All the miles have me off kilter. What day is it? What state am I in?

Tomorrow we go off the grid, turn the cell phones on airplane mode, drive up into the mountains, put on cowboy hats, pull on cowboy boots, park the car, let someone else make the beds, eat three solid gourmet meals a day. I can’t wait.

The last few days we’ve driven through hail storms. slept in less-than-stellar hotels, hiked in the Rocky Mountain National Park, seen so many elk that I thought at first were giant mule deer, visited the YMCA where I once upon a time spent the golden summer of my twenty-first year, visited a tea factory, ate a “skirted” burger, saw a quirky giant easel in Kansas, caught up with half a dozen sweet friends, toured Audubon State Park and peeked into the Parthenon. (Not the real one, ya’ll.)

It’s been All The Things. Lovely. Relaxing. Exhausting. Scary. Exciting. Hilarious. Ridiculous. 80 mph in Kansas and feeling like you’re going backwards in St. Louis. Cloudy skies and pelting rain. Sunshine and wildlife sightings. Prairie dogs and red winged blackbirds. You know where I’m going here – it’s been just like regular life. Except in a car. For like 1200 miles.

I started listening to a podcast that someone somewhere recommended – one of you guys, no doubt. It’s called S-Town and no, it is NOT child-appropriate. Which means that I could only listen to it during the time that I let the kids watch a movie and I used headphones. You know how I feel about movies in the car – rare occasions and all that. S-Town, while raw and gritty and full of all sorts of crazy cuss word combinations I have never imagined, is also painfully beautiful and incredibly compelling and tragic in an Alabama meets Shakespeare sort of way. It’s so good that I want to let the kids watch more movies so I can finish the series.

So far on the adventure we have learned or observed the following things: (And I have compiled this list with the aid of my five companions.)

Kansas is against us.
Hotels are expensive and frequently overbooked. (Thank goodness for credit card points.)
“Mom thought elk were mule deer but she was wrong.” – Otto
Chipmunks are friendly.
The Amazon Firestick does not always work on a hotel television, resulting in disappointment when one family has waited to watch the Survivor season finale until said hotel.
You really can travel with a family and not eat out, thus saving a great deal of money on food costs.
If your favorite necklace gets caught on the back hatch of the Yukon, it will break.
Gas gets more expensive the farther west you travel.
A room completely full of gigantic bags of peppermint smells incredible and clears your head.
When left to serve himself, Otto at a hotel breakfast will stack his plate with a bagel, a powdered donut and Fruit Loops.
When you pack your own suitcase at the bottom of the loaded car, sometimes it’s best and easiest to just wear the same outfit twice. (What? I was in two different states. No one in Colorado knew that I wore that in Kansas too.)
Facebook can be a vast and frightening wasteland, but it can also join together friends across the country and provide for fun and unexpected drop ins along the route.