Before children, taking off for a trip was easy and we had very few hiccups. Then we hit parenthood and it seemed as though things that could do wrong, did. It has nothing to do with the children really. Just our luck I think.

Well this trip was no different I guess. After Ellie’s graduation from Kindergarten, we sped home and collected the last of our things and hit the road. Our destination, Redding California. We knew it would be a long drive and that we would be in after midnight. I even planned an extra hour for traffic!  Well, I guess the traffic Gods were angry because that extra hour turned in to five. Yes, you read that right. Five. It took us over five hours to get from our house to Olympia Washington. If you are familiar with the area that drive should take about an hour and a half tops!

This was not a good start to our trip and we weren’t even that far from home. With the traffic out of Seattle and Tacoma and then a stop on the grade down in to Yreka due to a jack-knifed semi, we didn’t roll into Redding until almost 6am. Yeah, it was a long night.

Thunderheads… at least we have something fun to look forward to.

Driving through Portland at sunset. We should have seen this with more light in the sky… much more.

We slept for a few hours… 4 to be exact and then set off again in hopes to make it to our destination without any hiccups. We achieved that and had the chance to check in to our hotel before the sun even started to set! It was a miracle. It was probably the longest 36 hours of travel in our life, but we made it and it gave us the chance to actually sleep before our activities the following day!