trek: road trips

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Things to bring on a road trip:

 1. Ouyang foldable car seat table
2. EEBOO robot's landing magnetic play board
3. High Five Magazine
4. MABO grey tank
5. Melissa & Doug water reveal pad
6. Seedling knitting spool
7. Miraclekoo squirrel neck pillow
8. MABO azure leggings
9. Melissa & Doug magnetic color maze
10. NPW coloring pencils
11. Moulin Roty crayons
12. Freshly Picked weathered brown moccasins
13. T.S. Shure magnetic dollhouse & dress-ups set
14. EEBOO fairytale spinner game
15. Amazon Fire kids edition tablet
16. EEBOO create a story cards

MOMS Club® does not endorse these products or opinions.
There is nothing remotely chic or altogether comfortable about our road trips from Wisconsin to southern Texas. Crammed into the minivan permeated with the scent of Banana Boat sunscreen, coffee, turkey sandwiches, and diapers, with my husband behind the wheel; the kids watching a film and urinating every other exit; and myself, reading and fetching everything under the sun every five minutes.

Road trips are not chic. Heck, they're pretty tedious. But there is something kind of fantastic about them too. The drives are long and lurching with a zillion pit stops at dirty gas stations and abandoned parking lots on remote stretches of highway near places like Paradise, Arkansas and behind roadside scrub bushes along the flint hills of Kansas. But we get to see tangerine sunrises and indigo night skies. We drive by watery rice fields, well-to-do ranches, bone-white beaches, flea markets, green plains, bleak casinos that look colorless in the pale morning light, muddy rivers, blunt mesas, dense forests, jazzy cities, and dying small towns. It's dull. It's dazzling. We spend the nights at cheap motels in cool cities where we eat supper at local greasy spoons and go out for ice cream afterward. It does our bodies and spirits good to spill out of our cars, breathe the fresh air, eat good food, walk down new streets, hold hands, laugh, and unwind. And that's the point right? Time together. Seeing the world.