The great migration

When we decided to move from Cleveland to Phoenix, we didn't have a game plan how it would happen.  In the end, we decided to ship one car, get another pod, and drive the four of us in Mike's Prius.  I was really dreading the roadtrip but it ended up being better than I expected.

The most challenging part of the trip was the final day 24 hours in Cleveland.  We didn't get on the road until 7 p.m. which is about 7 hours later than we had hoped.  We drove to Indianapolis the first night.  When we were nearly there, we realized Mike's phone had disappeared and it was the only key to Mike's sister's new address. We knew the phone was in the car because we had heard it chirp earlier in the evening.  After we had resolved that drama, we were able to press on to find her house and enjoy a visit before finally crashing at about 3 a.m.

We decided we needed a reset if the trip was going to be tolerable so we slept in and relaxed all day in Indianapolis, leaving around 3 p.m.  We started out with a goal of ending up west of St. Louis.  I started looking for pet friendly hotels. It took me a while but I ended up finding a well rated hotel in St. Robert, Missouri.  We were happy to arrive at our hotel before 11 p.m. so we could relax and regroup.
Brady and Sherman were well-behaved for the whole trip and didn't seem too bored.  Sherman slept 99% of it and Brady amused himself with many car activities including a group game called Rubberneckers.  Here's our license plate progress from somewhere around the halfway point.  Brady was red and I was blue.

Interesting sky somewhere in Indiana

Happy boys ...

We left Missouri with a goal to get to Albuquerque.  We knew it was aggressive and, after doing some calculations, decided to settle on Santa Rosa, NM, two hours east of the original goal.  Booking a hotel for a Sunday night was much easier.  After miles of two lane roads, total darkness, and some construction, we were glad to reach our hotel at 10 p.m.  After doing 800 miles that day, one more day seemed do-able, especially since we were gaining daylight and the time zones were working in our favor.

We woke up early the next day and headed out, stopping at a candy store on Route 66.

Sherman is ready to be there!

Not far into Arizona, the directions took us off the interstate and onto state routes through the Tonto National Forest on winding mountain roads at about 7,000-8,000 feet.  That was exciting ... not!  It was beautiful but reminded me of a James Bond movie filled with nail-biting car chases through the mountains. 

Here's Brady laughing hysterically at Mike's jokes.  We were all getting a little punchy by this point.

We reached home by 5 p.m. on Monday. Not bad considering the rough start!

We went to bed looking forward to starting a new routine in AZ the next day.