Thanks for the offer. Our northern route would take us through Denver, but I picked the southern route to potentially avoid winter weather. We're traveling from New England to SoCal coast.

I haven't been west in many years. When I was about 10 we moved from Seattle to New England. My mother, grandmother, my sister and I with our cat. My mother took us on a tour of the country, hitting as far south as Arizona and as far north as South Dakota, taking a lazy zig zag route across. Somewhere in Utah my grandmother was driving while my mother slept and started keeping time with the music tapping her foot on the accelerator. My mother woke up and flipped a gasket. Then in, I think, Iowa my grandmother demanded my mother pull over at a "rest area" so she could use the facilities. But it wasn't a rest area, it was a weigh station. My mother dutifully exited the highway and pulled up the the booth, smiled, then drove along after the staff waved at her in confusion. We still laugh about that.

My daughter has only been west of the I-95 corridor once when we went to my grandmother's funeral in Ohio; she was about the age I was when we moved from Seattle. I am excited for her to see how vast the landscape is in the south west.