Road trips and rest stops

On Friday we loaded the family up into the Rav4 (name pending) and headed North for our first family road trip in along time, and the first of this duration. We left at 7am – not bad considering all we had to do on Thursday. After 15 hours on the road and 4 rest stops (Elena, how many times can you run around that tree?), one dinner at Friendly’s, one tank of gas (32 mpg!) we made it to our first destination – Amherst, MA to visit our good friend Chris Elkinton (some may remember, he was a reader in our wedding) and he new wife, Melissa. We had to miss their wedding last fall and have felt bummed ever since. So it was a priority that we make it to their house before they move to Portland, OR in August. And we did. WE had a wonderful time on Saturday visiting with them – checking out the local arts festival, roasting corn for dinner, and Elena initiating both of them in the ‘why?’ phase of children. Chris and Melissa have a great yard and we just enjoyed hanging out catching up. It was so great to finally meet Melissa, she’s a great person (what did you expect?!) and to see Chris again; we’ve really missed living near Chris. In August, they are off to Portland to start jobs with a wind power firm, Melissa to do site analysis and Chris to work on engineering turbines.




And in the morning, we were off for the rest of the drive to Red Camp. Thankfully it was much shorter than the drive to Amherst.