On Saturday we drove to Caldwell, Idaho (just west of Boise near the Oregon border) to visit with friends and then drove back on Sunday evening. At just over 6 hours each way it made for 12 plus hours driving in the van over one weekend. It’s been three years since we’d done a family road trip of that size and all that driving gave me time for a few observations:
- The kids didn’t use the dvd player much and did quite well without it.
- This was Michael’s first road trip (he is a year old) and he fought sleeping for most of the trip.
- There is close to nothing north of Brigham City, UT until you get to Burley, ID (along I-84) and even those two towns are tiny.
- There is close to nothing again from Burley / Twin Falls, ID until Boise, ID.
- The fact that roads like I-84 got built at all is pretty amazing.
- I had forgotten what it was like to drive on a freeway at night without street lights.
- Any future family car we purchase will have cruise control, I used it for 90% of the drive there and back and it was great.
- There is a whole lot of empty space left in the United States.
- With large gaps between gas stations (measured in hours) I didn’t fill bad about stopping to fill up two or three times on a six hour trip.