This is by NO MEANS the full adventure, it started 5 months before this, but that's in a different blog entry! This is just the actual trip! I'm writing this almost 8 months after, but The Wife had a road diary for me to reference. These are my memories!
We had the party at Golden Gardens on Tuesday July 9th 2019.
So from there,
July 10th - Seattle To Boise we made stops at Cle Elum and Pendleton, OR 504 miles total. What I remember was packing up the last few things in our trailer and in the Subaru Outback (my Toyota we shipped a week or two prior). Tina and I were whisper fighting the WHOLE MORNING. I don't remember what it was, but I'm sure it had to do with our differences in packing style. She wants everything in a particular order so we can get it out, I want it in their tied down so it won't fly around when I take a corner. The Wife's tears in the FB picture, while mostly about having to leave this place, were started by that fight. LAME.
So we stopped for lunch and got into the HAWTNESS of summer away from the west coast, and off to Boise. I think Pendleton we just stopped for gas and potty and a quick snack. We got to my cousins house around 6 pm and he fed us and we had some fun talking about parenting and our family and making fun of each other. Good times!
11th - Boise to Salt Lake. So my cousin had a Purple mattress for my uncle and now that's what we have, so that's cool. But his dog is an abused Basset Hound and SO ANNOYING. I get it Johnny, a neurotic breed with emotional issues but for crying out loud STOP SCRATCHING AT THE DOOR. My cousins daughter was in Spain and she left some nasty mess in her bedroom/bathroom, but that's kinda' what we expect from teens right? HA!
Stops at Malad Gorge, Twin Falls, ID, Tremonton, UT, Willard Bay State Park, Eagle Mountain, UT total of 376 miles.
So Malad Gorge was an opportunity stop. From the road you could barely see it, and if you were walking or came across it on a horse 100 years ago it would've snuck up on you there too! Yikes! It was AMAZING! It was huge and steep and scary. If you found yourself stuck in the bottom of that, oh boy you could've been screwed! I seem to remember some old west criminals did exactly that and ended up dying of starvation. Willard Bay State park we stopped to go swimming and I remember being surprised at how many people in a mostly Mormon region had surgical enhancements. I also remember taking in the mountains as much as possible because they weren't the mountains I was used to, and there was a good chance I wouldn't be seeing mountains again for a few years. Sad Dad! We stayed at a friend of Tina's, they were GREAT. They made tacos and explained how much the region had changed in the last couple years. Exponential growth, which kinda' surprised me about Salt Lake City. Why?? She said it was just because it was so expensive in California, but there's gotta' be something else?
We came up with a name for the prayer plant the 4th time I had to get him out of the trailer. He's now known as "Jack." (If I forget later, he did live and is thriving in Miami). We also drove through a surprise thunder storm and saw a small twister off the side of the freeway. WOAAAHH....
Sam and Noelle had a BLAST playing with their kids and the pictures we got from their housing development are beautiful, even my poor photograph skills couldn't screw up that scenery.
12th - Salt Lake City to Arches National Park with stops at Price and Moab, UT total of 213 miles. Arches National Park was as beautiful as everyone says. The hike to the main arches is about 3 miles. It was 103 F. Tina said no, and I said "the kids they can do it, I'll carry 3 gallons of water and we'll take all the time we need!!" I REALLY wanted to go! But a Park Ranger heard me. She said, "that's a great idea Dad, and how you should do it if you needed to, but I agree with your wife that that's not safe for a 'fun' part of your day." We went to the Arches viewpoint... which was still gorgreous!
We got dinner at a pizza place with local beers and looked kinda' fancy, this was in Moab, and we had the place to ourselves (at that time). After dinner we went to our campground and did our process. The Wife tried for a while to back the trailer up into the spot (I'm super glad she's not a helpless Daisy princess) and couldn't quite get it, and I got in and did it on the first try and gave her a hard time relentlessly for the next hour! Karma came and got me in Panama City though, I'll tell that story when I get there... Camping was great, we have a family camping process and we all just kinda' DID it. Kids helped a little and then went and ran around. Wife and I sat and had a few drinks by our fire. So. Nice. But, it WAS sleeping on the ground.
13th - Moab, UT to Espanola, NM stops in Monticell, UT, Durango, CO, and Challa, NM. This was the drive to The Wife's brother. He's a literal rocket scientist. Neat! His house was a TOTAL bachelor pad, he taught us to make Oppenheimer martini's, we played Cards Against Humanity and told us all about his finishing his PhD (yes, the younger brother beat his older sister to the PhD!). Oh, had to come back to write this one... The roads in CO were super great. The roads in NM were NOT. Pay your taxes dear reader.
14th - Break day in New Mexico. We visited White Rock Overlook Park and watched the Rio Grande flow by and then we visited a Pueblo Native cliff dwelling archaeological site/park. We visited Los Alamos, the town that sprang up for all the WWII nuclear researchers. It was all pictures and stories of young people. During the middle of the war. The "we could die at any time, so let's party like it's the end of the world" vibe was STRONG. I suspect there was a LOT of booze and debauchery when that town started! After those three stops, with lunch in Los Alamos, we decided to take a break from being inside a car and spent the day at the bachelor pad having more martini's!
