Road Trip!

Lessons learned:

A 5,000 mile trip is not insignificant, but 11 and 14 are the perfect age travelers--happy with fast-food (in fact, local food is wasted on them) and tolerant of grand-parent jokes if you can overlook plenty of eye-rolling.

Despite sophisticated lyrics that they know by heart to their boy-band CDs, they still get homesick after a week. Ten days was a good limit.

Vocabulary word a day worked well.  Inuendo was apropos for Day 3 (see previous item).

Buskers was also a good choice for vocabulary.  The day after we used it, we were entertained by a father and son juggling on unicycles--everything from balls, to knives, to fire torches.  Fantastic!

Bed bugs CAN be found, even in luxury hotels.

Laundromats maintain scalding hot water, even after 7 loads.  There IS a spray specifically for bedbugs and we're crossing our fingers that it worked.  We shall never speak of this again.

Okay For Now by Gary Schmidt was a perfect, bonding read-aloud.

Getting the "meal deal" may provide grandparent points, but it is possible to have too many french fries and soda and one tires of paying for uneaten food.  At least this one does.

Orioles baseball is as good as Cardinal baseball; five home-runs, fireworks, free hats and ballpark crowds. Ah, yes, real America!

Nauvoo in July is the biggest testament to the Church being true. Not the pageant: surviving the heat and humidity.

Hotel pools are a necessity.

Sacagajawea, the GPS, knows the west and couldn't recognize Smithsonian, Inner Harbor, or even Gettysburg until we realized we needed to load the east-coast maps.  Things improved greatly once she had her bearings.  I think she likes Utah best, as I do.