As promised, it is time for a blog on the journey...

If you have about 3 months to kill, here is the full story complete with trip stats & photos.

Before I begin, I need to tell you that my brother & I drove my father's Mitsubishi Outlander on this trip. Outlander is pretty close to Outrider, Dash Rendar's ship. We thought that was a pretty cool name for the vehicle we'd make the trip in.

Luke & Leia are off on an adventure, carrying on our parents' legacy of acting retarded while traveling. We sort of meant to do it at times, but I think it's all in our genes. There is no escape: we will become our parents someday. With my birthday just a few hours away, I am gaining fast!! LOL!

I'm not sure exactly how to chronicle the trip here on this blog considering I wrote a dissertation over at that other blog. My hands are tired, a little dirty and I really really really want to watch the next episode of "Lost" on DVD. I am totally hooked on this show and it is not helping my SW addiction one bit.

Traveling with my brother was a lot of fun. We spent the first 8 hours just catching up on each other's lives, making fun of our parents as usual and cracking tons of inside jokes. He had bought a portable DVD player for the padawan to use on this long trip. It was the most worthwhile $130 anyone on the planet has ever spent. My son watched TPM, ANH, ESB & ROTJ along with many other Pixar movies & his new favorite: The Backyardigans.

There is not much to report on the actual trip, I mean, there was some cool scenery, like in Colorado & Utah and some not so interesting stuff. I tried to snap a bunch of pictures w/my camera but when it came down to it, my brother had the cooler camera so I used his when I wasn't driving. I'm just waiting for him to send me his pictures so i can post those as well.

One thing, though I was very upset we didn't have the camera ready for was this huge giant otter bear ewok thing dead on the side of the road. I'm serious, this was in Illinois, we could not believe our eyes. I am only 5'4" tall and this thing had to be at least that. Baby sasquatch? Yeti? Ewok? Who knows, but we couldn't stop laughing when we saw a sign a few miles later that said: "See the world's largest prairie dog!" My brother started laughing and said, "they need to change that to the world's second largest prairie dog... we already saw the largest." Ok ok, sometimes jokes made on the road aren't as funny to retell, but trust me, we were laughing all the way to St. Louis.

Alone I am strong in the Force, but together...? My brother & I could rule the galaxy. With one random conversation we we had while driving through Kansas City were able to influence his kindergarten best friend to suddenly call us from somewhere in Idaho. It was freaky! We were just chatting away about the guy when the phone rang. My heart almost stopped when I saw the name on the caller ID. Whoa. That's almost as scary as the dead ewok.

Funny thing happened in Kansas. The padawan had watched the Backyardigans about 100 times and this was day 3 now so my brother & I were getting a little punchy. All you parents out there probably know the theme song and those of you who don't consider yourself lucky: it's cute & addicting & you want to hate it for boring into your brain like those worms in Wrath of Khan but you can't because it's so cute. Anyway, we decided to drown out the song by playing some Johnny Cash on my iPod. Not sure what happened, but padawan-wan is enamored with the man in black. He started singing along with "Ring of Fire" at the top of his lungs. Nothing, IMO, is as funny as a 4-year-old from New England singing with a Kentucky twang "I fell in to a burnin' ring of fire" while the two adults in the car are chirping, "Your back yard friends the Backyardigans." It's a mad mad world folks. Just be thankful you weren't there to witness it.

Well, as you all know we have arrived in Vegas on Tuesday. The Outlander only killed one small bird in Kansas. We transported about 8 cups of crumbs & 4 pounds of trailmix across this great nation and came out sane & still friends on the other side.

I enjoyed our trip. I'm glad we did it this way - sort of makes me feel like I earned it and gave me some perspective on just how big (or small) the US really is. This is the 2nd time I've driven cross country, I'm sure it won't be the last. Let's just say I am relieved that we are flying back to Massachusetts in August instead of driving. I'm not anxious to do this again for a while!!

And, another wonderful perk of living here in Vegas: I get to sign off all my blogs now with:
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS STAYS IN VEGAS.