ROADTRIP! 

Who reading this has been on a road trip. Like a really long one. I have! Road trips are fun, yes, but they can also get tedious, boring, and kinda hard. Just yesterday I got back from a road trip with my parents and little sister. (my brother was working). We went to Fairbanks from our house which is about 500 miles (8 hrs one way). We left on Thursday late morning and got back at about 8:30 on Sunday. We drove for about 24 hrs altogether. Dad had work up there and my mom was leading a Practicum for Classical Conversations. So we drove up to Wasilla, had dinner with my oldest brother, in the morning we drove to Fairbanks and North Pole, on Saturday was practicum, and Sunday we spent the whole day driving back. 

Roadtrip Essentials: 

BLANKET, small enough to be manageable in a car but big enough to be comfortable

PILLOW, sleeping/resting is a large part of roadtrip life

BOOKS, if you aren't a carsick kind of person. (I didn't used to be but this time I was)☹️

COLORING/DRAWING MATERIALS this is a really awesome thing to do in the car. A coloring book, or blank paper, markers/colored pencils/pens make great entertainment. 

ENTERTAINMENT, whether it's toys, stuffed animals, etc. these are really important on a roadtrip

ELECTRONICS, okay these aren't essentials (I didn't use my dad's phone for a game till the last two hours;-) but they are helpful. 

AUDIOBOOKS/STORIES, my family is big on the audiobooks. We like always are listening to one. We listened to a 6 hr 27 min audiobook on this trip. (And I only fell asleep for about 20 mins of it)!!! We listened to Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George. It was a really interesting book. We also listened to Adventures in Odyssey, which is a family favorite. 

GAMES, we played: whiz kids, I spy, I went to the zoo and I saw, and our own variation of I went to the zoo and I saw: I went on a walk and I saw. Instead of animals in alphabetical order we did names of people we knew! It was really, really fun. (We even have a family member whose name starts with a U) For "X" we used a name with an "X" in it. 

FOOD, what would a roadtrip be without the food! We had trail mix, fig bars, z bars, clementines, gum, leftover candy from the practicum, and of course Subway!!! There was also some other assortments of snacks. 

Where we Went: 

North Pole 

Chena Hotsprings (so cool!) 

Chena Hostprings Restaurant (soooooo delicious) 

A park in North Pole (where we saw a moose, mallard, and squirrels) 

Denali Park (just checked out the dog kennels) 

We'd never been to Chena Hotsprings before in all our Fairbanks trips and on a 1 to 10 scale (one being worst, ten being best) the votes came back with a 3, 3, 4, 4. But the restaurant was definitely a 8 or 9. The food is *amazing!*. 

It had just snowed in Denali so we enjoyed a nice snowball fight! 

Anyway we had a really great time! Hope you enjoy! Sorry if this was long and boring!