You guys! Thank you for the responses to my bold request for vacation help. We were so overwhelmed with awesome responses and suggestions and offers to stay and Air BnBs and tips and tricks! We’re excited to get this show on the road and give southern Indiana some rest from our cuckoo ways for a bit.

In case you are wondering, what might normally be boring old vacation planning can be kicked up a notch with the following additions:

• Crazy immediate urgency
• Finding accomodations for six people
• Budgeting fun
• Four opinionated offspring
• One spouse who gets annoyingly hyper when stressed (Any guesses?)
• One spouse who goes into sloth mode when pressured (Hint: Not me.)

Following last week’s blog, we got amazing suggestions and offer from a bunch of you. The options are kind and generous and made me all the more excited about our spontaneous decision to avoid rational thought and logic and rather spend the summer in the confines of our van.

Matt is still pushing for the RV purchase but, as mentioned last week, we’d need a new truck to pull it. If you know of someone selling a truck/RV combo who would take an old Labrador or history books for trade, give me a shout. Otherwise, we’re mini-vanning it across the country.

You, sweet friends, gave us amazing options from California to Jersey and a dozen places in between. Deciding route and stops has been an exercise in marital bliss (nope) for two people who couldn’t make decisions in a more polar fashion if we tried. After some discussion, which others might call borderline arguing but they’d be wrong because they don’t know our lives or how wrong Matt is all the time (kidding!), we landed on a western route. Rough outline includes Yellowstone as our furthest western point, with different routes to and from Indiana so we can hit everything from the mountains to the largest ball of popcorn.

Priorities.

Biggest hiccup has been national park accomodations.

Did you know people make their travel plans in advance? Isn’t that amazing? Some people schedule their hotel stays more than four days before they leave. Who are these weirdos? Why not wait until the last possible minute and then complain and freak out when nothing is available?

(My brother, if he ever reads this, will roll his eyes so hard they may literally get jammed up inside his head. If you see him later this summer and he looks funny, it’s the blog induced eye damage. He is a plan which shirt he’s going to wear on the third Tuesday in November kind of guy. I know my waiting and indecision and copious research makes him CRAZY. Which is honestly pure joy and a real gift for me. Love you, Jon.)

So, here we sit trying to finalize plans and also grasp why the website for the Yellowstone National Park Lodges isn’t more user friendly. Isn’t the western half of our country inundanted with tech geniuses? Can’t they send some Silicon Valley people up to Yellowstone to work out some tech help. In the meantime I’m choosing to call every location in a 5 zillion acre radius of Old Faithful until we have success.

In other news, my daughter’s recently spent the night with my parents and brought this treasure back home.

I haven’t seen her in nearly 40 years.

Thank you, Lord.

No one told me the doll was in our midst so I happened upon her and nearly lost bladder control. This doll was a terrifying toy as a child but the horror has only increased with separation.

Absence did not in fact make the heart grow fonder.

I bet if I sent this doll ahead of us to Wyoming she’d scare everyone right back to the east. Then we’d have our pick of lodges in Yellowstone.

Better yet, I’m going to send her to my brother’s house.

Thanks again for all the input on vacation spots. We’re not going to get everywhere we’d like but we’re hoping to hit several new locations. If anyone has ‘must see’ lists for Colorado, Utah (Salt Lake City area), Wyoming Or Montana, we welcome them! There is a ton of ground to cover and we’d love to have your hidden gem or popular attraction suggestions.

Happy trails!

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