SMRT Day 1

Last summer, my family took a road trip. Back in 2012, it started out as a means to get to Montana for a family reunion, but it quickly morphed into something else. By the time my husband asked for time off in 2013, we had 35 days away from home planned, covering over 20 states and about as many stops. It's a good thing that military time off accumulates, and that Phil usually never takes time off! :D We dubbed in our Super Mega Road Trip, or SMRT for short. :) Coast to coast, and back again.

We officially left on July 18th, and drove all day to my friend Becca's house near Louisville, KY, and stayed for several days. I have zero pictures from that time. ZERO. At the time, I had a phone that took dismal (read: not good for scrapbooking) pictures, and I was having such a blast, that I forgot to "document" it. *sigh* It had been a year since I'd seen most of my friends there, and I didn't want to leave!

But leave we did, after re-packing the car and saying goodbye several times (we actually left three times before we had everything we were supposed to have! LOL) on July 23. That day, we drove north-west to Macomb, IL. I had *wanted* to get to a hotel near Nauvoo, IL (our actual destination) but as we called our preferred hotel chain, we found that all their rooms were booked up. And then it hit us: The next day was July 24, or as we Mormons like to call it, Pioneer Day. It's a HUGE "thing" out west, but honestly, hardly ever mentioned in the east or the south, where we've lived for the past 10 years. Was Navoo doing something for Pioneer Day? Nothing was mentioned on their website. So we branched out and tried other hotel chains, but there was nothing available anywhere near Nauvoo. We had to settle for Macomb, IL because it was cheap and they had a pool. ;)

GDS 

GDS WLS

As you can see, I've used A Fish Design's templates. Templates are so nice to work with; I don't have to think about the shapes-- just pop in the papers and photos, add a few elements, and bam. TTFN!