Summer time is fun. It evokes images of backyard BBQs, sprinklers, pools, lemonade, sunshine and happy-go-lucky kids riding bikes and everyone is just a ray of sunshine and rainbows. This year, my insanity got the best of me. Because the husband's job is going to keep him rather *um* "preoccupied" over the next year, I decided that the kids and I would drive out to California for a good chunk of the summer. The boy's last day of school was May 27th, so why not leave right after that? (No, seriously...we left right after the last bell rang.) Originally, my dad was going to fly out to Dallas and we were going to pick him up and he'd drive back with me. Such is the case with best laid plans...they don't quite always go the way that you want them to. In the end, it looked like I may have to do this haul by myself. Then I realized that the husband had a 4-day weekend and plenty of leave saved up. Cue the puppy dog eyes and some irresistible pleading and voila! He was suckered into my insane thought process as well.
To start off the story, I have to rewind a weekend. I decided to print out the confirmation emails from the hotels that we were supposed to stay at along the way. Our route consisted of 5 days: Day 1 - Shreveport to Dallas. Day 2 - Dallas to Amarillo. Day 3 - Amarillo to Flagstaff. Day 4 - Flagstaff to Bakersfield. Day 5 - Bakersfield to Dixon. I had the confirmation from the hotel in Dallas, so I printed it out. I looked for the other ones and couldn't find them. What? Wait a sec...I KNOW that I have them. I don't delete records and confirmations. I still have the confirmation emails for flights that I took 4 years ago, so I just *know* that there is *NO* way that I deleted the emails...or did I?? The month of May was very chaotic. I still can't remember much of it. I think it's my brain's way of blocking out how truly crazy it was. Any hoo, I call my dad to see I had sent him a copy of the emails. He doesn't have any. The husband is wonderful and calls each hotel chain to see if we have reservations at any of the hotels in any of the cities. It takes him two days to make it through the list. Turns out I didn't make the reservations. Yes, my friends, I felt pretty stupid at this point. Again, I blame it on the brain block of May. I make the hotel reservations and all is right with the world.
The first afternoon from Shreveport to Dallas was really uneventful. We took both cars because the husband, while he has a plethora of leave, didn't have a summer's worth of leave and had to fly back to Dallas-Ft. Worth the day after our scheduled arrival into California. When I say it was uneventful, I mean it was really super boring...to the point that I was actually reading different kind of semi-trucks that were on the road as well. Yes. It's that exciting between Shreveport and Dallas. Three hours of nothingness.
On Day 2, we decided to expend some of the kiddos' energy by throwing them in the hotel pool first thing in the morning. The drive from Dallas to Amarillo was slated for 6 hours. Since my children have no concept as to what the phrase "sleep-in-past-7-in-the-morning" means, we figured we had a little bit of time to kill. After about an hour in the pool, we loaded up the car, turned on the DVD player for the bean and headed up toward Amarillo. We took a road that took us up through a little town called Wichita Falls. That's kind of a wackily set up town. We started our McDonald's stock surge at lunch. It ws rather warm and the kids were getting itchy to play outside. We warned them that the slides were going to be a little toasty and even pointed at the signs so that the boy could read them himself. Since they are kids of a special nature, they figured that their little tushies would be immune to the toaster slide. Alas, they soon found out that was not the case and they played on the playground for maybe 5 minutes. After lunch, we continued the trek to Amarillo. We passed through many small towns, that I'm proud to say are waaay smaller than my hometown (which is pretty dang small). On the outskirts of one particular town, there was an adult super mega-ultra porn shop. I don't usually pay much attention, but this one made me giggle because it advertised an ATM AND free coffee! About 10 feet from the store, right inside the city limits was a sign that stated, "This town does not condone pornography in any way. Pornography victimizes women and is not tolerated in this town". Kind of reminded me of the movie, "Footloose". The town bans dancing, and what do you know...it's done in basements and eventually there's a big dance sequence and everything is happy. I don't want to know what happens in the basements of the town that bans porn. A couple of hours and 11 counted trains later, we make it in to Amarillo for that particular leg of the race.
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