Can I just start by saying that I strongly dislike moving? Especially while pregnant. Unpacking is going very, very slowly… very slowly… I do have two boxes of cookbooks unpacked, though, and they’re staring at me. But…there are other boxes of cookbooks, books, fabric, clothing, etc. that all still need to be unpacked and put away. I mean…while pregnant not only do you have no energy for unpacking such things, but you can’t even have a beer or a glass of wine to celebrate small victories. 😛 Not that it’s that big of a deal. Okay, I’m actually done complaining. (I should put some of that energy in getting my sewing machine out of a box!)
So, we moved from a small college town in Northern California where milk costs nearly $10 for a gallon of organic milk and drinking is a sport to a decently sized city in Kansas where things are quite a bit cheaper…and there’s a lot more family-friendly activities to do…and things for grown ups to do…and it’s just all around a better fit for our family. And hey, we don’t have to make a three-hour round trip drive to find plus-size maternity clothes, so that’s a bonus too.
We shipped our stuff and then my husband drove us out here. Let me tell you, 3 cats, a teenager, a toddler, and a married couple in the car together for looooong stretches of boring can get a little irritating. But…we made it. I had the best minestrone soup of my life in Winnemucca of all places. That was our first night’s stop after taking off from Sacramento.
It was at a place called Winnemucca Pizzeria. I ordered a salad too, which was pretty tasty. The soup bowl was so big though, that, well, I couldn’t finish everything. I ate the soup, and then I had to take the salad to go. Because wow. That was a *LOT* of soup.
On the way to Winnemucca, before we crossed into Nevada, we stopped at Donner Lake to take turns to stretch (remember 3 cats…so we kept the AC going at full blast and took turns getting out of the car to stretch because yeah, not going to leave my fur babies in a hot car). It’s a pretty place. I’d never been up that way before (or if I have, I was too young to remember it. I took a few photos with my camera before we headed on our way. It was one of the shorter days we had.
The next day, we went from Winnemucca to Salt Lake City. That was the looooooongest day. I had to stretch that out, because it was a very boring drive. You see, there isn’t a whole lot out there in Nevada. We saw things like this little town called “Mote.” It was a shack and some telephone poles. Now, maybe there was something else hiding somewhere that was more interesting, but Mote, NV cracked me up as we went by it. Just because there isn’t a whole lot out there doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful, it is. But I’m not sure I could ever live in Nevada.
Not only was this the longest day, but it was also the scariest. People in Nevada and Utah drive like maniacs! We actually wound up stuck, after just going through the salt flats and before we got to go into Salt Lake City on 80 behind a pretty nasty turnover accident where the driver was booked on suspicion of a DUI. We’d just missed it happening because we’d stopped at the salt flats rest stop to look around and stretch. Thank goodness we missed it! Yikes!
I did take some pictures of the salt flats – they’re beautiful.
From Salt Lake City, we went on to Cheyenne, Wyoming. That was the longest day in terms of distance. We played Mariners Uno (Affiliate link) while there, and had a lot of fun. Cheyenne seemed like it was a nice place to be. We went to eat at Wyoming’s Rib & Chop House Cheyenne. It was a really good meal. I had Gumbo and Chicken Fried Chicken. The portions were reasonable, and the price floored me. In California, such a meal…well, let’s just say it’s a lot less expensive to eat and live in the middle of the country.
(And in case you were wondering, the gumbo was really good!)
From Cheyenne, we ventured off to Kearney, Nebraska. By this time, everyone was SICK of each other, the cats were done with being in the car, and the toddler was over it. She even somehow managed to figure out how to unclick her car seat chest strap. That’s how done she was, and she LOVES to “go.” So, we drove, and drove to Kearney, parked for the evening, found a Qdoba to eat at, and called it an early night. We were really happy that we would be able to make the last part of our trip the next day and finally wind up in Wichita.
During that stretch, we pulled off somewhere to grab some iced tea, and we saw a really cool old boarded up church I had to photograph…so I did. There were some other neat historical small towns between Cheyenne and Kearney that we stopped through for coffee, lunch, or stretching. Remind me never to eat at a Sonic again. That was gross. So gross. Particularly for one who doesn’t really eat fast food ever. Yuck.
What wasn’t gross was this little place we stopped at to grab lunch at between Kearney and Wichita on our last driving day. We’d pulled off in a little town called Belleville and grabbed lunch from the Belleville Food 
Mart. Yes, it doesn’t sound glamorous, but they had some really good fried chicken there! And their mashed potatoes! It was a nice little treat, for sure.
We arrived in Wichita with a day before we could move into our new place. It sure was nice to just hang out and not have to be in the car all day! Little Miss even got to watch her current favorite movie – Winnie the Pooh, and we played Ticket to Ride Europe (affiliate link) together.
It was neat to see all of the landscape between Sacramento and Wichita – but I’m glad that the journey is done. I took a ton of Instagram photos of the trip, mostly because it was something to do while in the car for ten million years.
I’m looking forward to having the dust settle and getting back to sewing and other things.
