Ah, summer. And what more says summer than the Great American Road Trip? Last month, my husband and I bravely loaded up our 8 month old and 2+ year old to head up to the playground that is Jackson, Wyoming. The drive is about 8 hours, and we did it without any electronic entertainment devices. (Admittedly this is only because I hid that iPad so well from my toddler a couple months ago, that I still haven’t found it.) We more than managed…it wasn’t the same as relaxed traveling without kiddos, but it certainly wasn’t awful.
We spent one night in Casper (home to Mike Devereaux, one of my favorite Baltimore Orioles) in a most wonderful Courtyard Marriott. A clean room, a king-sized bed, refrigeration, and coffee and cocktail options in the lobby are some of my new hotel requirements, and this one met all of those. Plus, it is located very close to a Flying J truck stop. Now that I am the mother to the future Secretary of Transportation (watch out Anthony Foxx), this is an incredible perk–real life tractor trailers, cement mixers, and fuel tankers are 100% guaranteed to result in joy and hours of fascination.
While the king-sized bed entertained the boys during the evening, all of us were piled into it by the middle of the night. This caused only half of us to get any sleep (and not the grown-up half). And all of us were wide awake by 4:30 or so, so we headed on out bright and early. Ugh.
We stumbled across Dubois, WY and its great playground and paved trail just in time to take care of a screaming, hungry baby. We stopped for an hour to eat, play, and expend energy before the final push into Jackson.
Pictures from this portion of our vacation appear below.
All images © Susannah Allen 2015
