Homebound Day 3: OK, AR, TN, MS, AL, GA

The only thing that kept any of us motivated today was knowing that we would be sleeping in our own beds tonight!  The mugginess that greeted us in Oklahoma City when we woke up was disgusting and it made Alain and I a bit sad to be heading back to the South.  We'll miss the dry weather and cool nights of the last month while traveling the West!  :(

I've been slacking about taking pictures of the state signs now that we are on a large interstate.  It's just so much more difficult to take pics while the car is moving 80 miles per hour!  We stopped near Little Rock, AR for lunch and I think we stopped right after Memphis, TN for dinner at a Chick-fil-A!  That place always perks us up.  We let the kids play finally and we also treated for milkshakes since they have been really good today!

This has definitely been one of our favorite vacations EVER as a family!  It's hard to beat Norway, but this comes pretty close in overall "awesomeness."  We're so grateful that we've had the opportunity to spend time with our friends and family this past month!  It has been an unforgettable experience for the whole family!

Homebound Day 2: AZ, NM, TX, OK

We stayed in Kingman, AZ last night right on Route 66! We had another really long travel day today! We drove 1000 miles and made it from Kingman, AZ to Oklahoma City, OK!

Of the states we drove through today, we all agreed that New Mexico was our favorite state to drive through. We loved the mountains around Albuquerque and the chacter of the canyons and plateaus scattered throughout the landscape!

At this point the kids are very ready to go home! We drove until 3:30am Central time zone, so I am praying for a peaceful car tomorrow on the last leg of the trip.

Homebound Day 1: CA, NV, AZ

Well, we are on our way home from California today. It took quite awhile for us to leave, but we finally said our goodbyes and pulled out of the driveway by 11:30am. We decided to take the Tioga Pass straight through Yosemite again after Jim and Jocelyne's recommendation and I couldn't complain about taking that awesome drive one more time! 

This is Yosemite High County and that's 2 amazing waterfalls!

We were supposed to head south to Bakersfield and then cut over the Mojave Desert onto I-40 which is our gateway home. However, we opted to cut through the mountains and drive past Vegas. I definitely don't think it was the best route to take for time, but it was a wonderful drive. We drove through 3 mountain passes to get from California to Nevada! They were winding, tight roads and I briefly feared for our lives on only a few occassions. On the upside, we saw beautiful vistas of the Sierras behind us, free range cattle close enough to touch (and cross the road in front of us) and Alain got to see the amazing lights of Vegas at night!

We didn't get as far as we originally hoped last night, so we'll be driving at least 14 hours for today and tomorrow! :(

Another interesting thing about Nevada is the random houses you see in the middle of nowhere (as you approach Vegas) with lights and interesting names like "Shady Lady Ranch". It took me driving by three of them until I believed Alain who insisted the were 'brothels'. Obviously, we did not stop. ;)

The kids are ready to go home finally! I find it amazing that our kids have adjusted to the vagabond lifestyle so easily these last few weeks! It's helped that we didn't stay in one place more than one week, but it's been really fun to watch them adjust at each house to different toys, different kids and different house rules. They are such wonderful kids!

Nicolet Reunion Weekend

Well, let me start by saying that a reunion with the Nicolets begins and ends with the food. God bless Aunt Jocelyne and Uncle Jim (our hosts) as they love to cook and entertain! We arrived in time for dinner Thursday night - Tri tip beef roasts were delish!

Josh, Mary, Luc and Jy had already arrived (well, Mary was picked up late that night from the airport). Alain's cousin, Dolcey, was also there with her two boys. We set up our tent near the other campers and we were ready to crash early after a long day of driving through the mountains!


