10 hours to go and back to Sweet Home Chicago!

Despite some crazy Ottawa ave neighbor ranting, we managed to find a little fun on our final stretch home. We will have driven through like 7 states before we finally make it!  Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, then Illinois!  Leaving Arizona, we saw some funny things that must be distinctly from the west!  

Mountains of New Mexico look so different from all the hills and mountains we have seen. 

Tinkertown off of Route 66 in New Mexico. These people built this museum with bottles and odds and ends! Ridiculous and cool!

Tired and crabby but still Molly!

The kids painted Donlin on these Cadillacs in a field in Amarillo, Texas. These were really great... Junky... But so cool to see something like this just hanging in a field!

Last big dinner at a place called the BIg Texas Steak House in Amarillo. Food was ok but the experience was pretty cool. Texan musicians were walking around, the room was big and full of cowboys and there was a 72 ounce steak eating contest going on right next to us. It was pretty cool and something we would only see in Texas!

Molly flipped her hair forward, saying "cause I am a girl cowboy!"  Funny!

We ended up sleeping in Oklahoma City in the nicest hotel yet... We even had a suite. It was hard to wake up!

No more good shots from here on out... Pouring all through Oklahoma and can barely see in front of our car! 

I am already nostalgic though. Sitting here looking at the rain, I am thinking of all the good times, the highs and lows. It was only 3 weeks but it felt like a year!  I am not sure if we can do a trip like this again, but I can say we have been able to show our children glimpses of half the country!  They have seen things I have only read in books or on TV. I hope we were able to create some wonderful memories for them and a greater closeness for us as a family. For better or worse, we had each other everyday with no interruption and I will never be able to regret that.., I will actually miss sleeping all together in the camper!  We are eager to sleep in our own beds and get back to life but I hope we will feel like a closer, stronger family with great memories of our time together!