On the road again - ONE LAST TIME!

We are on I-57 travelling through central Illinois right at this moment.  This was the quickest we have packed up and rolled out of a campsite in the whole month we've been gone!  Yes, as Henry said in his last post, we are so ready to be home.  Only 2 1/2 hours to go! 

I've got to admit, Arkansas is one of those states I really never gave any attention to.  Other than knowing that Bill Clinton was from there, I didn't know anything else about it.  But, I've got to tell you, it is lovely there.  The large lakes, mountains, and general landscape was remarkable.  I'm so glad we headed through there on our way home.  Hot Springs was naturally beautiful and we learned so much about the process of how the water goes through the mountains into fissures and comes back up to the surface as hot, naturally purified water.  Is it still sterile after we put our feet into it? 

The water comes out of the springs at an average temperature of 143 degrees.  It was very HOT!  Henry (my husband) built up to sticking his leg in and touching the bottom of the pool.  He said it still hurt a few hours later.  Brock stuck his whole arm in and Seth plunged in his whole leg also.  Why must men do these feats of endurance?  I'd love them regardless! 

We did a DUCK tour (the amphibious vehicles built in WWII) of the town of Hot Springs and Hamilton Lake.  How fun to have a huge lake named for us.  Too bad it's in Arkansas!

Hot Springs was a hot spot for gansters (not gangstas as my kids like to say!) in the 1920's & 30's. They would come here to relax, gamble & party.  We learned of tunnels in the hotels where Al Capone would go directly from his hotel to the casinos.  This was a home on Hamilton Lake where the mob would congregate and, whenever the authorities came, they would slip out through a secret tunnel in the house to this outlet & take speedboats away.  Interesting stuff! 

One of the bath houses on "bath house row" (on the main street in the valley between 2 mountains where the hot springs naturally occur) still operates in the same manner as an old time bath house.  A couple more are currently spas and the rest are just historic buildings now.  The most opulent of all the bath houses is now operated as Hot Springs National Park Museum.  Here we are pretending what it might have been to be guests here close to 100 years ago.

Oh, I forgot to mention that they gave all of us these duck quackers on the Duck tour; they have all since been confiscated by me and Henry. 

We ended our day in Hot Springs with a trip to the local go-cart/putt-putt place that every tourist town has.  It was a nice one and we had a lot of fun.

Even though we were worried we wouldn't be able to enjoy our stops on the way home (because of being so anxious to just be home), we sure did!  Yesterday was a driving day but our highlight was stopping by Lambert's Cafe in Sikeston, MO for lunch.  They are known as "Home of the Throwed Rolls" and was made famous on the Travel Channel as one of the best places to pig out!  So, it is like an oversized Cracker Barrel with signs and license plates all over the walls.  A guy rotates around the different corners of the huge room and throws rolls to patrons with their hands up all over the room.  So much fun!!!  We all did pretty well catching the delicious, yeasty, HOT rolls!  http://www.throwedrolls.com/  Delicious home cookin'!

Henry just leaned over to me and said, "I'm really glad we did this."  So am I.

Almost Home

Hello out there, We are greatly missing home. we miss our Life Group from TPCC, our friends, our family, our routine, and our jobs. I am really looking forward to being back. We are struggling to enjoy these last couple of days. Last night we stayed in Alma, AR and woke up and had a wonderful morning playing at the playground and riding paddleboats. We then drove down to Hot Springs, AR and we are staying at the nicest campground yet. We are going to tour HotSprings tomorrow and maybe go go-karting. Anyway just wanted to day HI.
Henry

God's creation has me in awe

ast night was pretty cool we all got up on top of the Rv and watched the night sky. We haven't seen such clear skies and dark nights around us. I was just dumbfounded today as we drove through the petrified forest near Holbrook, AZ. It was utterly incredible. The colors were amazing. I will include some photos but believe me the photos do not do the colors justice. The purples, reds, yellows, golds, blues, and greens were all there in their glorious splendor crying out for this world to know their Creator. We were driving through what seemed like a barren wasteland when BAM God just carved out these amazing valleys and put petrified wood in it. It was so neat.

He followed us around through most of the park (around 3 hours)

The sky is so blue.

We then crossed into the Painted Desert. What a treat that was and it sits just 2 miles off the interstate.

