Spontaneous Spring Break, Part 5

You can read all the other parts here, here, here, and here.

We were SO SAD to leave and not only because we decided to drive the whole 797 miles in one clip.  ARGH.

We left at 7:00 and got home at 9:30.  IT WAS THE LONGEST DAY EVAR.  And we lost an hour, which we knew but didn't totally take into consideration.

We also lengthened the trip by hitting up the Badlands one more time because it was just a gorgeous place, and we wanted one more peak.

And we had to stop in Sioux Falls again because we lost Dorothy and Cooper;s coats and called just about every place we had been and finally found them at our shitty first night hotel.  But then, when we got there (just an hour after stopping for lunch), the front desk people couldn't find the damn coats.  But they did give us two other coats we lost that we had no idea were even missing (they were both Jack's-- poor Jack).  We waited around for a few minutes and then got pissily back on the interstate only to get a call that they re-found our coats about 10 miles down the road, and of course we turned back.

And THEN, we decided to make the trip FEEL longer by not letting the kids use any iPads or Nintendos until 4 hours into the ride.  To facilitate this, I sat in the back.  For 4 loud hours.

 Of course, the one day we set an alarm, the kids all slept in.  OF COURSE.

 One more hotel breakfast.

 One more attempt to play casino games.

 Oh, the back.

And now we are unpacked; all the laundry is done, and we are covered up in dumb souvenirs.  An old man in the Mitchell, SD, Culvers reminded us that these busy years with little kids are the best of our lives, and even though the children were fighting and we were all dirty and tired and facing 8 more hours in the car, we were like duh.