15th - Time to get back on the road, we went from Espanola, NM to Big Springs, TX with stops at Clines Corners NM (one of my new favorite pictures is The Wife and kids in the trailer eating lunch here), our hard copy map showed Roswell, NM on the way for one of our optional routes, we were moving at a pretty good clip and since alien conspiracies aren't a thing for us, and google said it would only add 15 minutes to the drive we went to Roswell! It was pretty neat! We made a stop in Brownfield, TX for gas and snacks and then got to Big Spring, TX. Big Spring smelled very clearly of refinery. It permeated the blankets in our hotel it was so bad. When the hotel staff saw that we were a family and not big Texas roughnecks, or business men, they treated us fairly poorly. We were supposed to have a non-smoking room and it smelled so bad that all of us were coughing almost immediately. They said they didn't have a room and The Wife said "ok kids, let's get back in the car and head to the next town" and they magically friggin' found a room. Jerkwads. When we got up in the morning, a F350 flat bed truck parked about 6 inches from the front of our Subaru. I got a VERY distinct feeling it was just for the sole purpose of irritating some liberal <OFFENSIVE SLUR> passing through in their Subaru. I was tempted to slash their tires, but The Wife convinced me that we should just get the hell out of that shit hole country, er town. I totally meant town. ANYWAY. A whole lot more straight roads to San Antonio.
16th - Big Spring, TX to San Antonio, TX. We stopped at a BBQ place that was owned by a friend of a friend. I was ready for some amazing Texas BBQ. It was underwhelming. I kinda' got the feeling that Texas BBQ when it's IN Texas is given a huge pass because it's "authentic" because it's actually in TX. In my humble opinion, I wasn't impressed, but we made a connection for a friend. Then we got to The Wife's BFF's house!
17th - Break day at The Wife's childhood best friends house in San Antonio. BFF had to work so we went to Sea World! I was excited to see the Sea World Beach Band that entertained me when I was a college music major. No beach band =( LAME. The elder of my children freaked out at real life roller coasters and didn't go on ONE damn ride. I was thankful for my annual military pass that I didn't pay for entry. I swear I would've forced that kids arse onto a roller coaster (no I wouldn't have, but I can definitely tell you we will not pay for another amusement park!). The younger of my children went on a couple of the little kiddo rides with The Wife, and we saw a couple animal shows. I know Sea World has gotten some bad press the past few years because of keeping wild animals in captivity, but I got the vibe that they were doing the best they could FOR the animals. The Orca amphitheater was closed and empty.
When we got back, the BFF gave me a little bit of a hard time for leaving a burner on on her stove. WHOOPS.
18th - Back to it! San Antonio to Lafayette, LA. This side of Texas was REALLY AGGRESSIVE on the freeways. We have a Subaru Outback and it's towing a trailer. We know damn well it's more than that car was meant to do, that's why we're going 60 in the right lane. Calm down Texas. The Wife tried to keep up and I think we caught air with the trailer in Houston, the roads are bad here too. All that oil money and all those millions of miles of road and that's the best you can do Texas?? Anyway, I'm glad we got to see some friends, but Texas can eat it. 416 miles for the day. Hello Louisiana!
19th - In Lafayette, LA we stayed in a hotel again and it was MUCH nicer, I used some of the hotel points I got from my stay during my Army training from the spring! Neat! It didn't stink, and you know, if the schools weren't so bad in Louisiana, there could have been a chance we could land there, but no. So we made it to Pensacola, FL stopped in Covington, LA and Mobile, AL for gas and the Florida welcome center for our Sunpass (toll road account). 306 Miles total and I'm absolutely POSITIVE The Wife caught air leaving LA.
20th - Pensacola to Panama City, FL. We stayed with a friend of my Dad's in Pensacola. Got a first hand account of Hurricane Michael and he took us out in his boat. SO. COOL. We saw Dolphins and massive hurricane destruction. Short day, but that's just damn skippy. Drove through a HUGE rainstorm. So remember in Utah when I gave The Wife a hard time for having trouble backing up the trailer? Yeah, my Dad's friend is a car guy and he has a boat (those often go on trailers) and I told him he couldn't watch me back it up or I'd screw it up, he said "hand me your keys" and had it done in like 3 seconds... Karma for Deadcat42!
21st - Nearing the end. We left Panama City to Davenport. Driving is getting old, kids are finally starting to fight. Almost there. We stayed in a KOA and it was RAD. We made an instant pot soup that was tasty (not a restaurant meal) and there was a playground and a TV in our cabin. It wasn't a long day, but man it FELT long.
22nd - Davenport to Miami. We took our time getting up and enjoyed the KOA, it was the Last Day, we planned for it to be only a couple hundred miles, and our stuff got there too. The Toyota was being delivered in a couple days so we started unpacking and getting settled in until the school year starts.
Since Seattle ended so late and Miami Dade county starts so early I had like 5 weeks and it was all JAM PACKED with moving and stress. Now it's just getting the kids enrolled, finding things for them to do, not getting lost or hit by Miami drivers, getting Tina set up and me finding a job and then a new unit to transfer to.
No biggie!
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