Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 16

Well today was our last day on the road. However keeping with Squires Road Trip tradition we would make a few stops on our way home from Albequrqe. Our first stop was actually right in Albequerqe at Petroglyph National Monument. It was pretty cool and provided another stamp for us. After our brief stop we headed to Grants, New Mexico for another visit to a National Park. I figured I would periodically post a picture of the kid's favorite activities while in the car. As you can see Spencer was usually playing with his DS.

Our Stop in Grants was pretty quick but informational and fun. We learned about two parks in the area and even bought us a new book about parks in our area.

Jayden read the book below on our trip. He got to where he couldn't put it down for long.

Today we crossed into Colorado and took this picture of the kids on the sign.

In Memphis Shaelyn found a giant jar of cheese balls and enjoyed eating them on the rest of the trip.

Our last state sign was the Utah sign. We finally after two weeks arrived back into our own state. I will most likely post some periodic tidbits about the trip later this week.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 15

As we were headed to New Mexico we saw a sign for a national park 20 miles off the freeway and decided we would go check it out and get another stamp in our passport. It was called Washita Battlefield. It is a historic site where General Custer wiped out a Cheyenne camp. It was a great lesson in U.S. history. Today we entered Texas, I believe this is our 14th state on the trip. We would travel through the pan handle of Texas today.

Our pit stop for the day was in Texas outside of Amarillo. This place is called Cadillac Ranch. Basically a farmer decided to bury 10 Cadillacs into some of his farmland and allow people to come put artwork or sign them.

The kids found some cans of spray paint with some paint still in them and had a blast painting the cars.

Below is a picture of the kids by a car they were painting on.

In the afternoon we entered New Mexico and gained an hour back. We had been on Central time for over a week. We are pretty close to home now that we are in Albuquerque. We will make the last leg of this trip tomorrow.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 14

We started off our day with a huge history lesson. We had a great morning going to the Central High School Visitor Center. We were all amazed by the amount of things we learned in the time we were at the center. I highly recommend all to visit this place if you are ever in the area. Jayden and Spencer learning about the Little Rock 9 and how they helped the desegregation process. I should probably should write more about what we learned today, however it would make this page very long. If any of you are interested in hearing more just let me know, I would be glad to tell you more.

After we finished at the visitor center we went over to the High School which is actually still in operation and took some pictures of this magnificent building. We then headed out of Little Rock, Arkansas and started on our long drive for the day. As you can see below we crossed into Oklahoma today.

We made a brief stop in Oklahoma City to go see the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial. Again this was educational for ourselves and our kids. The mood was pretty somber the whole time we were here. Of course that is understanding since it is a memorial for a tragic moment in our history. Below Tammy and the kids are looking at a picture timeline of the events.

Below my kids decided that they were going to leave a message for the people who died that day. Shaelyn wrote "God Bless Us", Spencer wrote "God Bless the Kids". I was a proud dad that my kids wanted to do that. I was equally impressed that the memorial provides chalk for the kids and people to write in a designated area to express their feelings about this event.

Ok after I figured out how to work the parking meter and paid for my parking and someone Else's parking we fought through the construction downtown and found a way out of town. I must say as you can see from the pictures below the kids are still being really good in the car and they seem to adjust well to all of the travel.

Wide awake one minute crashed the next. They all took naps on the trip today. I believe I was the only one not getting some sleep on this leg of the trip.

Tonight we are staying in Elk City, OK. It is located on the historic route 66. We went by the museum and then went and ate dinner at a nice restaurant.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 13

We started today off by going down to Graceland. We did not go on the tour but Tammy and the kids went and took some pictures out by the gate and the wall. We probably would have gone in if it wouldn't have cost us an arm and a leg. It was still pretty cool to see the grounds the famous gates and his planes. We did find a gift shop that had about everything you could think of with Elvis on it.

We then headed to the banks of the Mississippi for our riverboat tour. We had to wait for awhile before it started and it was pretty hot, however it was kind of cool just hanging out on a riverboat. The tour eventually started and we headed down the Mississippi. I was not aware that we were going to learn so much about Memphis and the Mississippi. It was amazing all of the things that we learned on this trip. The views and the ride on the river were pretty neat too. Down below are some pictures that we took on our riverboat ride.

Above is a picture of the "old" arena for the Memphis Grizzlies. It is pretty cool to look at but is not currently used. Below is a picture of our kids riding on the boat with Memphis in the background.

We were able to get a picture of the whole family as we rode down the Mississippi.

The picture below is of the riverboat we were on during our tour of the Mississippi. We rode in the middle at first and then moved to the bottom later during the ride. We finally succumbed to the heat and humidity and move to the area of the boat that was air conditioned. It was about 98 degrees and 85% humidity today.

After our riverboat trip we headed towards Little Rock, Arkansas. On our drive we continued to fill out our scavenger hunt sheets. We also played road trip bingo. It was only a two hour drive and seemed to go by pretty fast. Tonight the kids played in the pool for a couple of hours. I don't see how they can stay in the water that long.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 12

I have added the picture below to today's post because we didn't like the Missouri sign that they had as we came into St. Louis, so we took this today on our way out of Missouri. Yes we are dedicated to this process and will take exits off the freeway and turn around just to get the right picture.

Well today we awoke in St. Louis and with a relatively small trip to Memphis today we decided to go on a small tour of St. Louis in the car. Since I have been here before I knew the cool buildings to show the family. I love the old buildings in downtown St. Louis. Below are a few buildings we went by on our tour. Below is a picture of City Hall.

