What have I done?

In two days, I have to drive to Grimes, Iowa. That's 675 miles from home. All in one day. With two childrens, a dog, a rat, and a wife in the minivan. That's 225 miles (about 50%) farther than we've ever driven before in one day with The Childrens. However, to be fair, it's pretty much through nothing on the way. Our benchmark roadtrip involved driving through San Jose and Los Angeles, both of which push really push your average MPH way down. Through LA, we used to average less than 30mph for about an hour and a half.

The GPSes and google mostly agree that this trip is about 9.5 hours, which is an average of 71 mph. I guess the highway must all be 75 MPH between here and there. We shall see. The trip is pretty straight-forward. Get on I-25, drive north to Wyoming, hang a right on I-80, drive for 9 hours.

This'll be the first long trip with this minivan that didn't involve mountain driving, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of mileage we get. In general, we seem to not do better than 22mpg on the highway, and we have only a 20 gallon tank. The old minivan got 26 highway, and it had a 25 gallon tank. Either way, it's likely our stops will be determined by bladders and stomaches.

Got word today that both my nephews and their wives and sons (two each) will be showing up to see us at my brother's place. MaxieC in particular is very excited to meet all these cousins of his. I think he's met one before, but he was under a year old at the time and doesn't remember. HannahC is perhaps less interested in hanging with a bunch of boys between the ages of 1 and 4, though she'll probably quickly figure out which one is most controllable and make him her pet, like she did with Bozzetto's kid.

We're going extra-far on the first day so that we can get to my brother's at a reasonable time on Sunday. It's the longest haul of the whole trip, and we get it out of the way right up front before The Childrens are too bored with traveling.

Though I think 8 hours of Nebraska could quite possibly take the love of the road out of them. Though I hear Nebraska is quite flat at this time of year.