Road Trip 2013- Day One

We left this morning to begin our trek to Yellowstone. To drive straight through to Jackson, WY is almost 22 hours, so I wanted to break it up into a couple of days.  I really wanted to make it to Laramie, WY for a couple of reasons, so we decided to leave super early in the morning.   I got up at 4:00 and finished packing up the last minute stuff in the car.  I woke all 3 boys up and we headed out at 4:45.  This was the temp at our house at that time of morning...

I started out driving and everybody else went back to sleep. I couldn't get a picture of the boys without weaving dangerously and driving off the road, so this will have to do.

We got about 3 hours under our belt before the boys woke up.  We stopped and got some terribly unhealthy gas station breakfast and I filled up on coffee and off we went again.  I ended up driving about 4 1/2 hours before we switched.  We had lunch at Dairy Queen and then Brian took the wheel.  Here are the boys with their first trip "present" of the day.  Last year on our road trip, I bought a bunch of little things and then wrapped them up and handed one out every now and then.  They loved it, so we did it again. It sure helps break up the monotony.

Eight hours after leaving home we finally hit another state!

Then not too long after that we crossed into Colorado.  Reed was excited. :)

After driving through Colorado fir a while, the backseat started to get a little rowdy so I gave them their next trip present - a dry erase board from dollar tree.  They drew on it for over an hour- it was quite the hit!

The sunset outside of Denver... Beautiful!

We made it to Laramie about 9:00... Approximately 17 hours after leaving our house this morning.  For the most part it was a great drive.  The 75 mph speed limit was great for making good time and with the exception on running into some pretty heavy construction traffic around Denver, I'd say we had a very productive day.  The thing I was most impressed with today -  our kids are awesome travelers. I'm talkin' rock star status. There has been no whining and hardly any craziness.  Brian and I said we could've probably went ahead and powered through all the way to Jackson, but I'm pretty sure the kids wouldn't be the problem at that point... Their momma would. :) 

Oh, and for a last little tidbit, here's the temp in Laramie at 9:00... Ahhhhh.