Road Trip - Oregon to Utah

Less than a week after James graduated, we left our new house (and all the unpacking we still had to do) to go on a little road trip... to Tennessee.  Leaving at 4am, we were able to enjoy a nice sunrise.

Taylor's been wanting to see a sunrise for months, but it's so hard when you don't roll out of bed until 8 or 9 in the morning.  She was finally awake for a sunrise!  

The kids got as cozy as they could with blankets and pillows.  We were going to be in the car awhile!  The first leg of the journey was to go from our home on the Oregon coast, to the Salt Lake Valley, in Utah, a mere 935 miles.  It would take us about 17 hours to get there!

 Passing the Siskiyou National Forest near Grants Pass, Oregon.

I believe that's Mt. McLoughlin in the distance, but I could totally be wrong.  We were driving near Medford at the time.  

After Medford, we turned East and headed for the border.  This is Eastern Oregon.  We don't get over here very often.  It's different than Western Oregon, but pretty as well.  

Yay!  We made it to Nevada.  

One of my favorite things about our vacation was seeing the different landscapes, hence all the landscape pictures.  I love the clouds in this one. 

These hills are so cool.  So rounded and treeless.  And so different from what I usually see everyday.  I really enjoyed seeing new places on this trip. 

Still Nevada.  I have no idea what mountains those are in the background, but that train passed by at the perfect moment, don't you think. 

After driving for hours and hours, we finally hit the Utah state line.

Yay!  We're in the 3rd state of the day.  

We drove past the Bonneville Salt Flats.  We'd told Logan all about how they broke the Land Speed Record there.  He was so excited to see it.  Then he saw this vast and flat expanse of whiteness.  Just more and more flatness, and vastness and whiteness.  For miles and miles.  I don't think he was impressed.  

The wind through that area was impressive though.  We were hauling a bike on the roof of the car and through the salt flats we were really concerned about it because it was so windy.

We passed the Great Salt Lake around sunset.   We got to see both sunrise and sunset that day... from the car.  Ugh. 

We also passed near the SLC airport.  It's a busy airport.  We saw no less than half a dozen airplanes coming in to land, in the couple of minutes it took us to pass by it on the freeway.  

We stayed with James' brother and his family.  We were so glad to be out of the car for the day.  So grateful for a bed to sleep in that night.  We loved seeing family too.  It'd been nearly a year since we'd seen them.  

The kids took off and played and ran all around, so excited to be with their cousins again.   It had been such a long day for them, but they were no where near ready for bed.  They had cousins to play with!  

Unfortunately, we were only there for the night.  The next day would take us on the next leg of our journey, but we'd stay with James' brother and family again on the way back home, for several days.  Knowing that, was the only thing that got the kids in the car the next day.