For most of the weekend we chilled around the house. That consists mostly of chatting, horseshoes, bocce ball, volleyball and napping. Uncle Frank and Alain were by far the most successful at horseshoes and they both went head-to-head in the end with Uncle Frank clenching the title after Alain's failed attempts to beat him!  The volleyball game on Sunday was also really exciting with lots of loud yells and even an injury for Jy.  Poor thing tore her ACL trying to score a point for her team!  They got the point in the end and she's quite proud that her injury didn't cause her team to loose a point.  Bocce Ball was a game that I missed, but I heard it was tons of fun.  Somehow Alain, Luc and Josh were put on a few teams together and became known as "The Brothers Nicolet."  When they played bocce ball against Uncle Frank, Josiah and Eric, they were unbeatable!

Jim and Jocelyne have all kinds of crazy toys.  The Nicolet boys got to play on a bulldozer, a tractor and a 3-wheeler!  Luc also found some bikes that he and Jy rode all over the 20-acres of property!  Jim is working on an old jeep that he's fixing up, so he took a few people out on a ride on Sunday and they had a blast.  Jy said it was almost better than Yosemite! 

Luc & Josh riding the bull dozer!

The kids had a great time bouncing from the trampoline to the playground all weekend. They also got to ride on the 3-wheeler with Uncle Luc.  On Sunday, the kids found a plum tree that had tons of ripe plums, so they picked a bunch and opened a plum restaurant. They called it Plum+Plum.  However, by the time most of us arrived at the restaurant, the plums were no longer ripe. We did our best to eat the outside of the plum, but it was very sour. It was so cute because they decided they weren't getting enough customers and they started a delivery service up to the house.  They had water and gatorade available to drink as well.  There was a small bench to sit on as part of the playground, so we sat there and were greeted by our server (Lauren).  She gave us our menu options and then told the upstairs kitchen what to prepare.  Soon after, she returned with our order!

Jocelyne took the slip-n-slide out on Saturday.  Luc helped her set it up in the perfect location.  "If you build it, they will come."  Oh, did the kids ever come out for the slip-n-slide!  However, it just wasn't slippery enough as first, so Jocelyne brought out some dish soap and that really moved things along!

Ian on his way down the slip-n-slide with Uncle Luc monitoring!

Some of the highlights of our food was coq au vin, carnitas and cinnamon rolls! Amazing food paired with one-of-a-kind company (and great wine and margaritas) equals one unforgettable weekend!

Well, this is Alain with Jy's hair and Cam with Cherie's hair! 

Aunt Mary napping after a rough day of playing horseshoes!

Lauren, Annabelle, Taylor, Zach and Emilie!

Pre-Reunion & Yosemite N.P.

When you buy a pass to a national park, it's always good for one whole week, so we were able to take advantage of the pass we bought on our way into California and return with the family to explore the park together.  It took forever for all 14 of us to get out of the house and ready to hike, but we finally left around 11:30am.  Jocelyne and Jim took us past a few of the important sights (Yosemite Falls, Bridalveil Falls, etc.) and took us to the tunnel view.  It's a very famous area for pictures on the whole Yosemite Valley.  You can see El Capitan, Half Dome and I think Glacier Point from this view point.  It's just absolutely beautiful and it was a perfect day for pictures, so we worked around the hoards of tourists to get a few shots.

They've had a ton of snow this year, so the waterfalls are still raging.  The last 2 times we visited Yosemite, the waterfalls were rather lacking by July.  It's usually springtime when you can catch them raging, but the rivers and waterfalls were so beautiful.  Zach found waterfalls everywhere.  They pop out of the rock as you are driving along and he was so excited to tell us about the waterfalls that he found!

We ate lunch at a picnic spot right below El Capitan.  If you don't know what El Capital is, I can tell you that it's a rock climbers dream!  Rock climbers come here from all over the world to climb this huge mass of granite the frames the Yosemite Valley.  We always look really hard to see if we can see the climbers because they look like little specks from down below.  Jocelyne put together an amazing lunch with freshly carved tri-tip beef roast sandwiches, fresh fruit and scones leftover from breakfast!  Let me just tell you that Jocelyn is an amazing cook.  We savor every meal that she makes.

