This year's family vacation took us on a road trip out east. After a couple years of flying, renting a car, and exploring out west, we decided to change things up a bit. With the burden of a crazy high school football summer schedule out of the picture this year, we were able to take a bit longer for our family trip and squeezed in a ton of fun!
Plans shifted right at the beginning because of some forecasted rain. We decided to leave a bit earlier on the first morning and made it to our first national park of the trip (Cuyahoga Valley). We spent the entire afternoon exploring and hiking a few trails there. It was such a unique park because it was surrounded by residential areas and was essentially just a carved out portion of the Cleveland suburbs. Nonetheless, it was beautiful and we had a great time exploring. We were glad we got the hiking done that afternoon, because we woke up the next morning and were heading out just ahead of a massive amount of rain.
The next day took us on a lovely drive through Pennsylvania and into where West Virginia and Maryland meet up. We spent the afternoon in Harper's Ferry on a white water tubing trip. Unfortunately, there hadn't been much rain prior to our trip, so there wasn't much white water rapids and there was a WHOLE lot of having to use our arms to paddle ourselves down the river. It was exhausting and not quite what we had hoped, but we made the most of it!
The following day, we headed down to Shenandoah National Park. We knew there was more rain coming, so we had to squeeze in a few hikes that afternoon before the rain came. We would've loved to spend more time hiking there because it was an absolutely amazing national park, but Mother Nature had different plans. It began to rain late in the afternoon and continued to rain for almost two whole days. Thankfully, we had an adorable cabin booked that was tucked away in the woods. We used the rain as an excuse to just relax, play games, and enjoy the time together.
After our two nights in the cabin, we began the trek back home with our first stop being in West Virginia at New River Gorge National Park. We spent the afternoon dodging raindrops and hiking. The scenery was amazing and we could definitely see why this place is one of the most recently added national parks. The following morning, we woke up and were so happy to finally see some sunshine. We headed out for more hiking in the morning and then came back to change into swimsuits for our afternoon adventure. We spent several hours at ACE Adventure Waterpark, which was full of awesome inflatables on the water. We all had a blast and came back exhausted that night!
The following morning we spent driving back into Ohio, where we stayed for two nights in an adorable town called Lebanon. When we got there in the afternoon, we ventured into their quaint downtown area and browsed through the cute shops. We had dinner at home and then the kids headed off to see a movie while the adults stayed back to get ready for the following full day at an amusement park. We all headed to bed with great anticipation for Kings Island the following day. We got there as the park opened and ended up closing it down. The day was EXTREMELY hot and miserable, but that also meant we had very few crowds to deal with and got onto rides with no problem. An added bonus was the connected waterpark, which we went to for a couple hours in the afternoon. It ended up being a bit disappointing because they had a lot of areas shut down, but we still enjoyed the chance to cool off a bit!
After an exhausting day at Kings Island, we woke up and made the drive from Cincinnati to Carmi, where we got to spend two day soaking up time with family. We absolutely loved getting to see baby Theo (well, now toddler Theo). He was quite shy at first, but eventually warmed up to everyone. By the end of the trip, we were seriously contemplating kidnapping him because he is just THE best little guy! Aside from being completely enamored by Theo, we also enjoyed the time with the rest of Tyler's family. As always, Aunt Sharon cooked the most delicious meals, we had hours of great conversations, and the visit ended with a fantastic fireworks show put on by Grant. It was so hard to leave everyone, but we were so thankful to get two days of time together.
All in all, it was a truly wonderful trip. We did a lot of driving, but an equal amount of adventure and fun was had. We know that the days of taking family vacations with all of our kids are definitely numbered, so we cherished this trip just a bit more than in the past!
