Let me just say that, I am bushed.  The drive home wasn’t as smooth as originally anticipated.  Day 1 we drove from Houston to Blythe, California, that is 1200 miles.  The plan was to drive from Blythe to home at a little under 1000 miles.  After Day 1, it should have been easier – nope.

Sunday, we were only able to get 200 miles in 10 hours.  I kept watching the arrival time get later and later.  We got to the point that our arrival time exceeded my start time for the work day.  The freeway traffic was showing red from LA all the way to Sacramento and we were running on 5 hours of sleep.  We decided to bag it for the night.

It still took us nearly 14 hours to get home yesterday.  By that, I will be getting to my finer analysis of the trip below.

  • I was worried about the weather, I never considered the traffic in the drive.  I5 was a parking lot all day Sunday and I never had any idea this would be the case.  I think about traffic during the weekdays but not weekends.
  • The original plan for the trip did not included driving my mother in law back (with all of her stuff).  We barely had room to move and when we stopped, we had to move stuff to move people to move stuff to get in and out.
  • Our overall planning for the time in Texas was weak.  I expected to work two days,  which I did.  That being said, the rest of the family did nothing on Monday.  We spent all day Wednesday driving to San Antonio (200mi one way) and back even though we past it both ways on I10.  I think that we could have done a better job of planning the trip so that we could have done more sightseeing while we were there.
  • It was extremely difficult to keep 11 people on track with only stopping for fuel and minimizing the down time.  I selfishly wanted to get home as early as possible because I wanted as much time as possible before work the next day.  No one else had the same urgency that I did.
  • I think a daily cap of twelve hours is probably a good limit.  That is still a long time in the car but it leaves a little more room for not keeping a blistering schedule.  There wasn’t a ton of sites that I would have liked to taken a little more time but having some proper rest in between days would have been beneficial.
  • Overall, the kids did a good job for the most part, the adults not so much.  There were several incidents of inappropriate behavior for no good reason.  For that reason, I will never do a multiple family unit in one vehicle again.  Between the difference in urgency and the plain ridiculousness, I will not do it.  It is not to say that I wont travel together, just not in the same vehicle.  That way, I have the freedom to go ahead if I want to.

I will probably post one more time about the trip and a different subject matter this week.  I plan to talk about my assessment of the states we crossed and how they compared with Oregon.  There are definitely some differences.

End Your Programming Routine:  I am not trying to be negative,  I am saying that I would do things differently if I could. Overall, this was definitely an experience for the memories.  And, I am not saying all memories are good.  The focus was on providing an experience for the kids and providing one more family get together as its current dynamic.  I think that was accomplished.  I am pretty sure the kids felt like this was an adventure despite what my opinion was exactly and that is the best I could hope for.