A family leaves for California

We left for our trip to California today.  A year ago, my SIL shared with us that our nephew, Alex, would be marching in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena with his high school marching band.  We missed out on seeing our other nephew, Connor, march with the same marching band in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade the year prior because the trip was very expensive and it wasn't feasible to take so many young children on a trip to the mean streets of NYC.  So for this trip, the stars were aligned.  We had a year to save up, the kids would be the perfect age to visit Disneyland, and it had been 8 long years since our last visit to CA.  We had a portion of each paycheck diverted to a special savings account, and at year's end, we were mostly set.  Theme parks are expensive!!

We left bright and early this morning, but still almost a whopping two hours behind schedule.  Despite the mother of all packing lists, it is the actual doing of the packing that we never seem to manage...  We are traveling in our van, and my brother, SIL, two nephews, my dad and stepmom are traveling in their van.  They live an hour away, so they hit the road long before us.  Our destination is Cedar City, Utah.

We've had some snow, but thankfully almost a full day of weak sunshine for the crews to work on the roads.  As we traveled along we fought a little bit of traffic along I-70, and decided in Frisco that it would be nice to be able to actually SEE out the windshield, so we stopped for a new pair of wiper blades.  After that, the travel was much better.  As we passed Vail, I remembered that Dean and I resolved to listen to Serial, the podcast that everyone is raving about.  So I queued up as many episodes as I could while we had cell service, we popped in a movie and made all the kids wear headphones, and then Dean and I settled in to enjoy the show.

As we neared Glenwood Springs, the canyons looked absolutely magnificent.  The snow-covered strata was so beautiful...

Funny, though, when I look at this, I associate it now with the beginning episode of Serial, as the case is being discussed for the first time.  The way people associate different memories with smells - I'm the same way with sounds.  I look at my bedroom walls, and remember painting them as I was listening to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

We drove through the late afternoon and evening.  I'm sad we missed seeing the beautiful landscapes of Utah, since it was so dark.  We arrived in Cedar City a dead-tired and crabby bunch, and immediately went to bed after saying a quick hello in the hotel hallway to my brother.  Tomorrow we drive to CA!