We left on a Saturday for our #bratchersixmidwestfix road trip. We were supposed to leave Friday, but Ben was sick all week and still wasn’t feeling well. He wasn’t 100% on Saturday, but he was a trooper and off we went. The first day we got as far as Grand Junction, Colorado. We went through Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and finally (late that night)… Colorado.

We didn’t know how far we would make it each day, so we booked our hotel while on the road. Ben does all the online booking because I get headaches if I read for long periods in the car. For most of the trip, we turned to the HotelTonight app (use RBRATCHER2 to get $25 off and I get a discount next time I use it too, so everyone wins!) or Hotwire to find our hotel.

The girls did so well on the road. We brought some of our school books with us, so we did homeschooling while we traveled. In addition, as we entered each state, we would color it on a US map and one of the big girls would read out basic information on those states from one of the books we brought along.

After staying in Colorado our first night, and going through the rest of Colorado and Nebraska, we ended up in Altoona, Iowa for our second night. Ben does most of the driving during the day, we usually switch in the late afternoon, and I get us to our destination for the evening. I love road trips and sitting in the car for hours. I really enjoy looking out at the landscape and seeing it change from place to place. This world is so vast and so beautiful; makes me in awe of God and how amazing He is. Besides admiring the view, I love having dance parties in the car. I go crazy dancing (when I’m not driving). Ben laughs at how much I get into it (it’s pretty much my arms flailing everywhere).

Those first two nights were kind of rough since Ben wasn’t 100% yet, so a cough was keeping him up at night, which was keeping me up at night. Praise the Lord we had enough energy to be alert and drive on through. The girls were so excited to keep coloring through the states. After two full days of driving, and crossing the Mississippi River, we were almost at our first main destination… Chicago. We all felt a burst of exhilaration knowing we were almost there.

Ben and I had planned to do a road trip with the kids in May, but we weren’t exactly sure of our destination. Initially, we were thinking it would be to Yellowstone, but most of the lodging was already booked. We had discussed going to Chicago for our anniversary in July (we both have never been), and then I told him, “Why don’t we take our family road trip to Chicago?!” He loved this idea, so that’s what we aimed for. We didn’t anticipate him getting ill prior to us leaving, but we were flexible and rolled with the punches. We hadn’t made any reservations yet, so we figured we could visit somewhere else in California if that didn’t work out, but thank Jesus it did!

More posts coming soon about the rest of our #bratchersixmidwestfix. Check out that hashtag on Instagram to see some other photos from our road trip (follow me @cakiesblog!).