I have fond memories of overnight road trips we’ve taken in the past: once home from Arkansas, when we were going to Harding; once to California shortly after we’d first moved to Arizona; once when we were visiting Phoenix for the first time. They were always fun… the late night conversations, the downing of coffee and energy drinks, the feeling of having the highway all to yourself. This one was different though, possibly because we were already on the sleep-deprived side even before we’d started it, or possibly just because we’re getting old older. It went smoothly, for which I am very thankful, but it felt like an exhausting blur. Poor Tegan woke up crying several times in the first couple of hours, too asleep to be reasoned with but awake enough to realize that she wasn’t in her bed. 🙁 And our sparkling conversations were non-existent, mainly because I’d turned from a normal person into one resembling a surgery patient coming out of anesthesia. I was having a hard time stringing even two words together, and I was dozing off mid-thought again and again. Mike was thankfully able to manage to both stay awake and stay on the road, responsibly stopping a few times for 15 minute cat naps at rest areas when he knew he needed them.

We were all happy to see the sun coming up when we were driving through Colorado (which, by the way, I do believe is the most beautiful state I’ve ever been in)

and we enjoyed a nice – if entirely too large – late breakfast at Jack and Grill’s, home of Man Vs Food’s seven pound breakfast burrito.

Adam Richman on the wall of fame

The kids alternately napped and watched movies while the mountains of Colorado gave way to the miles and miles of flatness in Nebraska.

Our excitement for the day came in the form of heavy winds, black skies, and torrential downpours as we approached our hotel in Lincoln. Everett was in tears – worried about tornadoes – and we did our best to reassure him, even as we kept our eye on some of the more ominous looking clouds that told us that tornadoes weren’t entirely out of the realm of possibility.

But there would be no tornadoes (at least to our knowledge) and we safely made it to our hotel a little after seven. It was 10:00 by the time everyone was fed, showered, and ready for bed. I had big plans to relax and watch something on Netflix on my computer… but I fell asleep with the laptop on my stomach, not twenty minutes into my show.

Tomorrow: Galena, Illinois

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