After spending a few weeks on the road, we had to stay goodbye to the west coast and start the long drive back to Texas.
22+ hours not including stops!
Tuesday:
We started the drive home on Tuesday, June 7th. We noticed that our YakRack made a few (hundred) new friends while traveling 4,000 miles.
Lunch on the road - Lola's Kitchen in Barstow, CA. It was delicious!
When you're the only gas station in the middle of the desert, you get to charge whatever the heck you want. Gas was $4.99/gallon here!
And they spelled Missouri wrong.
We made it to Flagstaff, AZ around 8:00 pm. We had dinner at an amazing BBQ joint called "Hickory's Smokehouse BBQ" - if you're ever in the area, you have to give it a shot. It was delicious!! After dinner, we went to Freddy's for dessert. This is Bry's favorite custard place on earth, so we were excited to find one in Flagstaff.
And it just so happens to be National Chocolate Ice Cream Day!
That's a thing, right?
We hit 10,000 miles on the Subi today! We've only had it for 3 months. Hope this car lasts forever!
Wednesday:
I'll miss mornings like these, crawling out of bed and falling into a bed of flowers. Don't get me wrong - I can't wait to take a real shower and sleep in my own bed, but I'll miss this for sure.
Driving through the middle of Arizona.
Our teeth are
mostly clean.
Delicious lunch at Central Grill and Coffee House in Albuquerque, NM. The owner was super nice and brought us food like every five minutes just to try!
After learning from our parents and my Uncle Tom and Aunt Sally, something we love doing is finding ways to bless people for no reason at all. Our server at Central Grill was an awesome guy who recently purchased the bass guitar of his dreams after it finally went on sale. Backstory: he had also told us a hilarious story about a woman on Yelp who referred to him as "the blue eyed guy behind the counter who typed too loudly on the touch screen." Bry decided to leave him an extra tip just because. We can only hope this made his day a little better. :)
Almost out of New Mexico!
The clouds made sure to let us know we were in Texas now.
We found
another Freddy's! :))))))
We made it to Palo Duro Canyon around 8:30 on Wednesday night. The Grand Canyon is our nation's largest canyon and Palo Duro Canyon is the second largest! It looked like a little mini me of the Grand Canyon. The park ranger warned us that at about 9:30 we'd hear a loud canon go off during their nightly show, "Texas." Sure enough, right around 9:35, we heard a LOUD canon go off and it shook #thehillsmobile! We put the shades down on the trailer and we watched a fireworks show! It was a very special way to end our trip out west.
Thursday:
We awoke this morning to some terrible news. This beautiful woman right here went to be with Jesus this morning and is finally reunited with her husband. As hard as it is for us to know that she's not with us anymore, we're grateful that she's no longer in pain. The cancer may have taken her body, but the Lord sustained her soul, her laughter, and her gracious spirit through it all. When Brian became a "manny" (a man nanny) for these three kids in college, we never would've imagined that our families would become intertwined and that we'd become closer than family more than a decade later. I know that Kim loved it when we were all able to get together to share a meal and talk about what was going on in our lives. No matter how often we got together, she wanted to hear the same stories over and over about how Paige didn't care much for Brian when he first started watching them, or how Connor got a goose egg that one time I was watching him because I let him jump from the trampoline to the pool, or how the cat died outside and Brian needed to bury him behind the house in his 3-piece suit in the rain, Godfather style, before Kim got home. We're so grateful to have these and so many other fun memories with this woman. She's taught us so much about persevering after losing a spouse, about work ethic, and about how to be a great mom and love on your kids. We'll miss her so much, but we'll see her soon. Much love to the Shackelford family. We love you guys and we're always here for you, no matter what.
December 2015 The Shackelford Family: Aubrey, Paige, Josh, Kim, Grandma Darty, and Connor.
The Yelp app took us to almost every restaurant we stopped at over our 5,000+ mile trip. It hasn't failed us yet! We stopped for lunch in Wichita Falls at this tiny Mexican restaurant. Delish!
Love some traditional Mexican Coca Cola!
A quick self-wash before heading home to scrub the hundreds of bugs off of the Subi and #thehillsmobile!
Home. There's no place like it.
