Destination: Auntie Marlene’s house in Gilbert, AZ (7.5 hours, 435 miles)
We started the day by saying goodbye to the Sullivan family. They were such great hosts and the kids played together so well. It was hard to say goodbye but we were all excited to see Auntie Marlene for our next stop!
We started the drive by going about an hour and stopping off in White Sands National Park. It’s incredibly strange because everywhere around it looks like your typical brown desert but then there is this huge park with tons of white sand (hence the name!).
We drove in a little way and then we took a walk on the boardwalk. At first, Beckett wouldn’t touch the sand at all. Brooke was a great big sister and played in the sand with him to make him comfortable. While we were walking on the boardwalk Brooke kept saying the boardwalk was silly because why wouldn’t we just walk on the sand? So, after finishing the boardwalk we all played in the sand dunes together.
After we finished at White Sands we drove about an hour to Las Cruces. During both the drive to White Sands and Las Cruces Brooke was in quite the mood. We were certainly worried about the 7.5 hour drive in front of us…Luckily, good old food seemed to do the trick. In Las Cruces we took a break, got some lunch food and loaded up for our “long stint”. Somehow, it all came together, and they ate their lunches and then fell asleep.
As the kids were happily sleeping and the miles were clipping off Jaclyn and I proved that we still don’t know parenting 101, don’t fix what ain’t broken. While sleeping, Brooke’s head tilted forward and was bouncing up and down with every bump. We felt bad for her so we tried to put her head back up and guess what happened? Brooke woke up, which then woke Beckett up…whoops! Luckily, they were both in good moods and we actually finished a 3.5 hour stint! I never thought, under any circumstances that we would ever go that far without stopping!
After that we stopped every hour or hour and a half. At our last stop, we decided to reward the kids with some ice cream since they had done so well!
During the last leg of the drive we were rewarded with some beautiful mountains and mountain passes.
Around 5pm (we forgot about the time zone change!) we arrived at Auntie Marlene’s. She welcomed us all into her home and gave us a tour of where we’d be staying the next 4 days. We tried to bring in only what we needed but failed again and have made about 100 trips to the car.
We got some dinner and ate outside on Marlene’s patio. Beckett tried to eat all of Jaclyn’s pizza and clearly has some learning to do in terms of how to eat pizza. After dinner, Marlene and Brooke relaxed in some Adirondack chairs and started planning a super-secret girls only show.
We continued catching up with Marlene and then we put the kids to bed. A long day but a good day! We had accomplished one of our longest (and certainly the hottest) drives on the trip!
-Jay
Jay, your writing is perfect–easy to read (and re-read!). So glad to hear about the details along the way.
Love all the photos too. Am happy that you all look so happy and are really having fun.
Well-paced Lovies!