In 2004 the Husband and I decided to road trip to vegas for Spring Break.

We had NO KIDS back then. I was working as a full time Assistant Professor at a Community College and Bill was programming at a small software firm. In additional to having no kids I had NO BLOGS. Can you imagine? Me? Blog-less? HA! Thankfully I’ve always been a “blogger” of sorts as I love archiving through photos. Here’s a playback of our historic journey.

Note: These were taken in order. Sorry for the bad quality.

It was April. Notice the snow? We left from Baltimore and I’m playing with my camera, of course.

We have a tradition of taking the Welcome State signs when we road trip. They don’t always turn out the greatest but the fun is in trying.

That’s Ohio and Indiana if you couldn’t tell. We tried, or  should I say The Husband did. ;)

We decided to take a northern route out and a southern route back. For us the road trip is part of the vacation and we wanted to see as much as possible.

Here’s The Husband getting ready to hit the road again after our first night in a hotel.

He looks so young!

Me? I just look like a big ole dork.

I love getting shots of cities.

Even though I don’t always get a chance to visit.

See….

I get better shots of the state signs. Just assume all bad ones from this point on were taken by the husband, good shots by me.

We stopped at Nostalgiaville USA

I was growing out my hair back then. Little did I know I’d just end of cutting it all off again anyways…

Cityscape!

And a perfect state sign…

:)

The landscape really started to change on us.

I’ve never, ever seen any place so flat before. Remember I grew up in North East Pennsylvania just a little ways from the Pocono Mountains!

You just have to take photos like this when given a chance.

Am I right?

Colorado!

I can’t lie. We actually pulled over to get that one. I remember. It was so late and no one was around.

We stopped for the night at Cow Palace Inn

I fell in love with the name.

Self timer shot before hitting the road.

Shortly after leaving the hotel, the landscape started getting a lot less flat.

And I remember being awed by the approaching mountains.

The next few shots I took on our ascent and decent of some mountain in the Rockies.

Utah!

Yup, that was me. :)

All I remember about Utah is being awed by almost everything I saw.

We stopped at one of the only gas stations we saw.

This is one of my favorite shots of the whole trip.

We were so happy and just loving being out of our element.

I don’t have shots of the Arizona or Nevada state signs for some reason but I remember it was getting late and we saw the skyline of vegas from miles away in the dark. Unfortunaly the battery on my camera died. I was devastated —for a minute, then I realized I was mere miles from VEGAS!

We ended up calling the hotel and seeing if it was ok to arrive early. We were ahead of schedule but had no plans on stopping for the night. We just wanted to get there!

We got there and charged the camera overnight. This was the view from our hotel room at MGM Grand.

We spent the next 3 days walking around, seeing the sites and gambling a bit. Low stakes, of course, but The Husband and I both like to play poker and a few other table games.

We went to the Bellagio garden and saw their fountain show.

The Husband even got some golf in!

While I went sight seeing.

We had fun and got lots of walking in to all the area casinos…

but when all was said and done, all we left with was this one chip.

No big winners here.

Most of the ride home was just as fun as the ride out.

This time I got the sign!

We saw the Hoover Dam.

Traveled on Route 66!!

Saw an amazing rainbow!

And, how could we be so close and NOT see…

That’s right, we took a small detour to the see the Grand Canyon!

The Husband was TERRIFIED, totally scared of heights. I was, however, in my glory.

This was the closest I could get him.

We weren’t there for long and I promised myself I would be back.

We also took a pit stop at the Meteor Crater.

This place was awesome!

Totally worth the stop.

The rest of the trip was driving thru…

New Mexico.

Texas

And OKlahoma.

Sorta. I’ll admit it. That mess up was me.

Arkansas

Tennessee.

At this point we were on a mission to get home. I drove through the night and we arrived home early in the morning.

It was quite the trip and we put some major miles on that rent a car!

That trip was 8 years ago and it’s making me feel old and reminiscent at the same time. I can’t wait to take another cross country trip but this time with my 2 boys and hopefully over a longer period of time. A week is ok but if you really want to make getting there part of the destination, it would be nice to not feel so rushed.

P.S. Just showed this to The Husband and he’s ready to do it again. We just have to wait until all babies are out of diapers. ;)