Vacation, Part Four (the end)

The hardest part of leaving the cottage was saying goodbye to my family, not knowing when I would see them again. There are no scheduled trips to Alberta on the books (visa issues), and they spent a lot of money to get to California. I may see them again next summer, but where has not been decided.

I think we were able to depart around 8am. The drive home went so much more smoothly. Miles slept in longer periods, thus were didn't have to stop as frequently. The goal was to stay in Richfield, UT for the night. We had packed a lunch, and we stopped to eat that in Primm, NV. That's right, we stopped inside the air conditioned outlet mall and ate our lunch. I also was able to sit on a couch to breastfeed Miles and watch classic ESPN. I almost got into the Old Navy outlet store but Elijah wasn't going for it. We stopped one more time, at a rest stop, then we made it Richfield in time for dinner. We went to a restaurant down the road from our hotel, JB's Restaurant. I loved it, I love diner food. It was what you'd expect. We checked into the hotel, and it was so much nicer than the place in St. George had been. Plus it had internet access! Geoff left to go check out the bakery he saw next door to JB's, and the boys and I got settled. He came back bearing yummy treats, a cookie for Elijah and a maple dip doughnut for me. It tasted like it came from Tim Horton's. The place was called Ideal Dairy. We had a hard time getting the boys to sleep. Miles was wide awake, and Elijah wanted to talk to me while I was trying to coax the baby to sleep. So I ended leaving the room and walking in the lobby to get Miles to fall asleep. Once I left the room, Geoff and Elijah fell asleep. 45 minutes later Miles was asleep.

Sunday morning we enjoyed the continental breakfast at the hotel (they had a waffle iron!) and then we were on the road. The hope was to be home by 4pm. We stopped for lunch in Fruita, CO at Pablo's Pizza. This was the best pizza (outside of Geoff's) that I've had in a long time. No joke, we're ready to drive the 4 hours just to eat there again! (We are planning on getting back out there, there are some cool things to do in Fruita). We then embarked on the drive home. Now we were on track to get home for 4pm, but hit yucky traffic. It added an extra 2 hours to our drive. We almost considered pulling into one of the mountain towns for dinner to let traffic ease up. But we got home at 6pm, and hit the drive thru at Jim N Nick's.

That was our vacation. Would I do it again? I probably wouldn't drive that far again with a breastfeeding baby. Or at least I'd spread out the drive more. I loved that we never ate at the same place twice (except In-N-Out). We explored new places, broke out of our box. We had some good laughs. I'm a pretty blessed gal.