The story of our most recent road trip begins several months before. A year ago during our cross-country road trip from Massachusetts to Arizona we stopped for two nights in Santa Fe, NM and loved it. By the time we left town 36 hours later, I had found an Airbnb condo for us, and within a week we had it booked. So, we’ve known for a year that we’d be spending this winter in Santa Fe.
Then, a few months ago I began planning the road trip to drive from Tacoma, WA where we spend the late summer/fall 2019 to Santa Fe. This past year was the first year of my life living on the US West Coast, so it’s been a lot of fun to explore (and even live in) many places that previously were just shapes on a map. Therefore, when I started mapping out our road trip from Washington to New Mexico, I thought it would be fun to also hit 2 more states that I’d never experienced before: Idaho and Utah. Particularly because a friend had highly recommended checking out Moab, Utah.
The Route
I mapped it out, and here’s the route we planned to take… It’s a fairly straight shot through 6 states (including the two I’d never visited before.) Here’s where the rub comes…
There are a lot of mountains along that route, and we planned to take this drive from December 30- January 4th. Mountain Passes + Winter = Snow. Being an east coast/midwest gal for most of my life, it quite literally didn’t occur to me… until about 2 months before the trip.
That was when several folks in Washington started asking about our next planned stop, and I showed them the road trip route. I still remember the first guy who just look at me with raised eyebrows and said, “Do you have chains for your car?”
*gulp*… “No, do you think we’ll need them?”
“Um, going that route, very likely.”
At this point, I had already booked our Airbnbs along the route. I was really excited about seeing this section of the country that we’d never experienced before, so I really didn’t want to change our plan.
That’s why… what was one of the last things I did before we left Washington? I bought chains for our car. I prayed that tire chains were kind of like umbrellas. You make sure to bring them so you won’t actually need them.
Then, we flew back east for the holidays and left both our car and its potential need for chains behind us for 5 weeks. However, as we started getting closer and closer to our return flight to Washington and the road trip, I started thinking about it more.
How could I be as prepared as possible and make the best possible decisions for our family’s safety AND enjoyment on this trip?
I reached out to one of the Roadschooling Facebook groups I follow and asked fellow roadschoolers how they get weather reports for their routes in winter time. Folks offered a couple useful websites and resources, which I checked on frequently in the days leading up to the trip. (www.SafeTravelusa.com and TheWeatherNetwork.com)
The Journey Begins
Finally, the day had arrived, and so far the first couple days of weather from Washington to Boise, ID looked good. So, we made it through several mountain passes in Washington and Oregon with only minimal snow action. Even though the mountains around us were lovely and snow-covered, the roads were beautifully clear. Exactly the way I kept envisioning them *wink*.
Well, we made it to Boise, ID for New Year’s eve fairly easily. That was where our Pumpkin astonished and delighted us by effectively using chopsticks for her sushi the first time she tried!
*SERIOUSLY* These weren’t kids chopsticks either, they were mine that I had just finished using a few minutes before. I thought she’d just play around with them and maybe stab the sushi with them. But, low and behold with zero coaching and only a couple minutes of experimenting with them. She successfully got the food to her mouth!
I was floored, flabbergasted, and very proud. Pretty sure I didn’t do nearly as well the first time I tried to use chopsticks, and I’m pretty sure I was a bunch older.
Time for Some Drama
Well, New Year’s day arrived, and our weather-related luck appeared to run out. The route from Boise to Salt Lake City was showing some persistent (if not highly significant) snow for most of the day.
I had said to Brian before we started this journey that worst case scenario we’d just find the closest hotel/motel and stop if the weather got too bad. (May I add now… that was naive and wishful thinking because a LARGE portion of our route included ZERO towns. Truly, unlike the east coast, there are large stretches of the western US with absolutely no human habitation of any kind.)
Blissfully naive and excited to get to Utah, we headed off for Day 3 of our road trip figuring that we’d just take it slow and do our best. This was when we learned that Waze navigation app was truly our best possible resource for road conditions and weather reports. Bless you, all you Wazers who report weather (ice, unplowed roads, fog, etc) as well as driving incidents (accidents, slow traffic, etc.)
We were able to anticipate the areas that were having worse weather, and I was able to adjust my driving in advance to be careful and cautious. What should have been about 5 hours of driving took rather longer, and the last 2+ hours were a lot of “white-knuckled” road conditions.
The weather kept wobbling back and forth between rain, snow, then rain again, which for my money is some of the worst weather for driving. My greatest concern was black ice… that stuff you cannot see on the roads until you hit it going 40-50+ mph and skid straight off the road (and hopefully not over a cliff.)
Well, since I’m still here to write this (and no, I’m not in a hospital bed,) I’m glad to say that we didn’t hit any black ice. We did however pass a tractor trailer that had jackknifed right off the side of the road and literally burst with all its load oozing out.
