Love Fam Road Trip #1: A Success

On July 3rd, I finished a graduate workshop, drove home, and hopped in a car for the first official Love family long-distance road trip. Kelly and I have taken shorter excursions with the kids, 3-5 hour trips at most, but have never attempted a trip that would require us to stop for the night and continue on the next day. When our kids were all under four, even driving to Springfield was an adventure, so we were pretty impressed when we could make it more than an hour away from home. Now that our kids are getting a bit older and are better able to handle long rides, we figured it was time to give the family road trip a try, so off we went.

My aunt lives in Santa Fe and has been begging for some time that Kelly and I would bring the kids out for a vacation. The trip finally fit into our schedule, so we sandwiched it in between grad work and football camps and lit out for New Mexcio.


We couldn't have imagined a better vacation. We had no agenda or plan, plenty of time to spend in Santa Fe, a great place to stay, and the two coolest hosts (Aunt Linda and Uncle Andy) a person could hope for. We relaxed, ate, hiked, explored, took in some live music, read, strolled through art galleries, and watched movies; the best part was that we did all this in what I'd consider perfect weather (love those mountain climates).

Here are a few snapshots:

The boys at Bandelier National Park near Los Alamos.

While hiking at Bandelier, a guy who was about 50 yards ahead of me started frantically yelling at me to get my kids back away from something. Confused, I did what he said. I then realized Jett and Ramsey had been about 5-10 yards away from a really big rattlesnake. Two days later, my heart rate returned to normal.

The kids had a great time climbing into the Indian cliff dwellings. I'm pretty sure that every time they went to climb ladders like this one (which went five to ten feet off the ground), I heard other folks on the trail saying, "I wouldn't let my kids do that." Each time, my inner monologue replied, "Yeah, and that's why your kids hate going on vacation with you." Thank you, Lord, for granting me a filter.

When kids begin to wear you out on vacation, take them to a Catholic church with a labyrinth path outside (as seen above). They will immediately begin running...and running...and running. This, later in the evening, will translate into fussing, then crying, then sleeping...and sleeping...and sleeping.

Typical Love kids...Parker's posing, Ramsey's not paying attention, and Jett's just being himself, a ten-foot tall deer-like shaman.

Albequerque has a really cool aquarium, so Jett took full advantage of it. They had a spot where visitors could pet stingrays, and our fearless li'l guy was all over it. He and this particular stingray quickly became pals.

Just adjacent to the aquarium is a pretty cool botanical garden. The kids weren't too pumped about most of the gardens, so to liven things up, I got Jett to pose for a picture where it would appear I was tossing him into this prickly pear cactus. It seemed hilarious then, but now it just looks like this is the type of thing that could spur a call to DFS, right?

We took an afternoon and headed up to the aspen forests in the mountains around Santa Fe, and it was BEAUTIFUL. It was also an arid 75 degrees at that elevation, so we took our time before heading down. Sidenote: my wife is hot.

We rolled back into Bolivar last Friday and are just now getting back into the swing of things here, but I'm already looking forward to Love Fam Road Trip #2. As long as the DVD player in the van is still operational then, I can't imagine our second trip being any less successful than the first!



One last pic of my road warrior kiddos!!!

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