Sisters Road Trip 2008

My sister Rebecca and her three kids decided instead of flying out for their 4 week vacation to Utah they were going to drive out so she could have a car. My other sister, Melissa, had been living with Rebecca in North Carolina for the last two months and they planned what I thought sounded like a really fun road trip. I figured that I may not have a chance to drive cross country in my life and after consulting with my husband I bought a one-way ticket to NC to join in the fun (he was very nice to let me leave Ryan behind). I flew to Denver had an unexpected 6 1/2 hour layover, got in to NC around 11:30 p.m. then got up and started on the road at 7:30a.m. I wish I had had more time to see where she lives in Chapel Hill because it was beautiful.

It was great because they planned one big thing to do each day to break up the drive and then we tried to stop at the most random/classic road trip places we could find-and boy did we find some winners. First stop was the Great Smokey National Forest where we had a run in with a mother black bear and her two cubs-luckily we were in the car when we saw them, but we all felt like we were in a National Geographic magazine. We spent our first night in Tennessee and woke up the next morning to head out to Graceland.

One of our first great finds was the "Old Country Store" we found along the road to Graceland-they sold everything you could dream of if you wanted to be a red neck-like these beautiful coon hats!


Graceland ended up being pretty cool-esp because I knew almost nothing about Elvis-their were some die-hard fans visiting his home that day.


For some reason I have always wanted to go to a Piggly Wiggly (mostly because I can't believe a store is REALLY named that) so my sister made special stop to fulfill my lifelong dream.


Our third day we were in St. Louis and rode to the top of the arch and walked around the museum-it was really neat. Everything we did seemed to exceed all of our expectations so it made things fun. That day we also went and ate at a World Famous bbq joint in Kansas City (my sister had done some serious research about what was the best)-it was AMAZING! We were all craving it the next day and were sad they don't have Arthur Bryant's in Utah.


Melissa wanted to run thru a cornfield, but most of them were fenced off so we took advantage of this open one...


As we drive thru Kansas, we saw signs advertising a six-legged cow at a place called Prarie Dog Town-we were sold. We knew we had to go after that-and it did not disappoint. In fact, it was one of the highlights of the trip. It is too bad in this picture you can't tell that the cow's friend had five legs.


The three kids were great, but after driving thru NC, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado and Utah we were very glad when we drove into my mom's driveway. We all had a great time and it was fun to be able to spend some much time with two of my sisters.