There’s something fairly important you guys should probably know…

WE’RE NOT HERE. Well, “here” is kind of the internet, and we’re “here” several times a day. But we’re not at home… not for nearly a month.

We left on Saturday, July 18th for an EPIC three week road trip with our kids. We spent that first night in Gallup, NM, in a hotel where John Wayne and other old west movie stars have stayed… of course, Jack flipped out and loved it.

We spent Sunday night and Monday at the Grand Canyon.

We drove into Anaheim Tuesday to spend some time with my sister… Wednesday & yesterday, we’ve been at Disneyland. (#duh)

already, not even a week in, and I’m absolutely convinced this trip was the best idea I’ve ever had.

Today, we’re onto San Francisco. From there, it’s north to Redwoods State Park, Portland, Seattle, the Hoh Rainforest, and Bellingham. We’ll be half-camping, half staying in hotels. After Bellingham, we’ll drive to Butte, Montana for a night before continuing on to Yellowstone, where we’ll camp for three nights. Then we’ll drive down to Denver and stay one night, followed by two nights in Taos, and then finally home.

For, like, a day.

Then Mack and I will fly to Tampa for 6 sessions.

We’ll get home late the night of August 12th, and the next morning, we’ll get up and drive to Austin for a portrait session. We’ll come home late the afternoon of the 14th, and collapse into an exhausted pile of happiness, because seriously, this month is going to be AMAZING.

We won’t be blogging at ALL over the next couple weeks, but we’ll be posting plenty on Instagram. You can (and should) follow us there… we are @chelsea_mcgowan and @mack_mcgowan.

I’ll be keeping up with emails as much as possible, but obviously during times we’re camping in more remote areas, cell service isn’t really going to be a thing. So thank you in advance for your patience.

After the crazy ride our family has been on the last month, we’re SO grateful for this break just to be together. It’s going to be a little heavier on the sunhats & vitamin E oil than Dorothy would like, but hey… she’s able to get out and hike with us, and that’s pretty amazing.

I promise we’ll have tons of images to share in personal blog posts when we get back… so we’ll see you then!