Day One of Trip to St. Louis

Road trip you say? There is nothing quite like traveling with a Bittle Man. I am convinced there are nomadic traits inherent in their genes. First, the route MUST be planned in advance. I do believe that my generation of Bittle men has evolved quite nicely into the computer era of Bittle Travelers. Chris’ parents have stories of cross country trips which involved getting there as fast as possible. Eliminating any unnecessary stops, food? Bathroom breaks a thing of the past with those folks. I think they had a spoken or perhaps unspoken competition to beat the time of the previous trip. My Bittle Man however organized and well planned he is, allows for eating and potty breaks, Thanks Chris. Road trip blogs are new with this generation. Journals of past Bittle trips have been long a part of the trip, now it is posted onto the web for everyone to enjoy. We will be posting pictures and if possible a little diddy the kids were singing.

Our morning began with an attempted start time of 6am. We were close, we were leaving Starbucks drive through at 6:43, yes AM. Chris can function in the mornings for a good cause. We had our well packed Honda Pilot loaded up with suitcases, a cooler, 3 laptops (no I’m not kidding), DVDs, books on cd, 3 Nintendo Ds, books, 3 ipods, and various other sources of entertainment for the kids and us too. Do you see a theme here? Three. I never knew that the number of children you have will dictate your life so much.

We planned on approximately 800 miles of driving today. Our goal was to reach Moab, Utah to stay in our preplanned hotel for the night. Entertaining three kids for this long of a drive was definitely a major consideration in our planning. For some reason Nevada seems to be a bad state for our family to drive through. I received a speeding ticket for traveling 86mph in a 55mph zone. In my sort of lame defense I honestly thought it was still a 70mph zone. Which the officer kindly pointed out I would still be 16 miles above that rate. OOPS. I’m proof that having a police officer for a spouse does NOT relieve me of getting tickets. It’s happened 2x in the last two years, both on road trips. Anyhow the officer was kind enough to give me a ticket for 65 in a 55 mile zone. At least it was a “basic” speeding ticket and not one for reckless speed. I “let’ Chris drive after the ticket.

We did great passing off driving back and forth as each of us tired. The kids did moderately well. We arrived safely in time to eat dinner, allow the kids a brief swim and were asleep by 10pm. I’ll let Chris pipe in with his own version of events; I left some out for him to cover.