We are very anxious to get home as this has been a long and tiring adventure. Patience is wearing thin. It seems like it takes forever to do the simplest things. It took us over 45 minutes just to fill up with gas. Everybody needs to use the restroom at different times. The truck takes over 40 gallons and the pumps always restrict how much you get so we have to do it twice. Eating isn't simple it just takes forever. I am sometimes overcome with joy though as we are quietly driving down the interstate and Camille will just start belting out some childrens praise songs. She will sing for 15-20 minutes. It is so joyful. Anyway we only made it to Albuquerque, NM today. We are hoping to make it to Amarillo, TX tomorrow. Take care and enjoy Gods incredible creation.

Leaving Las Vegas

Well we are officially on our way back east...still very far from home, though.  We left Vegas this morning and are in Holbrook, AZ right now.  We will be seeing the Petrified Forest National Park in the morning which is very close to here.  We continued our Sunday afternoon tradition of eating pizza by stopping at Little Caesars, picking up some pizza and eating it at a local park in Kingman, AZ.  It was good to run around and stretch our legs.

Yesterday was a day of cars, cars, cars and amazing hiking.  We started off by going to the Auto Collections Museum where we saw over 250 classic cars.  Most were for sale with the top price displayed being $3,000,000 for a Dodge prototype from the 60's.  The boys (including my husband) were in hog heaven!  It was really neat, I must admit! 

We then went over to The Venitian where there is another showroom connected to the Lamborghini restaurant/store.  Here we saw Lamborghinis (obviously), Ferraris, and other fast, expensive cars my boys were going "ga-ga" over! 

Red Rock Canyon was where we spent yesterday afternoon.  I really can't believe I had never heard of this gorgeous wonder before coming out here this time.  I told Henry I'd fly out to Las Vegas just to spend a few days here.  It was amazingly beautiful & so much fun to hike around.  Of all the places we've been so far, we all agreed that this was probably the best hiking and breathtakingly beautiful. 

And there were wild burros too...so cute!!!

I feel like we are getting better at figuring out how to do things in the camper with such limited space (such as cooking dinner, cleaning up, getting dressed, etc.) but I also feel like it is starting to drive us a little insane (at least me and Henry!)  It will be a bitter-sweet return to "normal" life!  

Through the eyes of Brock

Yesterday we went to a chocolate factory and a M&M World. We had a ton of fun. We got some samples of chocloate and some peppermint bark and some amazing pecan bark also. We bought some chocolate for some friends and we got some pretzels.  Over at M&M World we got a m&m dispenser that's very cool. And went to go swimming at our pool. We had a ton of fun. Also, one of the cool cars I saaw in Vegas was a Rolls royce Phantom.

Vegas Vacation

We have spent the last 2 full days here in Las Vegas.  Thursday we went downtown and toured around the large hotels and casinos.  The Bellagio Conservatory was amazing.  I guess they change the floral displays seasonally.  We also really enjoyed the choreographed water and music show there.  We had some good opportunities to teach our children to think about the things made by God (most of what we've enjoyed on this trip) versus what was made by man (Vegas) and how and why they are so vastly different -- the things that God wants us to do with our money, time and talents vs. what the world says will bring temporary happiness.  We talked about what gambling is and how and why it can be a problem in some peoples' lives.  When we saw pawn shops on every other corner, this really hit home with them.  Brock said the casinos looked like a giant Chuck E. Cheeses and Colette wanted to "play the games".  However, we did have a little fun with it and they watched Henry loose $2 on roulette in about 15 seconds and we we all cheered when the 1 dollar Claire gave to Henry to play on a slot machine quickly turned into $5!  Then we indulged in a buffet dinner. It featured food from all over the world and they kids loved the dessert area that had all of the usual cakes, pies, mousses, etc. but also had M&Ms, jelly beans and cotton candy!  The excess of everything was really disgusting (but delicious :))

In the conservatory - nice pose, Colette

Before the water show

Yes, that's a crab leg, Camille!

Glorious Cotton Candy

Yesterday we just hung around and did a lot of school and work in the morning.  We then went and toured the Ethel M. and Mars chocolate factory.  We got some yummy samples and had fun in the M&M's World.  We enjoyed their beautiful cactus gardens also.  Our afternoon ended with some swimming in the campground pool.