We left a little later than I originally planned, but it worked out since we missed most of the traffic in Maryland and Virginia. We also caught a great sunset as we left!

I had a silly idea of wearing my Raven’s jersey until we checked into our hotel…which was about 2 days later…it apparently didn’t work for the Patriots game. 😦

Here’s Bret enjoying the bed in the backseat. Note, this was taken at a stop and he adjusted his seat belt after. 🙂

I started reading a pretty neat book…didn’t get too far through it because I spent most of my non-driving time sleeping…or playing Candy Crush, tee hee.

This guy kept me company in the backseat.

One of the states that’s harder for me to drive through is Oklahoma. If I remember right, it is just fields and a lot of the same scenery for miles and miles. Texas is somewhat the same. This year was a totally different experience. There was an ice storm and everything was coated with ice. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in my life. It was like driving through a winter wonderland. I kept looking around saying, “WOW, WOW…..WOW!” Bret had been sleeping and I had to wake him up because it was just so amazing. I never would’ve expected to see something like that in Oklahoma! The photo only does it about 10% justice.

Then, we got to Texas and that’s when the fun started! Bret started to drive about an hour or so outside of Amarillo, Texas. I woke up when he pulled over in Amarillo to grab some gas. There was SO much ice on the road and he’d been driving about 30 miles an hour. I asked if he thought we should stop or not and he’s like, well, there are still a number of people on the road…I think we’re ok for now. Well, about 50 miles outside of Amarillo, we hit a little traffic….then the traffic was bumper to bumper…..then it stopped. Dead stop. After about an hour of being stopped, Bret said, well, shoot, I’m going to get in the back seat and go to sleep! We tried to lie down and sleep, but I kept thinking, what if the traffic starts up again? So I couldn’t sleep. I moved to the front seat, wrapped up in a blanket and watched for a while. After about an hour or so, I fell asleep. Another hour or so, sleep. We were stopped there for about 5 hours. Finally started again and I drove for about 30 minutes and we were stopped again. We stopped for about an hour at that point. Drove a little more and then were stopped another hour or so. All told, I think we were stuck for about 10 hours. It took us 10 hours to go about 30-50 miles. What’s crazy about the situation is that we were going to stop at our favorite rest stop that was only about 30 miles from where we were stopped. We were even going to stop and sleep in the car for a bit. Craziness! At least it was pretty in the morning.

I found this sign in a gas station….great advice!

We finally stopped in Flagstaff, AZ at a hotel. After we showered we headed across the street to the Galaxy Dinner. It was SOOO cool! There was a ton of 50’s memorabilia on the walls, oldie’s playing on the radio and nice greasy foods AND beers to relax with. It was a GREAT night!