ADTE: Day 10

We had an early morning and got out at about 6:00 in the morning. We tried to sneak out quietly so we didn’t wake anyone, but Krista insisted on waking up to send us off and give us a Tupperware full of cookies for the road. She’d made a bunch of As. We drove away already missing them and wishing we had more time with them.

We rolled into Ohio and visited another church history site in Kirtland. Some of you may be thinking, “this seems like a very “churchy” vacation”, and you are right. We’ve never had the chance to visit these areas and have been excited to experience so much along our way. It’s not only church, but family history involved and it has been amazing to see where and how many of my ancestors lived.

Mr. John planned for us to stay in a parking lot tonight… Yes, you read that right. He called ahead to his friend at a minor league baseball team and asked if we could set up our camp in the parking lot. We were ahead of schedule and we decided we would go to the movies before we made camp. we took the kids to see Monster’s University and we absolutely LOVED it! I want to see it again to catch all the details.

After the movie we were going to head to our parking lot camp for the night, but Mr. John wanted to forge ahead and get some more miles under us while the kids slept, and go off book.

I think this would be a good time to talk about “THE BINDER”. When we go on any kind of trip, Mr. John plans it out in a binder. He prints out google maps and directions. He prints our potential places to eat and to stop. This is an impressive binder. While he is an uber planner he is also good at changing it up. He just likes to have an outline of estimated time of arrival, departure, fun things to do… in other words, he’s a little bit of a control freak, but that works out great because I am the exact opposite and we even each other out.

He reveres his binder and I think this story best illustrates his feelings on his binder: (the below story must be read with the right ridiculous tongue in cheek attitude).

John: “Hey, you know when you put away the binder earlier?”

Liz: “Yeah?”

J: “Well, when you closed it, some of the pages were bent so it kind of messed up some of the pages. So, to give the binder the proper respect and to get things back on the right foot, you need to say 2 things you like about the binder.”

L: “HA!”

John’s infatuation with his scheduled binder is a longstanding one, and my teasing and poking fun at his binder and its “glory and magnificence” (his description) blossomed as soon as our honeymoon trip… with binder in tow, of course.

So, we went “off-book” because we wanted to be able to go to Niagara Falls in the morning. We found a random, cheap hotel room on Priceline and I booked it and we headed toward our new point B. we got there and our room had one bed… This is what happens when you go off book, or when you give me responsibility for booking a room (I SWEAR I booked two beds!) We made the most of it, and some dog piled on the bed and threw pillows on the floor for the others. Bodies were strewn everywhere, and we slept like rocks.

Note to self: take a picture of “THE BINDER” that captures all its awesomeness.

 

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