It was bittersweet to say goodbye to everyone on Sunday, but it was time. We left Monday morning and headed to Indianapolis that day, stopping a few times at some random places like Pilot Mountain State Park and a little park in Jamestown, OH, around dinnertime. We told the older 4 kids they'd get to choose the food each day, so Katie chose to eat pancakes. The IHOP we stopped at was really understaffed, but they took care of us anyway. We went through 5 states that day: NC, VA, WV, OH, and IN. It was amazing to finally reach the hotel.
Tuesday, we left after a bagged breakfast at the hotel and drove to Carthage, IL. The tour of Carthage Jail was really good, especially when the guy played "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" on the harmonica in the room where Joseph Smith died. The kids were mostly good, but Samantha and Lewis got antsy toward the end. It just so happened that the rest of our tour group was also from Vernal! The odds of that are 1 in a million! It's also one of those tender mercies: a gentle reminder that I am going to survive the next few days and make it home. Kenny chose McDonald's for lunch, and it felt like a miracle to even find one. We drove through a lot of fields in IL, but not many towns. We then headed to Nauvoo to look around. The kids loved playing old pioneer games while a group of missionaries serenaded us with hymns and fun songs. We walked around a little, but the kids got grouchy, so we went inside the visitor's center instead. They all got Nauvoo bricks for doing the scavenger hunt. We decided to get back to the hotel early to eat dinner and gets kids to bed on time. It was worth it. After most of the kids were in bed, James took Joseph to get some drone shots of the temple while I sat and did nothing! (It's really nice to get a break sometimes, even if the kids are still technically yelling in the other room.) James also brought back some fun snacks for a mini date, something we hadn't done in a few weeks.
Wednesday, we went back to see the Nauvoo temple in the morning. It was beautiful and not too hot outside. We then headed toward our Air BnB in Nebraska, but everything changed when we got a text from a family member saying she tested positive for Covid. Ack! James and I had some very mild cold symptoms, but Joseph had been coughing a lot, so we got him tested at an urgent care in Lincoln, NE. It was negative! Despite that, we made sure to be extra careful about doing outdoor activities and switched from an AirBnb to a hotel. (The AirBnb was in someone's house with some shared space, so it didn't seem like a good idea.) God was with us, and we easily found pizza with a park next door, plus a cheap hotel where we could sneak in and out with almost no contact with people. Our phones weren't working super well at this point, so it really was a miracle to find all these places "by chance."
After a quick breakfast in our hotel room, we left to go to Vernal on Thursday. It was a really long day, and Katie had a really big meltdown during the afternoon. It was a bummer not being able to stop anywhere to see attractions because there were a lot of things along the way that looked pretty interesting. We settled on pictures instead and only went inside, masked, for bathrooms. We finally made it home around 9 P.M., clocking in at almost exactly 5,000 miles on the the trip odometer. We traveled through 15 states on the way and went as high at 11,158 feet!
It was a really fun trip, but it's amazing to be home.
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