Vacationing with a 4 month old

So we haven't taken Ross on any trips longer than 30-40 minutes in the car.  He usually loves the car and falls asleep.  It's always pleasant.  Why did we decide to introduce him to vacations with a 16 hour trek across Nevada and California for his first experience?  I'll never know.  The first day went something like this:  happy baby, napping for an hour and a half,eating, driving some more, still a happy baby, and then....all hell broke loose.  He would go to sleep for 45 minutes only to wake up being completely sick of his car seat, screaming his guts out.  Nothing could comfort him - not toys, not baby einstein videos, not even his food for very long.  He had to be OUT of the car being held or laid down to be happy.  We had to stop at this hole in the wall place near Winnemucca called Golconda where Ross had his first drink from a bar called the Watering Hole...and it was a hole....and no - we didn't give him any beer - we just gave him a little cool water to cool him off... that just happened to come from a bar.  We got quite a kick out of that one.  We had started our trip at 8:00AM and didn't get to Reno until 9:00PM.  Lets just say by the time we got to Reno I was planning the flight home and making Steve drive the car back home...that's how bad it was!  We got a good night's sleep and decided to try for the last 6 hours of driving.  I prayed and prayed Ross would handle this better.  He about did me in the day before.  He handled it all like a champ!!  He slept so well while we drove.  We also took longer breaks for him to stretch and be out of his car seat.  The only problem was we missed an exit and added 1 1/2 hours onto our drive.  So it was two long days of driving, but we finally made it to Fort Bragg for our family reunion.  I feel that if we could make it through this trek here with a 4 month old, we can probably conquer anything!
 

This is our stop just after the "Watering Hole" - as you can see Ross is recovering from his bar experience...okay - he just loves laying on his back - especially when there are trees above him to look at.  The grass here was gross with lots of bird poop everywhere so we opted for a blanket on the table.  Steve's showing off his baby belly ;)  Ross has become our little Tarzan as he calls to his jungle friends everywhere below.

This innocent face doesn't look like it would have been screaming earlier does it...well looks are deceiving!  He still melts my heart though.

Patient parents....okay - attempting to be patient.

Kind of a crazy picture!  You can see up Steve's nose! ;)

Cute boy with a cute hat!

Cute boys at the Winnemucca park!

The reason we drove 16 hours!  My grandma and grandpa Grenny live on the northern California coast in Fort Bragg.  My grandma is actually swiss - she came over here to go to BYU when she ran into my grandpa again after he had served a mission over there in Switzerland and had met her.  So I'm 1/4 swiss and Ross now has an 1/8!! I love them so much.

Mom and cousins planning out our activities.

Ross just looking so handsome as he had survived the trek!