And Here We Go...

 Well it was here, ready or not. August 2 Hayden drove the Penske rental down to Logandale where we planned to meet up and drive him across the country to North Carolina. It was a pretty full truck but he managed to fit Jeff & Rachel's stuff in there too.

 The Leavitts came too and they said their goodbyes at Ashley's. We had a family prayer and we were off. Mendis and Hayden drove the Penske down the back road and into Arizona, Ashley drove Hayden's Honda and I drove our car. Ashley & I drove straight to the airport in Vegas where we parked my car in the economy lot. We got into Hayden's car and headed out. 

Love this text Ashley got from Benjy! We are so grateful he was able to get the time off to be with the kids so Ashley could come with us.

 We wanted to have some fun along the way so our plan was to take Route 66 as much as possible while the Penske slogged away on the I-40. We met up in Kingman for In & Out (Hayden's last for awhile) and then off we went. The thing is the truck didn't go all that slow even over the mountains.

Let the party begin. 

 We started right off by heading to Hackberry Spring, one of our faves from the trip last year with Christina. It was so fun to show it all to Ashley.

 After Hackberry Spring we headed through Seligman. Another fun town on Route 66.

 There was just fun stuff everywhere we looked. I even found a penny smashing machine!

When we finally hit the I-40 we found out we were quite a ways behind the Penske. Dang it! And there was a semi that burned on the freeway just outside of Flagstaff so we spent over and hour trapped in the car crawling along. We made the best of it.

We all met up again for dinner at Dennys but the guys had to wait about 15 min for us to get there. We ate dinner and hit the road staying on the I-40 all the way to Albuquerque. We arrived at about midnight thanks to the accident! We were exhausted and had to be up early the next morning to do it all again.