Day 9 - Last Day of our Roadtrip to Cali

We spent the night in Palm Springs! We realize that we could have made it home since we were only 2 hours away, but after driving close to 10 hours, we were exhausted! We decided to call it a day, spend the night there and sleep in the next morning before driving home. 

We also decided to get massages since we only had 2 hours left of our roadtrip!

We felt like BRAND NEW people as we drove the last 2 hours of our drive

AND THE SUN WAS SHINING!!!!!

We made it HOME!!!

That was the last cross country road trip we will be doing for awhile. But we definitely plan to do a lot more traveling, so check back for more blogs! :)

Day 8 - Roadtrip to Cali

We spent almost ALL day driving today. The last leg (or two) of every roadtrip is always the hardest. We were very eager to be done driving and to be home. The ONLY state sign I missed was New Mexico. We were driving and it was dark (which would have made picture-taking difficult) but the sign wasn't on the side of the road, it was actually on a bridge that we went under. Here is the Arizona state sign. We drove into Arizona around early morning this day.

We drove well over 9 hours this day. And it rained the entire time that we drove! We were dissapointed that we wouldn't be able to go to the Grand Canyon. It had snowed in Flagstaff and the storm was moving north. We were feeling really bummed about that fact.

We definitely listened to Christmas music most of the drive! 

We ate at Cracker Barrel one last time while in Flagstaff and said goodbye to one of our favorite restaurants! :( so sad. All of you who live anywhere other than Cali are super lucky! :)

WE MADE IT TO CALIFORNIA!!!!!!

Day 7 - Roadtrip to Cali

Good Morning from Colorado!

We woke up this morning to snow! I was absolutely thrilled! Here are some of our pictures that we took trying to get the snow off of our car. The first picture below, our car is on the left.

We are NOT skilled drivers in the snow, we had a few "hold your breath" moments as we waited for our car to stop sliding and come to a stop at a stop light, but there were no close calls. 

We wanted to explore Colorado Springs so we decided to start with Garden of the Gods. We started in the Visitor's Center and as we walked through the doors, three workers all raised their hands above their heads and yelled "YAY!!!" We were their first visitors of the day!!!

I like the picture above because it is of our footprints in the freshly fallen snow. And the picture below is of the icicles that attached to the bottom of our car!!! It was soooooooo cold! The rest of our tour of the  Garden of the Gods we decided to take from the car.

This rock is called Balancing Rock!

Then we went to see Cliff Dwellings! It was incredible to see what the Indians made so many years ago!

After the Cliff Dwellings we drove to Focus on the Family. This is such an incredible ministry and we loved being able to tour it and see everything that they are doing!

Then we went to one of many Olympic Training Centers! WE LOVE THE OLYMPICS!!!!

Michael Phelps swam in this pool!

Apolo Ohno spent 8 years training at this site!

This is what the original Olympic games would have looked like!

This is torch from the Torino, Italy Olympics in 2006

Josh wanted to be a silver medalist.

Right before we finished touring the facility and seeing all the different gyms that the Olympians train in, we met an Olympian who won a GOLD MEDAL!!! His name is Brandon Slay and he won Gold in the 2000 Sydney Olympics for wrestling. He beat the 3 time gold medalist! He is now a coach and he spent several minutes talking to our group about what he and his athletes do. SO COOL!!!!

We left Colorado and headed south towards New Mexico. We were super bummed about not being able to travel through Denver and see Arches National Park in Utah, but we decided we would rather be safe than sorry with the crazy weather conditions!