Road Trip Gone Wrong

For the past ten years I have been joining my climbing friends every spring for a rock climbing road trip. Last year I missed it as I had a 5 month old and wasn't up to climbing par yet, so this year, being our tenth annual road trip, I was determined to go.
I can see how it might have been a fun trip, but unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way. I was pretty much doomed from the start as my two high school babysitters I was hiring to go with me and help decided to drive seperately which left me to drive 13 1/2 hours with a 3 year old and a 1 year old by myself. See how this could be a bad start?

Amazingly, the boys actually did really well and I amazingly didn't crash as I was constantly looking back at them and handing them things.

Then our plans to climb near Lake Tahoe were thwarted by thunderstorms so we kept driving onto Bishop, California where there was off and on rain. That night Lukas had a disgusting runny nose going and Nik came down with a bad cold and cough and kept me up all night in our tent. I was worried for his health out in the cold so the next morning I decided to climb for the day and then head on home. Yep, I drove over 1500 miles to climb for one short day. Sad, I know. It was a great day of climbing though:)

The view of the Sierras

Lukas was enamored by little Grace, another climber to be. He kept kissing her and holding her head, which she didn't like very much. They both wanted Dave to hold them, apparently he's a babe magnet:)

Lukas climbing at the crags

Nikolas climbing on a 5.7 with some aide from mama.

Notice Lukas below? He was screeching and pointing at the rock until Sam picked him up and held him up high. He's my little climber to be:)

We then left Wednesday night and headed over the mountains stopping after 5 hours of driving and getting a hotel at 2am. Then off again at 9:30am and headed for home. I called Tone's aunt and uncle who live in Sweet Home and asked if I could stay with them for the night making my trip a little shorter and they said, "yes" so I was feeling better about the day. Then, naturally, something had to go wrong. As I was driving over the high Siskious on the California/Oregon border my van lost power and I had to pull over to the side. Right at that time a thunderstorm rolled in and it started lightning and pouring down rain. There I was, stuck on the side of the freeway in a thunderstorm with two little boys and a long way from home. Thankfully, I have AAA! They towed me 100 miles north to a little town called Canyonville where I spent the night in a little hotel. The next morning I got a call from the mechanic who couldn't find anything conclusive about what was wrong with my van but said it was running fine and up hills too. So off we went down the road again and eventually made it to Uncle Ed and Aunt Anita's home.

Their small town lived up to its name, home Sweet Home :)