The last few days have been all about traditions and fulfilling dreams. 

After getting our Beastie fixed (again shout out to Trevor and his crew at British 4X4 Specialists) and indulging in some fun time and chocolate at Hershey Park we headed westward. 

We made a few stops along the way and made some girlies super happy!

First off I just have to again say, God has definitely filled in the gaps of my less than stellar planning on this trip. I’ve wrote about it a few times already. And I know there are some of you reading out there who don’t believe in God, so call it what you will, but things once again worked out amazingly well without any intention on my part.

First off I just have to again say, God has definitely filled in the gaps of my less than stellar planning on this trip. I’ve wrote about it a few times already. And I know there are some of you reading out there who don’t believe in God, so call it what you will, but things once again worked out amazingly well without any intention on my part.

Our first night westward, we stopped at Wright Patterson AFB in Dayton, Ohio and camped at their Fam Camp. I don’t think I’ve really mentioned these fam camps much, but we’ve stayed at several of them along our journey thus far.. 

Fam camps are campground/RV parks operated by military organizations and usually only run $10-15 a night for tent campers making them very budget friendly and allowing us to be on this amazing journey.

We should have made it farther than Dayton, but a late start and extra stops made this the best place to stop.

We were supposed to head to St. Louis next but were looking at a detour to Chicago as Miss Drama was promised a trip to an American Girl doll store. I was not feeling the detour and was trying to convince her we could go to the one in L.A. once we got to California. (If your geography is a bit rusty a detour to Chi-town would have added about 6 hours to our trip plus another night’s stay. Bleh!) She was adamant we had to go to the one in Chicago.

So, I pulled up trusty old Google maps to show her just how close the one in California would be to our house, only to find out it was permanently closed at the time. Ugh!

Then as we were looking at just how far away the AG store in Chicago was I spotted something awesome! Columbus, a town we’d only just passed the day before had an AG store and it was near a Build-a-Bear store and a Lego store. 

Hooray! This was like scoring a bases loaded home run. Little One and #2 had both been wanting to go to Build-a-bear and Mr. Stubborn would love the Lego store. 

Best part of this win-win situation? It only added 2 hours onto our journey versus the 6 if we headed to Chicago. 

This is where I see God’s hand. If we’d left Pennsylvania earlier like I’d wanted to, if we’d not stopped as many times along the way, if I’d decided to keep driving just a bit more to reach Indiana (which was our original stop-over point for the night), the detour to Columbus would have ended up a detour to Chicago and we wouldn’t have been able to make everyone’s dreams come true and I would have been one grumpy lady.

See, we have a tradition in our family to go to Build-a-bear on your first birthday to pick out and create a bear. Since Miss Drama and #2’s birthdays are each within a week of Little One’s, they had also been promised bears whenever we were finally able to go. See, we hadn’t been able to go on Little One’s first birthday because of the pandemic closing so many stores in the UK. 

Instead, we had planned to go while we were on our cross country road trip. This ‘mistake’ of stopping in Dayton instead of making it to Indiana ended up a blessing in disguise. Now, Miss Drama could go to the American Girl store (this was a compromise in lieu of Build-a-Bear), Little One and #2 could get their bears and Mr. Stubborn could check out the Lego store.

How perfect!

And it was. Miss Drama spent over an hour in the American Girl doll store while the other kids and I built bears and legos. Best of all we all got to eat ice cream because we found a shop with dairy-free ice cream for the boys. 

Today was definitely one of the best days on our trip.