After 1,460 miles, several SoBe's, a bag of sunflower seeds, and more fast food than I care to recount, Karin and I made it to Stafford, TX. The trip was rather straight forward, especially when compared to our trip from Minnesota to San Diego (more on that in a future post). If you want details on this trip, well, read on.
Karin and I, as has been our form recently, hadn't finished packing everything. Fortunately, a couple of good friends of ours (I don't like putting names up on the blog in case they don't want to see their names up here) came over to help pack. One helped Karin out quite a bit; the other was responsible for drinking my extra beer and moving bags from one bag to another. (No, I didn't understand what the point of the exercise was either.)
Anyway, the upshot of all of this was we didn't get on the road until about 4. I was initially planning on 1p and hoping for 2p. Fortunately, we missed most of the traffic on the 8, and were able to get out of town fairly painlessly. After a quick stop in El Centro for supplies, we got to Arizona when Karin decided that she was just too tired to go on. We spent the night at the Best Western Space Age Lodge (real name) in Gila Bend. Not only did this room feature the world's loudest air conditioner, it was right next to railroad tracks, with a train about every hour. Needless to say, this does not lend itself way to a good night's sleep.
The good news was discovering that Roscoe adapts real well to travel. He was all excited for about the first hour or so, but when he realized there wasn't a park or day camp in the near future, he settled in and took a nap. Every time we stopped, Karin would go pee and I would walk Roscoe. He knew after a few minutes that it was then time to go back in the car and continue on. He couldn't have been any better.
We hit the road on Saturday at the butt crack of dawn. We stopped in Tucson to sneak in to a Wal-Mart (sorry, Mom) to get a window sun shade for Roscoe. This of course required me to ask for the baby section, which was enough to freak me out and remind me of why I don't want kids. As luck would have it, after installing the sun shade, it was cloudy the rest of the trip. Outside of one spot of hard rain, the weather cooperated real well. We'd see pockets of rain out in the distance, but never had to drive through another, including one rather freaky moment when there was a rain cell not a mile off to our right that we were able to just drive right past. We managed to make it to Fort Stockton, TX.
Again back up at the butt crack of dawn for Sunday. I was very impressed with Karin, as she only needed to stop 3 times over the last 505 miles. One of our stops was Segovia, TX. The only reason I remember this was because when I went in to the convenience store at the gas station they were selling shirts that said, "What happens in Segovia, TX stays in Segovia, TX." I figure this is true either because nobody would believe something would happen in Segovia, TX or because nobody knows where it is. It was also here that I came to the conclusion that finding a SoBe in rural Texas is impossible.
(Side note - I tried to link to the Wikipedia article on Segovia, but there isn't one.)
We hit Stafford at about 3p. After a trip to Target to get just enough to survive - toilet paper, paper towels, cheap TV, Sierra Nevada - it was time to sleep.
Right now we're set up in a 1BR place living like college kids - bean bag chairs and an air mattress. Karin did say that she's OK with the current arrangements, but she wants a house again soon. Not sure the exact timing coming up, but hopefully this will just be the 3 months we planned for.
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