Sorry, there won’t be pictures yet. I’m waiting to post some pics when we get home. Here’s a quick synopsis of our adventures on the way there…bullet point style…

• We made day number one our longest driving day (wise choice). After driving for over twelve hours we arrived at our KOA stop in Brigham city, UT after hours only to discover that the cabin I had a reservation for was for the wrong night! So there we were at the camp sight with no cabin to sleep in and no KOA employee to help us out. So what did we do? We fished out our tent and set it up in the dark as quick we could. It went better than expected…that is, until our allergies hit. Whatever those beautiful smelling trees were surrounding us they wreaked havoc on all our allergies. The most painful was our children who wheezed and coughed all night…none of us really slept. The next morning we left before the campground opened so that we wouldn’t have to deal with paying for an extra camp sight or trying to explain the situation so as to hopefully change the reservation after the fact.
• Oh, I forgot to say that we paid 4.33 for gas in eastern Oregon…ouch.
• Day two was easy. It was our short day, only 7 hours. We arrived at our Cheyenne destination with enough time to eat some Taco Johns, go swimming, and relax at our cabin. It was nice. And jones decided that he’d rather stay here than go to PAPA fest.
• Day three. We saw a giraffe and a camel while driving through Nebraska. There they were just chillin‘ at a local farm. It was strange.
• Paid 3.73 for gas in Iowa…nice
• Things were going fine and dandy driving through Iowa. We stopped at some little Podunk town called Walnut to get some gas, it was 60 miles from anything of significance. After refueling, the car wouldn’t start. When we’d turn the key it’d just click, like a dead battery. The gauges were twitching like they had a tick or something and all the lights on the dash would come on and off as they pleased. The strangest thing was that whenever the key was out there was a loud buzzing sound under the steering wheel. I was worried it was some sort of electrical short or something. We were able to jump the car, but if we turned it off it wouldn’t start back up. New battery? Alternator? Starter? Lucky for us there was a man there who knew a guy and who seemed to have the impression like we were really poor and needed help (are we really that obvious?). So he called around and within an hour we had a mechanic take us to his shop where he proceeded to diagnose the problem. One dirty battery terminal later and $0.00 in fees we were off and running. The amazing thing in all of this is that neither Jess or I were stressed. We both felt an overwhelming sense of the peace of Christ. We knew that we were only on this trip because we felt urged by God to do so and we both are convinced that our vehicle belongs to him. So we just sat back and let God do his thing.
• Jess made this trip easy. Not to mention all the great snacks and healthy meals she planned out ahead of time. But she also put together a large amount of prize bags for the kids. These bags ranged from little homemade activities, to a leap pad, to books, to some out of the ordinary toys that we purchased ahead of time at Goodwill. She’s amazing and creative and even hot too boot!
• On our last day of travel going from Des Moines to Tiskilwa (a 4.5 hour drive) we woke up incredibly late. Crap! We wanted to arrive as early as possible at PAPA fest because we didn’t know what to expect and we wanted to have time to adjust on the fly with our kids. The opening ceremonies were at 1:00 and we didn’t leave until 7:45. And to make things worse was that we hit some traffic that set us behind even more.
• We passed over the Mississippi river without having time to stop. We refueled at the largest truckstop in the world (3.83 a gallon). We saw some of the effects of the flooding. And we arrived at PAPA fest at 12:30. Right in time.
• When we pulled into the mowed down farm field for parking and instructions a girl sprayed our car with a supersoaker and I was immediately overwhelmed with the number of people I saw with dreads (over half of those currently visible). A girl with long hair under her arms and on her legs gave us the rules for the weekend and told us where to park. Everyone was incredibly nice and strange looking. It was going to be a very interesting weekend.