For Christmas 2020, Michael got me the National Parks Bible with all the information you could ever want to know about the National Parks. I spent days just pouring over all the information and within that time I planned a road trip for September 2021. At first we were planning on also heading over to Disneyland and Universal, but with all the restrictions we decided to nix that.
One of the reasons I wanted to mainly do a National Park road trip was because it couldn't get canceled. Sure...some of the Visitor Centers might not be open, but you can't cancel the great outdoors!
We headed out on my actual 41st birthday, September 16th 2021! Zeke is on the verge of sneezing in the above picture because of the bright sun shining on him. Hahaha!
Let's try again! Nice!
I had planned this trip down to the each stop we were going to make for lunch. I love having a plan....although I'm not going to freak out if things change. I do like to have an idea of what's around and what's a good place to stop for the kids to get out and run some of their energy off.
We drove over I-90 and our first stop was Indian John Hill at the Rest Stop and then we were back on the road. We went through Yakima and headed down to the southeast portion of Washington state. I had never driven that way and it was like we weren't even in Washington. The landscape was so different!
We stopped for lunch at the Umatilla Spillway Park in Umatilla, OR. I packed a ton of stuff for breakfasts and lunches in order to help us not spend so much. Our plan was to try to avoid fast food at all costs and only eat dinner out at nice sit down restaurants! We all made ourselves a sandwich or had cheese and crackers and then decided to walk around the park and stretch our legs.
This is my favorite part about road trips. I always try to find somewhere fun to stop in the middle of the day to get out and explore. This is where spontaneity can come in and we can see and experience some really fun stuff!
The kids and I walked all the way around the pond and the boys climbed a tree.
The McNary dam was right down the road. Michael wanted to go see if the fish ladder was open so we drove over there.
The fish weren't running very much, but we did see 3 fish and got this picture. The kids thought that was awesome and it was fun getting to explain how the whole thing works.
Our stopping point for the night was Nampa, ID. It was already dinner time so instead of going straight to the Airbnb we stopped to eat. I had researched ahead of time places to eat in the areas we were going to stay the night. I wanted to have a couple of options each night and I also wanted to make sure that we didn't end up eating pizza 3 nights in a row.
We ate at Holy Cow ID and it was phenomenal!
First off it had fun pop culture decor on the wall!
It was clean and bright and the staff were very friendly.
Also this was the best burger of my life. The amoungus fungus burger. If you love mushrooms you would love it too! Yummy!!!! They also served the best beer batter fries I've ever tasted. If you ever have a chance to go...take it! My only complaint was it was cold in there so bring a coat!
Another spontaneous fun thing was happening right out. They were having a street fair with live music and a car show. It was so unexpected! It was funny because I was right in the middle of reading a book all about Johnny Cash and the guys started singing Folsom Prison Blues. It was so wild!
The kids wanted to take all sorts of pictures of the cars to text Pa.
There were some good look vehicles!
Wow!!!
We originally were going to stay in Boise, but the owners of the Airbnb I had rented decided to sell it just a couple weeks prior to our road trip. I ended up finding this one for cheaper in Nampa. It was actually a basement apartment. This was our first time using Airbnb and I think Michael was skeptical, but with 4 kids it's the way to go. Hotel's rarely can fit 6 people in one room and no way was I going to pay for 2 rooms and be separated from my kids or my husband.
Here's the house...that concrete pad was where we parked. That door on the left is the door to the basement unit. They have a nice lockbox that you punch a code into and retrieve the key for the door.
You step right into this landing. The door to the left is to their house which of course it's locked. The only place I could hear the family was from this landing.
You walked right down into this living room area. A big reason I was open to getting a basement unit was first off we were only staying one night and secondly it was so bright in all the pictures it didn't seem like a basement.
Here's the view from the living room looking out. They had a nice little table in the corner and past that through the doorway was the kitchen / laundry. That was the table we sat at to sign all our refinance paperwork with the notary. We asked the lady if signing at an Airbnb was the weirdest place she's ever had people sign papers and she said nope...she's actually met with truckers at rest stops to have papers signed before.
Here's the bathroom and the master.
You might be wondering where Ella and Zeke slept. It was advertised that they had a queen size air mattress so we were going to air that up in the living room so they could sleep on that, but they decided that they would both just sleep on the couch. Since it's was L shaped couch it worked out perfectly for them!
Here's the nice kitchen / laundry room. This is the only part that gave us some trouble. To the left of the picture you can't see them, but there is a furnace and a water heater. Those two things make interesting noises and they freaked Zeke out. He woke us up a couple times because of it. I went ahead and shut the door to the kitchen and that helped.
I'd say for our first stay at at Airbnb it was a success!
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