Our Cross Country Adventure – The Journey Home

Before we left Phoenix, I got to try out a newer lens. My parents patio has 3 hummingbirds that frequent. I managed to get a great shot of this Ruby Throat Hummingbird with its mouth open!

I was a little worried about packing the car to head home. We may have added a ‘few’ things on our journey. The car was more full, but it still worked! Whew!

Our first stop after saying goodbye to all our family, The Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. We enjoyed the drive through this National park making a few stops along the way. We didn’t stop a ton…gotta keep things moving to keep the kids engaged (and me too!).

The petrified forest is amazing. So picturesque.

While we enjoy the Petrified Forest, the Painted Desert totally outshined. We entered the National Park from the South entrance. The Painted Desert was our last part of the drive. We would come over a hill or around a corner and all gasp in amazement at the beauty.

The colors and beauty go on for miles. It is hard to do the beauty justice with these pictures.

We stopped at each state line for pictures. Going from Arizona to New Mexico there was no good sign at the visitor center. We settled for this sign at the visitor center.

Santa Fe Target – The architecture of the SW even at a Target!

The clerk at our hotel suggested we visit downtown Santa Fe. It wasn’t on our plan, but we decided we wanted to see a few sites. We saw the oldest house in the USA. It dates to 1646.

The oldest house in the USA. It wasn’t open to the public, unless you called for an appointment. We were only spending 1 hour downtown, so we couldn’t add seeing the inside to our trip.

Next door to the oldest house is the oldest church structure. The San Miguel Mission/Church. It dates to 1610.

I loved the sconces in the San Miguel.

This bell dates to the 1300’s and is in the San Miguel as well. They let my girls and myself ring the bell. 🙂

Loretta Chapel. This chapel has quite the story of this beautiful staircase. They call it the Miracle Staircase.

I loved the pretty stained glass at the Loretta Chapel.

After downtown Santa Fe, we headed to El Rancho de las Golondrinas – This is a living history museum. It is also where the pictures for the Josefina (American Girl Doll) books are from. This gate is the cover of the first book.

Entrance to a Rancho.

Ovens in the courtyard of the rancho.

Woven blanket in of the rooms in the rancho. This blanket is featured in the Josefina books.

They use natural plants and flowers to dye the wool and make the yarn needed for all the rugs, etc. The volunteers do all of this at El Rancho de los Golondrinas.

It was amazing all the colors of yarn they could make using natural materials!

Adobe at its finest.

Have I mentioned that I love taking pics of flowers? 🙂

They had this fantastic teepee that we could go inside. This living museum was huge – as in on many many acres. The only thing that wasn’t my preference was that they covered multiple times of history. It seemed a little confusing. Yet we LOVED this living museum and would love to go back with more time to explore.

We enjoyed Santa Fe so much, we stayed until 4:30 pm. Makes for a late arrival at our hotel in Texas. Oh well…we had fun!

The following day we were on a smaller freeway in Texas. Driving from Amarillo to Dallas. It was a lot harder to find fun stops. We found this big arrow.

We found this big shoe…can’t you tell the kids are thrilled about it? lol!

In Wichita Falls, Texas we did find a stop we liked. This is the world’s smallest skyscraper. It really is small! It was a fun find.

We met my husband in Dallas for one night. He was there for business. It was the only time we saw him in 6 or 7 weeks. They say everything is bigger in Texas…including the soft pretzels! This was at our dinner with my husband and my in-laws.

First mug to add to my collection on the journey home. My girls talked me into buying the Starbucks You are Here Collection Mugs as a souvenir from all the places we went on our trip. Glad I listened. I’m happy to have them!

Off on a small road for our Louisiana border crossing. We were just 1 mile from our fun stop for the day.

Just barely in LA, we stopped at Gators & Friends. It was a bit of a pricey stop (especially since we only stayed for about an hour…it was nasty hot and humid). Loved this stop though and highly recommend it! Look at that gator getting its food!

Snowflake jumped right in to hold an Alligator…surprising this Mom!

Pumpkin held an alligator as well.

Gators & Friends had ALL kinds of other animals that you could see and feed. We bought one cup of food and easily could feed tons of animals. I liked this guy…though I was a bit intimidated to feed him.

We managed to cross into Mississippi just before dark. This was a perfect state line picture. Right on the Mississippi river…very pretty!

The Mississippi River

The following day we made it to Alabama…making progress and getting to see family!

My cousin and I traded Starbucks mugs. I gave her an Arizona and she gave me an Alabama. 🙂

We picked up a 3rd passenger in the backseat for the drive to Atlanta & the American Girl store. The girls watched the new AG Isabelle movie while I played chauffeur…like I hadn’t done that for a few thousand miles already. 😉

We picked up some extra smiling faces at the Georgia state line. These are my cousins who we stayed with one night and they came with us to Atlanta to the AG AND Lego store.

Another mug for my collection. I’m amassing quite the collection!

Our journey home was based on visiting my cousins and the Atlanta AG store. The girls and the dolls were very excited to see a different American Girl store and have some fun out of the car for the day!

Lunch at the bistro is a necessity when you have driven cross-country and half way back to get to this store…don’t you think? 😉

The following day was our last day (and a very long day). Our first state line came fairly quickly and made me think the day would be easy…ha ha!

In downtown Greenville, SC was a super fun 1 hour break from our long day. It is called Mice on Main. There are 9 mice hidden on Main street to hunt for. It was fun to find them and find lunch to take in the car (if you go the Pita Pit is really yummy!)

The mice are small…keep a good watch out for them.

Just to give you perspective on the size of the mice. Can you find the mouse in this picture?

Another state down…again more thoughts that this day will not be so bad. Haha…it was a very long day of driving in which I almost gave up and had one more night at a hotel.

I added two mugs in one stop in Charlotte. I had been to Charlotte for a blog convention and have been to North Carolina a few times so even though this was a drive through visit, I’m glad I got the mugs.

In High Point, NC we stopped to see the World’s Largest Dresser. It was really big. I love the socks! There is also a house or something attached behind it.

We got a little lost going from High Point back to the freeway. Happy accident! We passed by Furniture Land. This is the World’s Largest High Boy…and more importantly…

We love watching the TV Show Tanked. This is one of the tanks they made. It is in FurnitureLand. They were closed, but my daughter asked the security guard and he was nice enough to take us in and show us the tank. Thank you!

What felt like an eternity of a day later, we made a late night state line picture in Virginia. Surprisingly with how many late days we had on the road, this was our only late night state line picture.

One last mug for my collection. I ended with 10 total from our trip.

I drove 5,346 miles (I took this pic a little late) on our 5 week road trip. Pretty impressive to drive that many miles all myself…at least I think so. 🙂

In all our travels, we found every license plate EXCEPT Vermont and Washington D.C.