Tap. Tap. Let’s see if I even remember how to work this thing.

So, we’re back from our road trip. Woo! Actually, we got back about a week and a half ago, but we’ve been so busy since then that blogging has not been a priority. For shame.

So where did we go, you ask? California. Yes, you read that right. California. You may or may not recall how Dave has this deep hatred of air travel. Combine that deep hatred of air travel with our awesome jobs that allow us to work from anywhere and we decided to drive to visit my family for the holidays. In a car. With the puppies. There AND back. It was epic. And kind of awesome.

I’ll give you a quick play-by-play of how it went down and save the nitty gritty details for another day.

In a nutshell:

1) We took 5 days from our home in Keene to my parents’ house just north of San Diego, with stops in Harrisburg, Louisville, Oklahoma City, and Flagstaff.

2) Oklahoma City was scary. Flagstaff was awesome. Not that we got to see much of anything at all. We were drivin’ fools.

3) The arch in St. Louis was neat-o.

4) I hereby declare New Mexico the largest state in the union.

5) We took a side trip to Sedona, AZ. Highly recommended. It was spectacular.

6) Willa kept us safe by making sure Dave was at 10 and 2 at all times.

7) The girls loved San Diego, especially dog beach.

8 ) Spending Christmas with my family was priceless. I’ll leave it at that.

9) On the return trip, we slowed it down a bit and took 7 days to get home.

10) We spent New Year’s Day at the Grand Canyon. Amazing. And cold. So very cold.

11) In a sleepy little town called Panguitch somewhere in southern Utah, we nearly ended up with a third dog.

12) We stopped in Utah and visited with some dear friends. Drank lots of Polygamy Porter while talking politics, religion, economics, information aggregation, and True Blood. And Dave got to spend time with his Godson, who we think was happy to see him despite this picture.

13) Wyoming is beautiful. I want to go back.

14) We got run off the road by a tractor trailer somewhere in Nebraska.

15) Iowa sucks (sorry). The hotel TV was running a PSA: “Call 1-800-METH-NOW to anonymously report meth labs. If you cook it, we will come.” Sweet. Way to continue to capitalize on Field of Dreams.

16) Sometimes the puppies got bored (Esther) and got into trouble in the car (Esther).

17) Where are all of the parks in Indiana? I’ve only been to Indiana once before and I have fond memories of it, but we could not find a park to let the puppies run. It made Dave grumpy.

18) Other than in Indiana, we can give you a list of all of the state parks along route 80 and route 40 that are good places to let your puppies burn off some energy.

19) We drove from Iowa to New York in one day. I don’t recommend that.

20) There is truly no place like home.