That’s why when we managed to make it to our Airbnb in Salt Lake City, I couldn’t have been happier to arrive and unclench my fingers, shoulders, and jaw… that was until we hit the disaster of the last 20 feet. *SMH*
I’m not kidding. We made it to the house, had turned on the street, and the snow had just started falling again in earnest about 20 minutes earlier. There was about an inch of snowy, icy slush on their little driveway hill… and the car simply wouldn’t go up.
I tried all my New England winter driving tricks, but after spinning, slipping, and skidding for about 10 minutes I realized this wasn’t going to work. The street conditions were bad enough that I did not want to park the car on the street for fear someone would skid right into it. So, I sent Brian up to the front door because fortunately we saw the host inside the house. The two of them came out and grabbed a snow shovel and some ice melt to clear the driveway.
After a few minutes of work, with some more slipping and sliding, I managed to get the car up the driveway hill and into the carport where we were assigned to park. Once we got all our bags into the lower-level apartment, I could just sit down and unclench… oh, rarely have I felt more relieved.
Fortunately, there was a Grubhub driver out there willing to bring us food because there was zero chance that I was going out again for any possible reason.
Red Rock Beauty
The next day dawned with no sign of further nasty weather, and the route from Salt Lake City to Moab looked dry and clear. *Thank Goodness*
This route was my favorite drive of this trip, and I’m really glad that we didn’t have the previous day’s weather on these smaller state highway roads. It was a curvy, mountain-filled drive taking us through such beautiful natural rock formations and valleys.
Having been told that Moab, Utah was amazing, this was the one place on this trip where we planned to stay for 2 nights and spend a whole day exploring the area. When we got to town Brian and I both joked that it was a little like Sedona, AZ but without the “spiritual Las Vegas” elements (which we both happen to really like *wink*.)
At first, just driving through town to our Airbnb, I was a bit underwhelmed. Although, I had that moment of gratitude and realization of how our priorities had changed because this Airbnb (unlike the one in Salt Lake City) was well stocked for kids. When our Pumpkin found the hidden closet full of toys, I truly couldn’t have been happier.
I was rather exhausted when we arrived, so Brian graced me with time to take a nap that afternoon while he and Pumpkin played and then went out to pick up some food.
The next day was the truly magnificent part of this trip. Not knowing much about the area, we just decided to head over to Arches National Park. Having visited other parks in “off seasons” we weren’t quite sure what we’d find. We thought there might be roads closed due to snow, etc. But, nope… all clear and just some beautiful snow emphasizing the textures of the stunning, red rock formations.
We stopped at the visitor’s center and “rented” a USB key with files for a full audio tour of the park. In just a few minutes Brian figured out how to plug it into our car and access the files to give us a full guided tour of the parks natural wonders, geological details, and history. It was awesome!
In many ways it was a lot like Sedona, AZ except that rather than having the town built right into the center of the beautiful rock areas, they had been preserved in all their natural beauty within the park.
Since it was about 34 degrees Fahrenheit (that’s about 1 deg C), and we were traveling with a toddler we were not really up for hiking around. The trails and ground were largely covered in snow and ice, so toddler hiking was just not happening.
However, we did get out and run around a bit at the Panorama viewpoint which was awe-inspiring.
Fortunately, as the afternoon continuing the morning clouds cleared off and treated us to some striking views of the red rocks, blue skies, and white snow throughout the park.
Since we only had this one day in Moab, I can guarantee that we’ll be back. While I don’t think the town/area is big enough to keep us engaged for a full 4-month stay (small cities with more restaurants, museums, and culture are more our thing,) I do imagine that we might come back for a couple weeks maybe some spring to explore more. We didn’t even get to Canyonlands National Park or the Needles which are just an hour away.
So… more for next time.
The Home Stretch
The drive from Moab to Santa Fe was the longest planned day of driving. Fortunately, the weather was clear, so it went reasonably easily… but it did take almost 8 hours (with lunch and potty breaks.)
We arrived after dark, having played a competitive round of the “alphabet game” right around dusk (Brian won ;)) while trying to stay focused on the last couple hours of the drive.
But, we were delighted to finally arrive at our new winter home. We are staying in a lovely two bedroom condo in downtown Santa Fe that both has stunning views of the Sangre de Cristo mountains and is about 5 blocks walk from the Plaza.
In next month’s Course Update I’ll share the stories and photos from our first month landing here in Santa Fe and gearing up for the launch of The Freedom Evolution!
It’s coming very soon!
If you haven’t yet ensured that you’ll receive our travel updates (and all the other awesome productivity insights too through my weekly messages,) then make sure you click the image button below to get those sent directly to your inbox.
