Road Trip Across Three Countries... Coming Right Up!

Time to plan a vacation, a journey, an adventure... a road trip! Here are a couple of pics from previous road travels.

Looking like a hot mess with my girls in San Francisco
(M. Rothman)

Emilio at DisneyWorld, in Florida
(L. Galo)

Where will we travel this time?
Cancun, Mexico
The US West Coast
Southwestern Canada

How will we get there?
Drive, drive, drive baby! We're expecting to log in between 6,000-8,000 miles on this excellent adventure.

When is it happening?
Summertime of 2017

People like to ask me if I'm scared or worried or if I'm out of my ever-loving mind to go on such adventures! Well, I have to say, there are times I feel anxious when planning a trip of such magnitude. But, once I'm on the road again, I feel much better and all that anxiety fades away. The waiting to go is the worst part for me. Do unexpected challenges show up? Of course. But that's part of the attraction.

What have we done lately?

Emilio - Received a four year scholarship to college and has a job waiting when he gets back from summer travels. He is a design engineering major.

Cristiana - Finally - finally! - is publishing her book. She completes Trigonometry this college semester. She's lining up a position at a veterinary clinic to start in August. She also has an invitation to volunteer at a equine therapy facility - to work with their horses. She is a pre-veterinary major.

Solina - Currently acting in a run of  "Stuart Little" (play), starring as the lead singer this fall in a garage band, and finishing up 7th grade. Have kid, will travel (for acting gigs, ha!). Follow her on Instagram at solina.galo.

(Sergio Garcia)

Me - Keeping this family unit humming along is enough of a job but I also finish Stats and Calc at my university this semester. I'm keeping up the A average! I am managing homeschooling, Solina and Cristiana's career paths and working online for a private business as an accountant, too. I was offered a short-term writing gig and am considering it.

Stay tuned for our drive to Cancun, Mexico and onward to Canada!

This post by Li Galo

Driving West to East in the USA in Four days

     As we traveled on I-80 through 11 states, the weather in each state was different. The first day, we drove from Northern California to Salt Lake City, Utah.  We went through Reno-there are a lot of casinos there. Next, we drove through Salt Lake City-very hot and in the high 80's.
       



There's not a lot to see in SLC, Utah.

    
     The next day, we drove through Wyoming, where we were snowed into the Rocky Mountains.  We were going about 40-45 miles an hour on snow, and the people passing us were going 60 miles an hour on the frozen left lane. We pulled over at a truck stop near the border of Nebraska and just stayed there. There were about 20-30 truckers there as well.  It got down to 8 degrees that night. My mom woke me up around midnight to tell me this, and we tried to get the heater working, and we eventually did, after I turned the radio on a a couple of times, since I was half-awake. In the morning, the roads were cleared.

Building a snowman in Wyoming.

My sisters and I were glad to reach Nebraska because it was warmer than Wyoming - but watch out for snakes!

     On the third day, we woke up and drove for five hours.  We reached Omaha, Nebraska, which is on the border of Iowa and Nebraska.  We stopped there for the night, before heading off to Des Moines.  Des Moines is famous for the girl who stopped the midnight express when the bridge in her town went out. She crawled across the broken bridge and ran all the way to the Des Moines station and told them to stop the express.  She then told them where the train crew was that went down with the bridge.  The train crew was rescued, and she received an award. When she got home, she fell in a deep sleep. She was exhausted.

Nebraska looks like this for 8 hours.



Missouri weather was nice - in the 70's - but the people aren't friendly there.

 

We stopped at the site of the original Pony Express Station for a break while we were in St. Joseph, Missouri.

     The fourth day, we arrived in Springfield, Illinois.  We could have kept going to our final destination - New Market, Virginia.  But we spend a day visiting the home of Abraham Lincoln at the National Park Service.  It was well done and a great visit to the former town of President Lincoln.  The homes and streets from that time are all there - just like they were when he was alive!

 

My sister is almost as almost as tall as I am - and I am tall!

My little sister is cute.

Inside the homes in President Lincoln's old town are artifacts from the period.

Here we are in front of President Lincoln's Springfield home - before he left to be President.

We really loved the room we stayed in that night.  My mother was able to get this room for only $60!