Memorable moments in life - Our first long road trip, relocating from NJ to Colorado

Traveling when you have to..  Relocation.  We have all done it, for some, it's as simple and easy as buying a ticket and heading off into the unknown.. This one was a bit more involved, being our first with the 2 girls and a big one at that.  Ed had come to NJ to study and stayed put for 23 years including college, work, home, marriage, two kids... an interesting job offer came his way.. So when opportunity strikes, the smart get moving and we did.   He took the job and we were moving lock, stock and barrel.

Changes on so many levels and we had to hit the road running.. too far to make it by foot.. the van needed moving, so we drove to our destiny in a place faraway from everything and everyone we knew, out towards the west like the pioneers of this great land, we never realized how many roads it would open up for us in the future.

No GPS in those days and thanks to AAA, we had a detailed triptik, road maps, travel books.. We booked our second night stay in St. Louis, the gateway to the west.  We would drive through PA, OH, IN, MO, KS, into CO, most of the trip would be on I70-W.  We planned on 4 days. Driving on the first day for ~400miles and then on to St. Louis for the second nights, spend the morning hours exploring the city and then head out to stay somewhere in Kansas the third night and finally do the last stretch on day 4 and drive into Denver however late it was.  We thought it was a doable pace as we wanted to enjoy our super long road trip.  I am reminded of Ed's words and I quote "it's is a once in a lifetime thing, we will never travel so far by road ever, we have the chance now, so lets do it", I was a little bit skeptical as we didn't do well with overnight road trips.. 6-8hours was our happy limit, this was us being way over the top adventurous.  The girls were excited but wary of leaving everyone and everything they knew behind to a future unknown.  

But first, Let me take a step back to the realities of life. We had to pack up and we needed to sell the house, thank fully our home sold very quickly, an interested couple stopped by, saw it and bought it almost as is.. a huge load off our shoulders.  Ed started work a month before the family moved.  He found us a house to rent in a great school district.  We had temp housing until the movers came with our stuff.   So far so good.  We set the date to drive across two-thirds of the USA as August 4th, 2004.  Ed flew in to NJ the day before the packers came in on 1st, by 2nd evening the movers were to be done. We would clean house on 3rd and hit the road early on the 4th.

Unlucky for us, we found packers and movers from hell.. A few hours into packing, they run out of packing material, and left with more than half our stuff not packed.  They never showed up on the 2rd, and we were in panic mode. Finally they came the next day, late afternoon, demanded we pay more and finally got on with the job. The worst was yet to come.. by the time they were done it was 3am on the 4th.  We threw out some stuff and cleaned up as best as we could.  Thanks to good friends who cared for the girls, and gave us food, we had an early dinner and left on our adventure at 8pm.

Our plans were off thanks to our late start.. But we we finally on the road.  We  drove out of NJ into Pennsylvania and stopped around midnight, I forget where, the owners at the motel offered us a home cooked breakfast and we were very grateful.. Well fed, we were all set to drive to St Louis hoping we would make it.  We did it, though I had to steal the keys from ed after a late lunch so he would get a well-needed break from driving.  He was not to happy but was too tired to argue, it had been a tough week. he took the wheel again a couple of hours later, rested and we got to St. Louis just past midnight, glad to be back on schedule..  

We had plenty of time to look around and to go up the gateway arch in this beautiful city on the banks of the Mississippi River.  It felt great to be there, like the pioneers before us, we had also set out to make our home in the West. We drove on after a late lunch to Topeka, Kansas, but as luck would have it there was a major tennis tournament in the city and all hotels, motels were full, we had to drive over a 100 miles, stopping by a few towns until we found a place to stay at Salina, KS. 

We slept in the next morning and headed on to Colorado.  We encountered heavy rain on the plains.  but it was dry by the time we drove to our temporary home at 7 in the evening.  It felt great to reach our destination and we were amazed to have made it and more so, since we absolutely enjoyed the long road trip.  Thanks to this beautiful beginning, it opened us up to many awesome family road trips and also gave us hope that one day we would drive through every state in the USA.  Today we have covered 46 states and DC.  We are just an average American family and if we can do it so can you.

If you've never done some thing unexpected, do take the opportunity when it presents itself, you never know what's out there until you take the first step.   More in my next with some pictures..  I promise.  :)