Summer means summer road trip. Last year we drove to Colorado, this year we are heading to DC.

Kids are excited

We are excited…but mostly stressed. It’ll be many many hours and many many full days with the kids with no breaks. Hopefully at some point I’ll be more excited than stressed about this trip. One can hope.

Of course, it’ll take us forever just to get out of Texas. We plan on being on the road for close to 8 hours today.

We thought it would be fun to listen to music artists from the states that we are passing through. Listened to some artists from Arkansas and some artists from Texas.

Boring.

Boring.

Still excited, but starting to get a little bit fussy. Just a little bit.

I introduced this song the the kids, and now everyone is singing it. We all love it, especially PL.

Passed by Waxahachie Texas, figured we’d listen to Waxahatchee..

Oops, forgot to start our trip odometer back at home. This is the point where I zeroed the trip computer, so now I can add the miles from home to here at the final tally.

Alright, zeroed the trip computer. Oh well, at least remembered not too far into the trip.

Oops, missed an exit, and now into a construction zone.

GPS is telling us to go a really long way to make an U turn. Screw that. We took a right, a right, and a left and got back on track. Go us.

The lake east of Dallas. Lots of construction here.

As far as lakes go, this isn’t a pretty one. It feels so…flat and so suburban.

We did find a restaurant to eat on the lake though.

The kids were excited about the swing seats for the table. I spent the whole time freaking out about them crushing their hands between the chairs and the table as they were swinging back and forth. I can bet there’s been a lot of crushed hands from these tables over the years.

Food is here. Our server forgot the bacon for little KL, forgot the fried egg for RL, and forgot the onion rings as well. Oh well, at least he was nice.

I will say, that’s quite the fountain sizewise.

Back in the car with RL taking over driving duties. This here is the small usb travel router that enables the kids to play Minecraft on their ipads using LAN. It’s still got a finicky convoluted start up of having all 3 ipads connect to my phone’s hotspot to get internet. Then one ipad creates the world, switches to the internet-less wifi, and then the other two ipads also switch to the internet-less wifi. Pray that the ipads can see each other on LAN, try to sign in and load world, and if it doesn’t, toggle back and forth between hotspot and wifi. Yeah, something like that.

The rest of our route today.

But look at that. Minecraft multiplayer happening as we are barreling down the freeway at 75mph.

We also get crying fits while barreling down the freeway at 75mph playing Minecraft. Inevitably, someone is either destroying someone’s house, not building where they are supposed to, can’t find the other people, having their stuff taken by another when their character dies, etc. etc. etc. WTF. All the effort that I went through to get Minecraft multiplayer to work, and they just use it as another excuse to get in a fight. Sigh.

Kind of boring if you ask me.

Gas and potty break.

Again, do people still buy these in the gas station restrooms? Do people even carry quarters?

Back at the helm for the final push onto Little Rock.

Finally leaving Texas. It’s so hard to just get out of Texas.

And this part of Arkansas looks just like Northeast Texas.

Trees are getting taller.

Finally into Little Rock, our hotel is at center of the photo.

Been a while since I’ve been in a hotel with a giant atrium. The kids were impressed.

They were also impressed with the glass elevators. Little KL was initially afraid of standing by the glass inside the elevator, but he got over that pretty quickly.

This is what $213 gets you in Little Rock.

The most crucial part of every hotel room is the door that separates the living room to the bedroom. The kids go to bed in the bedroom, and adults can stay awake for a while longer without having to be quiet in complete darkness.

This will do nicely for the night. The kids were very excited to be spending time in a hotel room.

Made a short walk across the street from the hotel to Trader Joe’s for some snacks. Then came back to the hibachi restaurant next to the hotel. How convenient.

The first time for our kids to eat at a hibachi restaurant.

Long day, time for sake.

Of course, the onion volcano. Typical stuff, but they didn’t do as much stuff with eggs spinning and whatnot. Oh well.

Food was decent enough. Hungry, so ate it all.

Note to self, this one is too sweet.

Back at the hotel, let’s hit the pool so these kids can get some energy out after spending all day in the car.

So glad that little KL knows how to swim now.

Pool time is fun time.

Beer time is also fun time. Long day on the road, time to wind down. Tomorrow is another long day on the road. Why is this country so big?!?

To be continued at Nashville.