After our self guided tour we went and got some doughnuts and headed down to Memphis. It was going to take us two hours to get to our lunch stop. Yes we knew exactly where we were going to have lunch today. We were going to eat at a place we found online. This place was serving food when Route 66 was booming. The cooks were so busy filling the orders that they just started throwing the rolls to the customers that needed one. They still keep this tradition going today. They actually have a guy that goes around throwing rolls to everyone. It looked like a pretty good job (he seemed to enjoy it). If you put your hand up, you better be ready for a roll flying across the room at you. Besides the entertainment of the roll throwing the food was absolutely delicious! Each one of us said that it was the best food we had. The portions of the food were enormous and they kept bringing extra sides around. We were all stuffed when we left the place. Oh and by the way it was way cheap for the amount of food we had.

Above the guy is loading up to throw a roll to a customer. Below Shaelyn is catching a roll that was thrown across the room. She was making some pretty awesome catches.

Below is a picture of us at Lambert's Cafe. Notice the plate sizes and what they served our drinks in (34oz. mugs).

OK so I didn't sleep too well in St. Louis and was up at 5:30 central and didn't go back to sleep. So after lunch I decided to let Tammy drive for the first time of this trip and I would take a nap. As you can see they had a little fun with me on this section of the trip. I must say I would rather drive anytime. I thought it would be easy over in the "copilot" seat. I underestimated the role by a long shot. I had to program the GPS, look over the map and find our pit stops and make sure all the kids were good before I could start my nap. Then I had to get up to take pictures at the state signs. I have now decided that Tammy is no longer just the copilot, she is now called the Navigational Officer and way above my pay grade. So needless to say I will be going back to my simple driving duties.

Yep I took that picture that you see below.

Once we arrived in Memphis we went to the motel and got checked in. The rest of the evening we went swimming and hung out in our room. We were still pretty full from lunch so we just snacked for dinner. Then we had movie night with popcorn watching Iron Man on the laptop.

Squires Road Trip 2010 Day 11

Today we hung around our camp for a little while so we(Tammy) could get some laundry done. As I was hanging out in the Explorer these bunnies decided to invade our camp. We had to wait for the Rain to stop so we could take down our tent. After a couple of hours of lounging, laundry, and other activities it was time to head to St. Louis. Kids playing miniature golf at the KOA.

I believe this picture was taken while waiting in the car for me to check us into the hotel. Our hotel is located one block from both the arch and the ball park. It made it really easy to walk to both things tonight. We did miss the first huge thunder storm by about one minute when we were getting our things into the hotel. The storm was big enough that they were calling for flash floods in the area and hail was the size of golf balls. We hung out in our room for about an hour before the storm died down so we could go over to the Gateway Arch.

After the storm we headed over to the Arch to go take pictures and go to the top. We learned about how and why it was built. The ride up was cool, I was surprised we were able to get Tammy in that tiny thing. I was surprised by how empty it was, we didn't have to wait hardly at all. I believe the storm scared a lot of people off. When we arrived to the top the view was magnificent. After we got back down we went and looked around in the Westward Expansion Museum.

This picture was taken while we were traveling to the top of the arch. If you can't see Tammy's head is hitting the roof in this tiny pod.Just one of the many spectacular views from the top of the arch.

Here is a picture of the family inside at the top of the arch.

After we were done with the arch we walked down to the Mississippi River so the kids could put their feet in the water.
We went back to the hotel and ate dinner after we finished at the Mississippi. The food was great! I had some St. Louis ribs and enjoyed every ounce of them. After dinner we headed over to the ball park to watch the Cardinals play the Mariners. The game was another great game, but a lot different from the Cubs game we were at two days ago. The Cardinals won the game and as Spencer said we are 2-0 on our road trip.

Picture of the family down on the field after the game.

As we were walking home from the park it started to rain. It ended up being a torrential down pour! As you could see by the picture below we got a little wet.

Squires Family Road Trip 2010 Day 10

Today the whole family had a hard time getting up. We decided after the late night and all of the excitement of yesterday that we would let the kids sleep in today. It was kind of nice to just hang around the motel for awhile. I was happy with our motel. I was afraid when I booked it online it was going to be in a bad neghborhood or really ran down, but it wasn't at all. After we had breakfast and packed everything up in the explorer we headed to the "L" parking lot. It was fun trying to get everything off the rack in the back inside the Explorer, including the rack itself. I was afraid to leave that stuff outside for too long, thought someone might try to walk off with it. Our first destination of the day was called Millinium Park. The pictures below are of what is called the Jelly Bean which is located in the park. The kids had a blast creating different poses with this object.

Another attraction in the park were two water towers that displayed electronic images on them as water ran down them. They were pretty cool and the kids enjoyed getting their feet wet.

After a huge lunch at a pizza place downtown where we had some Chicago-Deep-Dish Pizza, we went to Willis Tower (Sears Tower). All I can say is that thing way up there! We learned a lot of neat facts about the tower while we were waiting to go up. The visibility sucked so the wait wasn't bad at all. We almost didn't go up because of that but we decided to do it anyways. We couldn't wait to see it alater and we wanted to say we have been in the tower at the top. It was a good choice, we had a blast up there and still saw some stuff when the clouds broke up a little.

Tammy struggled getting out on the glass edge but being the trooper she is, she eventually got out there and took a picture with us.

This is a picture of all three kids in three different glass edges.

After the tower we walked around the city for a little bit and then got back on the "L" because it was getting late and we needed to head down to Springfield, IL. The "L" was crammed and so were the freeways. It was Rush Hour! Luckily we only had a three hour drive today, otherwise it would have been really late when we got to the KOA in Springfield.

No we didn't pay someone to get on the hood to take this picture. Tammy has devised a way to set the timer and then put it on the dash to take a picture of us in the car. I guess that is what happens when you spend so much time in a vehichle.

Sunset while driving in Illinois.