Portland Bound (Nashville to Kansas City)

And so begins our trip to Portland, OR.

We decided to take a trip to Portland since my job has an office there and we have never been to Portland. We love Seattle and the west coast in general, and have always heard that Portland is great, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. The idea is to take a week of vacation to travel to Portland, stopping at many places along the way, stay for two weeks and I will work from the Portland office while Jill and the kids rome around the city during the day.

Last minute tidying up

I got off of work at 2pm because I went in early. When I got home, I helped Jill put the kids in the car, finish some last packing stuff we needed to get done, like putting the other Highlander in the garage, and we got ready to leave. Our neighbor, Joe, came over and asked us if we wanted him to walk around the property once a day just to make sure all was well at the McDaniel household. I told him that would be wonderful. He even said he would have mowed our lawn, but I couldn’t think of ever asking someone to mow our lawn. The neighborhood guys will take care of our lawn anyways. It feels good to help out local business and have our property serviced as well.

After so much planning, off we go

The kids were already asking to do their first electronics very early, especially A. We started the drive around 4:30pm. It was really only about 2 hours after we wanted to leave, so that wasn’t bad. We stopped for dinner at a Wendy’s (and to go to the bathroom). Jill and K ate Wendy’s and A, C and I walked over to grab dinner from the Subway that was in the mall. When we drove past the arch in St. Louis, MO, we made sure the kids saw it since we had been there earlier this year.

Speaking of St. Louis

If you haven’t been, you must check out The City Museum. It is the most fun the whole family has ever had at a museum. Unique, eclectic, artistically driven, adventurous, and definitely as weird as can be, you shouldn’t miss it.

Here is a picture from the outside of The City Museum:

And this is the best Ice Cream I have ever had. Don’t miss eating this custard.

Back to the trip at hand

We got back in the car and made it most of the way to Kansas City, MO, without a hitch. We saw a beautiful sunset in Illinois. When we finally got to our Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, it was around 10:30pm or so. It was definitely dark and I think we were all pretty tired by the time we got unloaded and got our stuff up to the room. We got the kids ready for bed, (C and K in the sofa sleeper, and Jill, A and I in the Queen bed), and passed out like a light, ready to drive in the morning for another long stretch so that we could actually get to Wall, SD.