It's been a most wonderful 8 days on the open road- bathing in the most gorgeous sunset in Sedona, spending quality time with Bryson and family, taking in the vastly diverse landscape across the continent.
It was really a fantastic experience, except...
What on earth do you do with yourself for 12, 13, 14 frigging hours stuck in a moving vehicle on a mind-numblingly boring road that doesn't seem to end?!?!!
Well, as we found out, first, you've gotta have plenty of snacks. And I mean, PLENTY. Coz trust me, the clock stops ticking when you stop masticating (wow, it rhymes too, so it must be true).
What got us through was 4 huge grocery bags of junk food, including a Costco-sized bag of beef jerky, 
various Chinese pastries (washed down with copius amount of coffee and red bull), chips, candies, cookies of all kinds imaginable, plus a medley of artificial-color and preservative laden garbage that I'm too embarrassed to admit that we've shoved in our mouth (OK, Flaming Hot Cheetos was one).
Secondly, you gotta keep your mind going, coz otherwise it'll disintegrate to mush or make you want to murder your spouse (or both).
And not being particularly prepared in this department, we resorted to making up games along the way...
The first game was "Harry Potter Trivia".
Yes, we are hopeless nerds. We even dressed Bryson up as a wizard and attended the HP Book Seven 
party last year. We entertained ourselves with questions like "What was Harry's address before Hogwart's?" and "What subject did Dumbledore teach before becoming headmaster?". (Answer: "4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging"; and "Transfiguration").
And by the way, I won, ha ha! Nerds.
The second game was the all-time road trip favorites: "Examine Your Body Parts".
First, I examined my pores. Every single one of them. Counted Bryson's too. Then, I tried to carefully excise all those pesky hangnails without making myself bleed (unsuccessfully so. Ow.). And lastly, I examined the corn on my feet. I've always been mesmerized by how grotesquely thick they can get.
And I mean, why are they called "corn" anyway? Do they taste like corn?
I was seriously tempted to answer this last question for myself when we clocked in like the 1001th mile and have been stuck behind this cow truck for the last 4 hours. But I decided against it to regain the last shred of dignity.
You can imagine our joy when we finally drove past the first bookstore along the freeway, and had the brilliant (albeit a bit late) idea that we should go get ourselves some books on CD! We gladly emptied our wallet of all cash for a whopping 15-CD set by our all-time favorite author, Bill Bryson (whom Bryson's named after).
This is truly our lifesaver- it gave us 16-hours of solid entertainment and kept us from turning into zombies. Best $75 I've ever spent, and definitely beats counting pores or corn-examination.
But if you ever go on an extended road trip and want to save yourself $75, go visit your local library and stock up on books on CD before you leave. You can thank us later.
(P.S. This is what Bryson does every night when we get to our motel. I don't think he knows how unflattering it looks)
