exist or anything like that. Yay!
Eventually we made our way to the house of my friend Aaron and his family. Now Aaron would have me believe the Jackson Family was just on their best behavior due to the presence of the Martin Family. But I think they're a nice bunch and he doesn't give them enough credit.
We also stopped off for a while at a mall in Indianapolis before reaching Columbus Ohio. We stayed at the Super 8 in Ohio.
There is a really neat Burger King in Fredrick, Maryland. That's where we had dinner before reaching our destination in Middletown, Delaware. Here's the Burger King:
So we stayed a week in Delaware, on a farm. Karen's grandparents have such a nice home. Take a look:
We also visited some family in Virgina. We had a blast spending the day with them. We met everyone at Red Robin then set the kids loose at a nearby park.
I mostly documented the trip home on Facebook, so take a look at my wall for details about that. We went to Virginia to see some more of Karen's family, saw the sites there, drove down to North Carolina and stayed a couple days. After that, it was the long drive home. Apparently we just missed the biggest tornados anyone has seen in a long time.
Would we do it again? I think most certainly. The drive was long, but I think it was worth it. If anything, the country is smaller now to us because of this trip. Now I personally know what we can tackle in a day and what we can tackle in a week.
All GPS tracking information provided on behalf of InstaMapper.com
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