Our annual trip

So every summer we head home. We visit Ohio, Georgia and Alabama all in one fell swoop. In the past we have flown and then rented a car to drive between locations. This year, Josh was able to have a larger block of time off, so we crunched some numbers and decided to drive. The whole trip wound up being 7150 miles. We drove through and visited 20 states in almost 5 weeks.

We left California on June 15 and drove for four days to Ohio. We stopped  the first night in Green River, Utah and got up the next morning to spend half of the day visiting Arches National Park. It was spectacular. We have seen our fair share of national parks, but this one is definitely our favorite. It was so beautiful there that we felt compelled to take a million pictures...of course none of them do this place any justice. Just amazing. Much to Rea's excitement, there were wild rabbits everywhere! She was able to get super close to one of them. Made her day.

 Day two of our drive we only drove to Denver which was about 6 hours away. While in Denver we ate at the best pizza place. It was featured on one of our favorite shows, Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, so we had to stop in. It's called Hops and Pie. Best pizza I think I have ever had. If we lived in Denver we would definitely be regulars.

Day three we drove from Denver to St. Louis, so that was a pretty long day...and not much fun since we got to drive across Kansas. There is seriously nothing there. We made it to St. Louis late and got settled into the smallest hotel room I have ever seen. At that point we were just happy to see a bed, so we let it pass.

Day four we got up, grabbed a biscuit at a nearby McDonalds and headed to see the Gateway Arch. It took us forever to figure out how to get to it even though it was only 4 miles from our hotel. The city was doing all kinds of construction and had every other street closed. We finally made it down to the park (which was also under construction) and took a few pictures and then got on the road.

The last day of the trip was fairly quick--6 hours. We made it to Mt. Gilead in one piece and with all of the children and the dog. We were so glad to get out of the car and to start our vacation!