Destination Experience Compassion Conference: Day 7

The last day of vacation and it would involve about 12 hours of driving...yikes!

We left Utah really early in the morning. The kids were great about getting up, geting things re-packed, and helping out since this was the fourth morning of early morning rising to prepare for a long day of driving.

There was quite a bit of rain as we were driving through Utah and we even saw this double rainbow!

One of the rainbows even stretched from one side of the freeway to the other! We don't usually see this type of weather at home in the summer time unless we head up into the mountains, so we were easily delighted to enjoy the rain, the clouds, and the rainbows.

We stopped in St. George, Utah to fill up the gas tank and get a morning treat at Starbucks ($5 gift card was a blessing!), and let Matthew have a chance to drive us part of the way home. He ended up driving us all the way from St. George, Utah to Barstow, California. About 275 miles which brought us out of Utah, through the corner of Arizona, across the bottom corner of Nevada, and into California. Since he was driving, I was able to take a picture of this sign...

 ...as we were driving through Las Vegas...

...and this sign as we arrived back in California!

As we were driving across the Mojave Desert, I took a picture of the Joshua Trees along the side of the road. I thought this might be a good picture to share with our Compassion kids since these trees are so different. Maybe they have something like them near their home.

After all that driving Matthew did, we were all ready for a break from the car. So after eating lunch at one of the biggest In-n-Out Burgers we have ever been to, and filling up the car again with gas, we were in for the home stretch. The home stretch was over 5 hours of driving still! California really is a huge state!

We arrived home in time to unload the car, treat our house sitter to dinner, and relax at home after being gone for a week. Since Matthew starts college in 2 weeks, this was a wonderful opportunity to take a family vacation together.

So where did you take your family vacation this year?