Our 33 Day, 6731 Mile Road Trip—part 1

 

Early this year we began discussing making a trip to Oregon to visit our youngest son and his family.  We last saw them two years ago when we took the train out to Oregon.  We considered doing that again but Connie suggested that we drive.  As we began to plan the trip we decided that we would make it a little longer, time-wise, and a little longer, distance wise.  Our plan was to travel to Oregon, stay several days, then drive down through California, across Arizona and New Mexico and into Texas.  As I wrote about last fall, we are part of a prison ministry, and we desired to visit some of our brothers there.

To afford to make such a trip we began to plan ways to cut expenses.  There wasn’t much we could do to lessen the fuel costs but food and motels we could do something about.  We began planning to take much of our food with us—much of it being some of our home canned items.  To cut out the expense of motels we (along with help from my son here on the farm) designed a platform bed that would fit into our mini-van once the rear seats were removed.  I cut cardboard to fit the windows so that we could cover them at night.  Our plan was to stop at truck stops, Wal-Mart parking lots and campgrounds.

We embarked upon our journey on April 22, 2012.  Our goal for the day was the Pilot Travel Center in Boonville, MO.  We were up and on our way by 7:00 A.M.  By 4:30 P.M. we had completed the first 509 miles of our trip and had arrived at the Pilot in Boonville.  One of the landmarks we saw on this first day on the road was the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, MO.

 

Below is a pix of our mini-van parked in the auto parking lot at Pilot in
Boonville, MO.



You can see that the cardboard window covers are in place.  The side seen from the outside is covered with a reflective insulation.  Our mattress was the thick futon mattress from the futon in our spare room at home, and it was quite comfortable.

Part 2 will be posted later.