Most of the crew with us made the hike up to Vernal falls.  It was rather steep and I noticed that Emilie was not feeling the hike early on, so I opted to stay behind with her and Dolcey stayed with her 6-year-old, Ian, as well.  While everyone else got to see one of the most beautiful waterfalls up close, we truly enjoyed letting the kids play in a small pool of water to cool off while we took some time to catch up!  Zach and Annabelle went with Alain and Z-man hiked almost all of the way by himself.  That kid is going to be a serious track or cross country star!  He amazes me.  Annabelle made it to the bridge of the falls and then came back down with Aunt Mary and Jy!

California & Yosemite N.P.

The California sign was a little hard to see, so I didn't actually get a picture of it.  Just going too fast and I think I accidentally put my finger over the camera.  Brilliant, right?  Alain gave me a hard time about that, but it happens when I try to rush things.

So, we entered California through National Forest that borders Yosemite National Park.  We drove past a beautiful lake called Mono Lake and then found a true "Roller Coaster Road" on the way into the Park.  This road was amazing and incredibly scary at the same time.  The bumps were huge and you literally could not see the bottom of the road on the other side of the bump.  The kids were in heaven, but I felt like we were going to lose our front bumper any minute and flip over!  Alain had no worries and just found it to be a great distraction for our kids who were very tired of being in the car.  This was our longest travel day thus far at 10 hours.  We've been trying to keep it to 8 hours at the most.

Mono Lake 

We entered Yosemite from the East end of the Park it was unbelievably beautiful.  The East end of the Park (called the "High Country") is high altitude and averages at 10,000 feet on the roadway (Tioga Pass), so there were beautiful trees, snow covered mountains and amazing alpine lakes!  The road took over 2 hours to drive to get to the West entrance.  We were not expecting it to take that long, but the winding mountain roads at low speeds were slow traveling.  It's not like you want to rush through one of the most beautiful National Parks in existence anyway.  So, we did our best to keep the kids entertained and finally made it to Jocelyne and Jim's house around 6:30pm.  They had dinner shortly after we arrived and the kids were so happy to see their aunts and uncles that they didn't even remember how hungry they were.

Nevada & Great Basin N.P.

We took lots of back roads through Nevada, so we we literally saw three towns in all of Nevada on our way to California.  As soon as we crossed the border between Nevada and Utah, we entered the area of Great Basin National Park.

I noticed that we would be passing it when I made our travel plans, so I looked up some information about it online and found out that Great Basin was one of the best places in the continental US to see the milky way.  Once we realized that the sky was going to stay clear for the evening, we decided to camp instead of staying in a hotel.  It was a great decision and we found a campsite right near a raging creek.  The sound was so peaceful and the kids had a great time playing on the rocks around the creek the next morning.

We arrived rather late and had to set up camp in the dark, but Alain set up a fire as soon as we finished setting up the tent so that we could have marshmallows over the campfire.  The marshmallows were the most stale things we've ever tried in our lives, so we had to cook them a little longer than normal.  After marshmallows, the kids went straight to bed.  I think it must have been after 10pm Pacific Time.

Alain and I stayed up and laid down on blankets just to watch the stars after the kids went to bed.  We saw at least 10 shooting stars (which is a record for both of us).  It was unbelievably beautiful and the Milky Way was so perfectly clear.  We also drove up Wheeler Mountain (highest peak between Rockies and the Sierras) and had the most amazing view of the Great Basin below as the sun was setting.  They had a campground at near the top of the mountain (around 10,000 feet).  The summit is actually at 13,000 feet, so it's still a bit of a hike to get to the top.  It was a beautiful campground and I told Alain that I would love to come back here and camp!  It's a dream campground for sure, but it was full so we had to find our other campsite down closer to 7600 feet.  It was nice and chilly. . . perfect for camping in the summer!