A Rocky Mountain Adventure: Part 1 - Driving to Colorado

Hello Friends and Family,

So much has changed since our first road trip to Colorado way back in December of 2019, but our love for Colorful Colorado hasn’t wavered a bit.

Driving Across the Country with a 10 Week Old Baby

If you keep up with us on Instagram then you know we left Atlanta on 9/2/2023 and started driving to Colorado. We have received so many texts and DMs asking us if we had lost our minds!

No. We haven’t lost our minds! This is what our family does! And, since Mills is a part of our family…he goes on road trips.

The Drive to Colorado: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly…and the very Ugly

We decided to split the trip up into three days of driving with two overnight stops. The guidelines for infants in car seats suggest not spending longer than 2 hours at a time in a car seat without a break.

We set that as a limit and thought we could do 7-8 hours of driving in a day with 30 minute stops for diapers, feeding, and breaks. I figured that would give us plenty of wiggle room if things went awry.

We quickly realized that 20 minutes was the absolute fastest a stop could possibly take if Mills didn’t have to eat, but 45 minutes to an hour was much more common.

With our expectations adjusted, we carried on and decided to make a pitstop in Metropolis, IL to visit the home of Superman!

The rest of the trip to Marion, IL was uneventful.

After a quick night of sleep we headed to our next stop in Junction City, KS.

Marion, IL to Junction City, KS

This was our longest day of travel and not many great tourist traps along the way. If our trip to Marion was the Good…this was the Bad.

Prior to Asheville, Mills the longest Mills had ever been in a car seat was the 40 minute drive from the hospital to our home. He was a little fussy on the first day, but on this leg he was having a really hard time being settled.

Just when he would drift off to sleep we would start an audio book and within 5 minutes he was crying again. It went on and on like that for the entire trip. It was tough for Courtney because there wasn’t much she could do but provide a pacifier or try to distract him with toys.

Thankfully, we got to Junction City around 4pm and had all afternoon and night for Mills to catch up on sleep.

Before we knew it, it was time to head to our final destination: Fort Collins, CO.

Junction City, KS to Fort Collins, CO

This is when things turned ugly. At our first stop of the morning, Mills had a major blowout and we threw out his entire outfit. The best thing we ever did was register for 1,000,000 cheap white onesies.

So, by the time we got stopped, fed him, changed him, used the bathroom ourselves, changed him AGAIN after the blow out…we had spent well over an hour.

We timed our entire day for this one stop. And wouldn’t you know it…the sign was broken!

At this point we had exactly 3 hours to go which meant we would stop just short of Denver for a final car seat break and then complete the push to Fort Collins just in time for Mill’s to eat dinner.

This last stop was VERY Ugly. When we pulled in, Courtney hopped out to visit the restroom and I took Mills to the trunk to get his diaper changed.

Clearly he had emptied his entire bladder…or so I thought.

Big mistake.

As I was grabbing a new diaper I noticed liquid running down the side of the refrigerator and when I looked up he was full on peeing everywhere.

There was music playing at the gas station so the entire scene reminded me of a Las Vegas Hotel Fountain. Pee was going everywhere.

Willow is going nuts in the back seat and I’m trying to get a diaper on an actively peeing 10 week old. After the crisis was over, I started laughing and Courtney arrives just as I am Clorox wiping down the refrigerator, blissfully unaware of all that happened.

The rest of the drive was thankfully uneventful and we made it safely to Fort Collins to start our 2 week adventure.

Until our next Adventure,

Austin, Courtney, Mills, and Willow

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