Rooooad Trip

When the husband came home the week of Christmas, we were able to keep it a secret and made quick plans to surprise his family for Christmas in New Mexico. So I was the only one who picked him up at the airport making our reunion a bit less dramatic than the traditional military homecomings that you often see in the news but was still just as sweet and just as wonderful. Perfect! After giving him about 2 days to try and catch up on a bit of sleep, we began a road-trip that resulted in 20 days away from home and driving through 8 states (which is even more of an accomplishment if you live on the west coast!) I thought I'd give you the highlights about where we were in this post.

But before I begin that, I want to quickly fill you in on what happened to all those goodies I was concocting in the beginning of the month. My goal for this year was to give out something to bless the neighbors in our community whom we live so close to and yet don't have much interaction with. Thankfully we were able to get these together before heading on the road. In my dreams I wanted to give these out to people at church too, but that just didn't quite happen (sorry, friends!). Anyway, Chris helped me deliver these onto neighbor's porches at 4:00 in the morning before we set out on our journey. It felt rather sneaky like a hit and run, but hopefully it was a good hit and run for them.

December was the prettiest December I can remember in a long time in Washington with sunshine almost every day for at least the first half. Did you notice that too? Well, our sunshine streak continued on our trip and we were really blessed with great driving weather for the most part. Only hit snow on the road in a couple mountain passes and besides that we had beautiful snow covered scenery and blue skies over the wild west. Here we are driving through Oregon or Idaho. Not quite sure if we had crossed the border yet:

Turned out we were driving through Boise, ID right around lunch time and so with a couple texts to my cousin Darius who lives there, we were able to enjoy some "Boisian" Thai food with Dari and his wife Jenn. It was great to see them and catch up a little bit. Thanks for lunch, guys!

This trip added 3 new states to my "Places I've Been" list. Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. The scenery sure changed once we hit Utah! I got to do a lot of the back road mountain driving which was really kinda fun.

Our journey took us right past Arches National Park so how could we not stop and see! It was a really neat place to be and hardly anyone else there since it was like December 22. I'll share more photos of Arches later this week.

We took 3 days to make our trip and opened our stockings and presents from my family along the way. It was fun to be able to celebrate Christmas together--especially since we were not expecting to spend our first married Christmas together.

Dirty Windows became the norm and my phone camera does not do justice to the amazing vistas we saw along the way but you'll just have to squint and use your imagination. Here are some Colorado mountains in the distance:

New Mexico was snow covered the whole time we were there. A beautiful way to spend Christmas!

After Christmas, we began the second part of our trip from Santa Fe to Los Angeles. The Grand Canyon was just an hour-each-way out of the way as we crossed Arizona and so we had to make a stop there. Chris hadn't been there since he was a kid and I had never been. It was so worth the extra driving and it is one of those places that you just have to see in person. Photos don't do it justice! What a display of God's beauty and splendor in creation.

This was the last sunset of the year as we made it into California and found ourselves suddenly coming from the wilderness onto busy southern California freeways.

All in all it was a spectacular trip and we were grateful for the time we got to spend together and with both sides of our families. But after 20 days of living out of a suitcase and plenty of hours spent driving, it sure does feel good to be home! Thanks for following along with the journey.