Day 16 - Homeward bound

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We ended up bringing Levi to bed with us around 5:45 this morning. We had tried everything to get him to rest and we were exhausted. He slept great as long as he knew we were close. By 7 Todd was up and going so the rest of us followed along shortly after. We ate a hotel breakfast before checking out. We started by getting gas. Of course we decided on the Sinclair station since their "mascot" is a dinosaur. We took Paul's photo by the sign and found that they had blow up dinosaurs for sale inside. It was pretty fun! Then we were off to our final day and our last surprise stop for Paul. We had a little time to kill before 10 am so we stopped at Office Max and got Paul's school journal bound. The staples were coming out and we want him to be able to keep the awesome journal he has been writing in for the entire trip. Shortly after 10 am we arrived at the Magic Carpet Golf place we had found by Googling "Reno, NV Dinosaur". This miniature golf place had 5 dinosaur golf themed holes. We picked the 19 hole course that had the stegosaurus and the t-rex. The kids had a blast. Levi even had his own club and he thought that chasing a ball around was the highlight of our trip. Why hadn't we thought of this before? After an hour and 19 holes it was time to hit the road. We drove non-stop from there into Roseville to pick up our very patriotic Memorial Day BBQ from In-N-Out. We took the food over to visit some friends who live close by. It was fun to see them and their children. After an hour of eating and playing, we drove the remaining 3 hours to Fresno. Sarah sat in the backseat for the first part of this drive to finish up the homework. We stopped for shakes in Merced and then kept on driving. We got home around 7 and got the kids right into the bath. Then we had a light snacky dinner before getting the kids into bed. Paul went down quickly and knows he has to jump back into school in the morning. Levi was far less convinced by the idea of sleeping in his own bed. Poor kid, he is totally out of sorts with all of this. Hopefully we'll sleep ok tonight. We have plenty of unpacking to begin in the morning!

We had a great time. The kids were awesome. Paul complained more about having to get out of the car than having to get in. He actually wished for more time to play in the car. Levi got his comfort items (puppy and pacifier) when in the car so he was easily persuaded to return to his car seat. He did let out quite the cute yelp when he saw that we were driving up to our house this evening. You could tell he recognized the house and got excited. Although we were gone a long time and spent almost 75 hours in the car, it really went well. Having a Dinosaur theme made it very fun and focused. It also made Paul super excited about finding more dinosaurs each day. We've got all of the maps and the brochures that we'd eagerly share. We highly recommend the adventure!

Day 16 Stats

• 3780.2 Total Miles driven (327.5 for today)
• 142.4 total gallons of gasoline consumed (11.4 for today only)
• Average 26.8 MPG ( 28.7 for the day)
• 74 hours, 58 minutes in the car (6:23 for the day)

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