RN Travel Family (now settling down!) and Frugal Living: Our Vacation!!

Yea, life is still going on and keeping me from posting more updates! LOL

So, we have been having some fun the last week. We packed up last Tuesday and hit the road by 6:30am on Wednesday morning. Headed up to Chama New Mexico, through some rain and lots of elevation changes, gas mileage went from 300 miles a tank to only 160 mile a tank. We pulled in around 8:30pm Mountain time. Not a bad drive, just long!

Got everything unpacked and settled in at our friends home. The kids bounced off the walls for awhile and then settled down to sleep. The parents sat up talking til after 1am! The next morning the kids were up and ready to go by 7am.... not the parents!
Had a great time visiting, exploring the sites, enjoyed some great food and even all went out to dinner 1 night! Monday morning rolled around with sad faces and breaking hearts.... it was time to pack up and start heading for home. The rounds of good byes had some tears and then we were off around 10am.
We had decided to make a few stop and see things on our way home, we didn't feel like rushing. We also planned on finding a hotel and spending the night somewhere around 1/2 way. So, the 1st stop we decided was a truck stop, to buy a power inverter, to be able to charge the tablet's that were keeping the boys entertained!

Then around 6pm, we stopped at The Cadillac Ranch. It's just west of Amarillo, TX and has 10 Cadillac's 1/2 buried in the ground, standing on end. These cars are covered in spray paint. You are allowed to be creative and graffiti the cars. It was a really neat site if you stopped to look at where the paint had changed the texture and stopped the rusting/ weathering of these cars. I had a lot of fun taking some neat pictures. Yes, somewhere along the years I have always gotten a kick out of taken pictures of textures. There are more pictures at the end of this post!

After that stop we decided to head for the Giant Cross and we thought we would find a hotel near there. The Cross and the display around it were amazing. The kids really enjoyed it. There is a gift shop, but the selection is limited to general religious items and had very few souvenirs for their location. I also was disappointed in their prices, a CD of the builder talking about the Cross was $20. Too much for so little. They also only had about 4 other items for souvenirs, none very good and priced very high. Anyway, I got some pictures just before the sun went down, we went into the gift shop before they closed, then took a few more after dark.
We then decided since it was after 8pm, it was time to find a hotel and dinner. Well, we ended up not finding a hotel until 10 pm, dinner was McDonald's... not very good one. There is not anything around the Cross, so if you want to go, do what we SHOULD have done, plan on staying in Amarillo for the night.
We got up late this morning, Marty around 7:45am, me around 8am and last up was Andy around 8:30am. Went down and got some breakfast and was back on the road by 10am. We drove through town and by an old Route 66 gas station/ restaurant that was refurbished by 2003, and was the basis for Ramon's car paint shop in the Disney Car's movie. It is listed as a historical place and now is used to house a museum and the local Chamber of Commerce. This is in Shamrock, TX.
We continued our drive home, with lots of gas stops as the gas mileage seemed to drop the whole trip! Stopped in Denton to grab some lunch and made it home around 3pm. It's not 6pm, and I already have the second load in the washer, Marty has washed the bugs off the car and the kids have ridden their bikes some. The plans for the rest of the night is to eat some dinner and watch some TV before the kids go to bed early.

Marty is back to work tomorrow at 6am, and then we have church in the evening. Everything is going to be back to normal and the usual activities. I'll check in later this week, or I'll try to! Today's post was a quick one, and an excuse to post some of the pictures I took. I hope you enjoy!