On the Road Again!

Hello and welcome back to Nomad Dad Life! Our time in Oregon has come to an end. It’s time to pack up the traveling circus, as we like to call it, and head out on the road again. We now have a better idea of what to expect and how the children will react in the vehicle for extended periods of time, so the trip back “home” was a lot easier to prepare for. I put home in quotes because at this point, we don’t have one. We sold our home and were in the process of looking for land but hadn’t found anything before heading back to Minnesota. Our next destination is Colorado Springs, but we went back to Minnesota for a long weekend. One of Fae’s sisters was getting married, so it worked out great that we were able to be back for her wedding.

Leaving Oregon

One of the (many) weird things about me is I don’t like to go to the same place twice or take the same route back as I took somewhere. With that being said, we took a little different route back to Minnesota. We were on a more southern route to Oregon; on our way back we went a more northern route. Leaving Eugene, we headed north to Seattle. I have a cousin who was going to college in the Seattle area, so we were able to meet up with him for lunch between his classes.

We had been in the vehicles for over four hours, so we decided to spend a little time in Seattle. We had limited time so, we thought we might as well do the most touristy thing in Seattle and go to the Space Needle! It was midafternoon on a weekday so we didn’t have to wait in line to get tickets and we were able to go to the top right away.

It was a unique experience; our children loved the rotating glass floor at the top! This is the only rotating glass floor in the world. We only spent about a half hour here so we could beat rush hour traffic out of Seattle. There is a restaurant, bar, and café at the top of the Space Needle so you could spend a lot of time at the top if you wanted to. We made it to our stop for the night in Ellensburg, Washington, just in time to watch the Vikings get destroyed by the Eagles on Monday Night Football. Of course, we had low expectations considering it was Kirk Cousins playing a prime-time game.

What We Missed

Butte was our next stop on our way back to Minnesota. The drive there was amazing. Washington is filled with forests and surrounded by mountains. There is something new to look at around every curve of the road. The Channeled Scablands in Eastern Washington is a place we didn’t know about at the time, but it is one that I hope to get to explore someday. Had we known about it sooner, we would have made a pit stop for sure. I mean look at this:

Now a sentence I never thought I would say in my life is that I want to spend more time in Idaho. I was busy working the days we stayed in Boise on our way to Oregon, and we just drove through it on our way back. It has some of the most geographic differences of any state. We got a glimpse of craters of the moon on our way to Oregon. The lava field covers 618 square miles and really does feel “otherworldly” when you are there.

Shoshone Falls, AKA Niagara of the West, is located just outside of Twin Falls Idaho. The falls mirror the shape of Niagara Falls, as water falls over more than a 1,000-foot-wide semicircle. The Snake River has multiple points of interest up and down it along with world-class fishing. North America’s deepest river gorge (Hells Canyon) forms the border between Idaho and Washington, and at its highest point towers nearly 8,000 feet above the Snake River below.

Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area is a long name and self-explanatory. It is 480,000 acre park that is home to over 700 pairs of raptors from 15 different species. The conservation area is made up of a series of canyons cut out by the Snake River.

Home Stretch

We spent the night in Butte and decided to make a longer trip the next day so we would have a short drive the third day for the home stretch. Our plan was to drive nine and a half hours to Bismarck and have only a little over four hours left of driving. We made it to Bismarck late after stopping at I believe five different playgrounds on the way to get a break from the vehicles. This of course, was Arkyn and Ayla’s favorite part of our drive. We made it to Bismarck late, but the children were wide awake and excited to see everyone back home.

The final stretch of the drive was short and we got back home around noon, with plenty of time for Arkyn to drive all of his equipment at the farm. We had a busy weekend with the wedding, and it was tough to get everything done and see everyone we wanted to see. Everyone had a lot of questions for us. How are we liking it? How do the children do in the vehicle? What has been our favorite part of traveling? It was during this trip back we came up with the idea to do the blog–not just to share our journey, but to help us remember everything that that we’ve done since we started traveling.

Next Destination

Up next is Colorado Springs. We had been to Colorado before, but only in the Fort Collins/Estes Park area for a couple of days for a wedding. We loved the area and were hoping we would be able to live in Colorado at some point during our travels. It helped to have a little familiarity with the area, plus a friend in the Air Force was moving back to Colorado Springs around the same time we were moving there. That was extremely helpful having someone there who we knew who was more than happy to help us with any questions we had.

The drive wasn’t there wasn’t as long so we only planned to have one overnight stay on the way there. Honestly, not much to see driving through eastern South Dakota and Nebraska so we tried to make the trip as quick as possible with our normal stops at playgrounds to get the children some exercise. We didn’t plan ahead because we weren’t sure how far we wanted to drive so we didn’t book a hotel in advance. We made it to Kearney, Nebraska and got a room there. That was a mistake.

Life On The Road

I don’t remember exactly what hotel we stayed at, but there was a wedding going on and limited rooms available. OK not the end of the world because we were able to get a room and have a place to stay. The issue was the Mariachi Band playing pretty much right outside our room, as we were across the hall from their conference room, which they use for weddings. The walls were thin and you could hear the music almost as good as if you were in the conference room.

We were planning on toughing it out as we would just leave early in the morning, but we did ask if any other rooms were available. Lucky for us they did have a room on the opposite side of the hotel. Unlucky for us it was a small hotel. You could still hear the band from our room, but it was at least manageable so we all could get some rest.

We got to Colorado Springs a day before we could move into our home for the next three months. We did this so we could spend the night at Great Wolf Lodge so Arkyn and Ayla could enjoy the waterpark and everything else the Lodge had to offer. Our plan is to always tried to find something fun for our children to do when we move somewhere new so they would be excited about our new location.

The next post will be the first about our time in Colorado. Please follow our journey on social media by clicking one of the icons below.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter