Cheers to the weekend🥂 We are finally getting settled into life back in Indiana after a couple of crazy weeks! The weather has been a bit brisk for my liking here in Indiana, but I guess you’ll have that 😉 Our road trip was such a blur, going by way too quickly, but such a memorable time with my brothers and of course the g’s. We drank entirely too much coffee, ventured across 11 states, and had a fair share of laughs!! Let me take you on our one week journey from California to Indiana~
Friday, March 2nd, we spent the afternoon in San Francisco to bring our Cali adventure to a close. {I miss that place more than I thought I would, even after being gone a couple of weeks!} We had dinner at the Waterfront Restaurant, a great seafood eatery with beautiful views of the Bay!
We picked up my brothers (Eric & Jared) at SFO Airport Friday night and then headed towards Las Vegas! Arriving at about 5:00 am, we checked into Planet Hollywood Hotel Saturday morning.
Just in time for a couple of hour nap and some free breakfast at the random Auntie Anne’s nearby (who were giving away pretzels for their 30th Anniversary) #superrandom
We started our journey from there with a stop at The Hoover Dam!
Moving on we headed to Zion National Park—Hurricane, Utah. We arrived there just in time for sunset with a beautiful view of the sun beaming off of the red rock mountains. Our pics definitely didn’t do them justice.
Sunday, we drove up to Bryce Canyon National Park then back down through Zion National Park. It was more frigid than we had expected❄️
Grayson cried about the entire trip😅 #parentlife
Our goal was to make it to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon from Utah before dark. We might have made it had a couple of things not gone wrong! Grant loves to push our luck with how long our fuel will last and sure enough just as we were turning on a sketchy dirt path (with a sign that said CLOSED)— covered in a foot of snow, our low fuel light popped on. (This route seemed like an adventure to the guys but I was wondering why we decided down that path to begin with.)💁🏼♀️ We continued on our way and just as we came to a V in the path we noticed that the route we were suppose to continue on hadn’t been ventured before (with no previous tracks to follow). We stopped and decided to try our luck yet again down the sketchy path— where we ended up getting stuck!! Bahaha
The guys pushed for a good 20 minutes and finally got us out. I sat in the driver’s seat laughing at the situation, because what else can you do when you are in 10 feet deep snow and 10 miles in the forest with no way out!!😂
So needless to say we turned around, praying we’d make it to a main road again for some fuel! Thankfully we made it to the gas station, Grant said we had 1 gallon left! #woof After an exhausting trek through the snow, we stopped in the nearest town for some dinner and it just happened to be a cozy inn (from the 80’s) where we sat around the diner style bar.
After the waitress informed us that the North Rim was closed, #nowtheytellus we headed towards the south rim of the canyon so that we could spend the night and be ready to see it in the morning!
Monday morning at the Canyon was beautiful, such a fun way to celebrate Grayson’s 1st Birthday!!
He’d had enough!! #freezing
After the Grand Canyon we started our journey farther east. A quick pit stop at Petrified Forest National Park and The Painted Desert in Winslow, AZ– a refreshing break along a barren desert stretch of driving!
Pit Stop #2 of the day– El Malpais National Monument in New Mexico {Once again the middle of nowhere!}
Arriving in Albuquerque, New Mexico at about 9:00 pm, we had dinner here at a local New Mexico (southern cuisine) restaurant, Nexus and celebrated Grayson Quinn’s First Birthday! The food was yummy and the company👌🏼
We finished the evening stretch by driving to Amarillo, Texas to spend the night. Tuesday, morning Grant, Grayson and I left before Eric and Jared did, as we had planned to go different routes for the afternoon. Our route… was straight to Waco, Texas. Destination: Magnolia.
Arriving at Magnolia was so exciting and a beautiful experience! We spent a couple of hours touring the grounds–
This is such an inspiring place and is a must when in the Texas area!
Eric and Jared met up with us in Waco after they had spent the afternoon in Fort Worth, then we had an afternoon treat at the Silos Baking Co.
Driving towards Houston, we had dinner at a really great BBQ place, here (thanks to E & J for finding it)
and stopped by Texas A&M for a brief tour of the campus. {aka: drive through, snap pics, and leave}
Tuesday evening we stayed slightly east of Houston, so we would be ready for a longer journey on Wednesday.
Wednesday we left at our typical 9:30-10 am hour and headed towards New Orleans! I loved the drive into New Orleans–where everything was lush marshes out on the Bayou! Making it to New Orleans, we toured many sites in the French Quarter:
We completed the evening in New Orleans with local cuisine and a fun drink at Oceana Grill.
New Orleans is an exciting city, Grant & I would love to go back and spend a little more time here ⚜︎ {Definitely more to it than all of the scandalous occurrences that you hear about.}
Our goal that evening after leaving New Orleans, was to make it 3 hours north to Jackson, Mississippi {a random city we hadn’t been to} and spend the night there. Let’s just say we had a hotel booked and drove into downtown at 11:30 pm but as we were driving into the city, it was as if we were still searching for it 😂 Literally the main street leading to their capital building was lit up and the rest was an abandoned ghost-like city! So weird that it’s the state’s capital. Needless to say, we opted to venture farther north and not bother with staying in Jackson.
We finished the night in Memphis, Tennessee with check-in at 3:00 am. We slept in Thursday morning and didn’t make it out until 11:00 am. #notmadaboutthesleep
Our last major destination was Nashville, Tennessee. Eric and Jared had already experienced this city and with limited time {wanting to be back yet that evening} we kept our site seeing to a minimum. The one thing that I did want to do in Nashville was visit Draper James clothing boutique.
It’s Reese Witherspoon’s clothing store– super adorable southern classics that are 👌🏼 This store is gorgeous and definitely a new favorite place to shop!! #allofthesouthernfeels {Sorry guys that you had to experience an overload of everything bright and feminine all while in your road trip attire😂}
On our way out of Nashville, all of the men on the trip 😉 said that Indian cuisine sounded good so we found a local place outside of Nashville to eat. I will have to say even though Indian food never sounds good, it was tasty!
As we were making our final leg of the trip towards Indianapolis the guys found one last point of interest to stop at, Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. {You know we are going hard when it’s 8:45 pm and completely dark out but yet we are stopping at a National Park… add it to the list ✔️}
We completed our trip at about 4:00 am Friday morning! #exhausted This journey was such a fun experience and I’m thankful that E & J were brave enough to join us. This was our trip back east!! #inanutshell
{Until next time, Stay Classy}
Loved you pictures of your trip back to Indiana. Thank you for your descriptions ,very decise. That birthday trip said it all, Hope you will find some time for a trip to Brown co, Nashville, In and visiting Frank, Laura and I in the foothills of Brown Co.