So, I am completely aware that this post is very late in coming, as so many of you have pointed out to me. Thanks for that. School started and I have been very busy growing a baby, sleeping, and sometimes getting some stuff done for work. In fact, I am procrastinating right now. Avoidant behavior is my favorite behavior. And apparently, I’m very good at it.
On our way to California, Chris and I had a blast. When taking a road trip, it is definitely true that going to the destination is way more fun than driving home. Or at least, that’s how all of my trips go. I figured I would break this update into a few sections. This one will be about going to California, while the subsequent posts will be about our time in Cali, Vegas, and the trip home.
We spent the evening before the trip completing our last minute packing, shopping, and cleaning. When it was finally time to go to bed, I was BEAT, but was unable to sleep. It was like Christmas morning. After tossing and turning, and then realizing that Chris was in the same sleepless boat as me, we decided to get up and get on the road. It was around 4am when we got up and got moving.
Now, when driving out West, you can take 287 to Amarillo and then jump on 40 all the way out to California. Like this:
287 is pretty barren. Literally. There are abandoned houses and gas stations all along the road. We finally found one house that looked pretty spooky, so we hopped out to take some pictures.
From Amarillo, we got on Interstate 40 and headed into New Mexico. We had one very important stop to make when we arrived in New Mexico.
Logan, New Mexico wound up being a very small town. We ate lunch there at a little restaurant called The Annex. Chris had a hamburger (as usual) and I had the BLT with some potato salad. The food wasn’t bad for a little roadside cafe. And, we stopped to take a few pictures:
From Logan we drove across New Mexico and made it into Arizona around 4 pm. Luckily, we were making great time and decided to make a stop to do some touristy things. We stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park. This National Park is an area right inside of Arizona with the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. The Petrified Forest is known for its fallen trees that were alive 225 million years ago. We were only able to spend a few hours there, and didn’t get out and hike the trails since we didn’t feel like it would be safe to be in the middle of no where hiking while pregnant. It was beautiful, though.
After our tour through the area, we got back on the road and looked for a place to spend the night. I really wanted to stay at a hotel that was made out of a bunch of TeePees, but Chris was not feeling as adventurous. I guess looking back on it, the hotel did look like the perfect setting for a horror film. At this point we were very hungry and very tired. We stopped for some fast food in Winslow, but kept on driving until we got to Flagstaff, Arizona. Unfortunately, there was a convention in town, so our hotel options were limited. We did not book ahead of time, because we weren’t sure how far the pregnant lady would make it. We wound up staying at an OLD Ramada… the kind that the doors to the rooms open to the outside, not to a hallway inside the hotel. Chris and I got to our room, showered, and got in bed at about midnight (Texas time). We were laying there in the dark, talking about our plan for the next day when we heard a knock at the door. Chris jumped out of bed and asked “Who’s there?”, but no one answered. They just kept knocking. Thinking that this was the beginning of the horror film (and also that the TeePee hotel would have been a much more interesting setting than the dump we were in) I went and hid in the bathroom. The person at the door continued to knock, and would not identify themselves, so Chris told them he was calling the cops. He actually called the front desk and found out that it was one of their staff members bringing us a coffee pot. Um, we didn’t ask for a coffee pot….. and maybe you should get your staff some training on simple etiquette like identifying yourself as a hotel employee when you knock on someone’s door in the middle of the night. Okay, it was only 10pm there, but it was late for me.
The next morning, we got on the road again and drove the last 7 hours to LA. We attempted to stop for lunch at an In-and-Out Burger, but the lines were crazy long, so we found a less popular place for lunch. When we finally made it to Manhattan Beach and found Hima’s house, we discovered that someone forgot to put the key under the mat, so we were locked outside. Luckily, this was our view from Hima’s patio.
Hima is a nice person and left work to bring us the key so we could get into her house. I was tired and wanted to try to take a nap, but the excitement of being in a new place didn’t let me.
More to come…..
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