Well, there is not too much to report except that Denver, CO is a looooong way from San Francisco, CA. On Monday the 19th (Day 5), we arrived in Winnemucca, NV. On Tuesday, we drove all day from Winnemucca, NV to Rock Springs, WY. Yesterday, we drove from Rock Springs, WY and arrived in Denver, CO to an excited welcome party of my three cousins (10-year-old, 12-year-old, and a 14-year-old) and aunt and uncle. What maintained us throughout all that driving was a steady diet of musicals and a neverending conversation about how to best organize our materials (we figure we *might* be organized by the time we arrive in Orlando), what we have read about how to best promote literacy, what we should do at our next program, what bugs us about the current educational climate in the United States, and future plans for the Literacy Lab!  What we determined about the various states on I-80: Nevada has a lot of straight, flat driving (we continually saw large signs warning against driver drowsiness and fatigue); Utah is much curvier and greener (the signs we saw tended to warn against falling rocks, for example); Wyoming is brown with interesting jutting reddish-brown rocks all along the way; and Colorado turns green again with much more hills. What ties them all together is how much open space there is. Truly incredible for city folk and suburbanites like ourselves.

Musicals we listened to on the drive (if you haven’t heard of some of these, go check them out! also, this does not even begin to get at all the musicals we eventually will listen to on this journey):

• Les Miserables
• Mamma Mia
• Wicked
• Bye, Bye, Birdie
• Billy Elliot
• In the Heights
• Next to Normal

Today, in addition to getting errands done, we visited the Tattered Cover bookstore (recommended by multiple people!), which was a beautiful bookstore with a lovely children’s section. A dangerous visit–we walked out with a number of awesome readalouds…and a shark puppet.

Tomorrow, we are really excited because we have the first of our optometrist visits! Thanks to the awesome sponsorship from HOYA Free-Form Company, we are connecting with optometrists and their patient base. The link to early childhood development and vision care has a huge impact on a child’s ability to read, so our relationship fits well together. We will be visiting an optometrist practice in Littleton, CO.