Palo Duro Canyon - Day 1

Day 1 - Surprisingly, we left San Antonio on-time, if not early at 6:40AM on Sunday morning, which is completely shocking since we woke up to Daylight Savings and having lost an hour of sleep. Our bodies thought it was 3:40AM when our alarms went off at 4:40AM. I guess Blake and I were just excited for the trip and we finished packing everything and getting the house ready for us to leave. We had packed the car the night before and luckily the kids slept and were very quiet for the first 2-3 hours, of the trip. 

The kids were amazing in the car on their longest road trip yet. It was 7 hours & 29 minutes of actual drive time and we stopped 2X (once in San Angelo and once in Lubbock.) So total it was a little over 9 hours in the car. They only used the iPad for less than 2 hours to watch their brand new movie, Moana, and otherwise, I had packed a ton of random games, dry erase boards, coloring and sticker books, tic-tac-toe, puzzles, car BINGO, magazines, the books they are reading, etc... and they stayed busy. I printed off a map of our route and all the little towns we were going through, so they could just check them off so we didn't even have any "how much longer's!?"

We planed a stop 3 hours away in San Angelo at Donatopia (donut shop seen on Daytripper) but were sad to find it closed due to "plumbing issues" at 9:40AM. So we found a other nearby donut shop where we visited with locals and then headed out to find the famous Blood Red Lake - the O.C. Reservoir. We had mixed emotions to find out that there no longer was a red lake since he drought of 2011/2012 was over! Oh well.. we were 0/2 of San Angelo things to do but in high spirits, so we headed North towards Lubbock. 

Exactly 3 hours later, we met up with the Boercek's and my girlfirend Nicki, who just recently moved to Lubbock at Spanky's and sampled their famous homemaker fried cheese! 

90 minutes later, we arrived at our home away from home - that literally sat in the edge of the Palo Duro Canyon and less than 1.5 miles to the Palo Duro State Park entrance. We could not have gotten a more ideal location.

The guys ran the 12 miles into the town of Canyon to the grocery store while the kids and moms explored the house, property and Palo Duro Canyon edge.

After a fajita dinner, the 4 of us sat outside on the porch catching up, looking at the full moon, listening to music and the sounds of nature and tentatively planning our week.

It wasn't until nearly 10:30 PM, that Blake and I remembered it was our anniversary since waking up that morning, so we documented it with a 4 year old in our lap, which perfectly documents this great chapter in life.