I thought I would share a little with you about the adventure we had in getting to our new home. It turned out we could not get the travel trailer we preferred locally. They just did not have the floor plan, the brand, or the price we desired anywhere nearby, so we started to expand our search as the sale of our home grew nearer. To get exactly the one we wanted at a price we could live with we had to begin our journey by traveling to Ohio (without a home).
There had been a miscommunication with the power company about the disconnecting of our power, because they did it a day earlier than we had wanted them to, so we left the house a day earlier than we had originally intended. Luckily we had some really great friends that got us a room at the Silverland Hotel in Virginia City where we spent a great first night without a home, but with an indoor swimming pool. Our second night was spent with my Grandma which was also great. We got to spend some time with her and my Uncle before we left town. This is when the adventure really began.
We knew that we wanted to get to Ohio as soon as possible to get our travel trailer and start this new chapter of our lives. The destination was the easy part the getting there was slightly more challenging. We only made one reservation at a campground in Peoria Illinois, this was done because it was a holiday weekend and we knew campgrounds would be busy. Other than that we really had only planned out how far we wanted to try to make it each day and looked at a few places we might possibly eat during our travels. Our first destination was Salt Lake City, however; we didn’t quite make it. We drove as far as we could that first day, it was getting late, so we just pulled off the road, and set up the tent. 
The camping was free but nothing really ever is. The railroad tracks were so close that it shook the ground all three times it went by that night, the kids slept right on through, but obviously the adults were not so fortunate. We woke up in the morning basically in the middle of nowhere, packed up the tent and found a scorpion right under our tent! We got back on the road.
Our next day was another long one. We made it all the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming where we encountered rain, something us Nevadans are not very accustomed to. We had planned to camp all along the way to Ohio, but rain we had not planned on. So regardless to say we did not camp in Wyoming, and we almost didn’t get a hotel room either. We pulled into a rest stop/tourist information center (which was actually really cool and the kids were already asking to go back) to try to get some coupons and stuff for hotels in the area. When my husband started to look online for rooms they were all booked and I literally think he got us the last available room in the whole town. When we arrived the 
receptionist was on the phone to the online booking people telling them to stop letting people book rooms because they were full. It was really fortunate we got the room though because we were both very tired from the lack of sleep our previous night and from driving all that day.
In Nebraska we stopped off in Lincoln to eat and pick up a few supplies, but drove straight on into Iowa. There we got a really nice campsite near a river. The kids found an injured hummingbird that couldn’t fly and it kept their interest for quite some time. It had been raining still, and we were worried we wouldn’t be able to camp again, but luckily it let up just long enough for us to. Unfortunately, the rain made a campfire a lost cause although we did try. The kids were pretty disappointed. We made it up to them though by taking them to the park for a little while the next morning and it was pretty awesome because it had a merry go round! Now back in the car we go. 
Peoria Illinois, was our next stop. It was nice to know we had a specific destination this time, but the rain followed us all the way. It barely let up for us to camp here, and it was cold and drizzly. They were going to shoot off fireworks across the Illinois river and we 
would be able to see them from the camp, but some people weren’t sure it was going to happen the weather was so bad. But luck was with us and we saw fireworks (even though it was the 3rd not the 4th) on the Illinois river. It was pretty cool because they were shooting them off from all over so we could see them all along the river. We had intended to stay at this site another night because they were having another firework display on the 4th, but the people at the travel trailer place had scheduled us for our pick up at 10:30 AM on the 5th, and not wanting to have to leave camp at 3 Am to get there on time we decided to try to get a little closer to our destination. Another day of driving.
When we looked at the map, after leaving Peoria, we thought we would make it to the border of Indiana and Ohio somewhere. We stopped in Indianapolis got gas, parked outside of McDonalds to tap into WiFi and decided we would just go all the way into Ohio, and ended up about half an hour from our new home. We stayed in a hotel room that was so awful we couldn’t wait to get our trailer, not to mention the days and days of seeming endless amounts of driving. We also had our car packed so full that things fell out pretty much any time a door was opened. We were all fairly tired of it by that day. Finally, we got to the lot and saw our new home and it was glorious!
