Let me give you some background. I made this four day trip with my best friend since high school, Joy. Some people think she is Indian because she has an Indian last name, so she thinks this gives her the right to vote for Sanjaya on American Idol. I say no way. Hmm, what else should you know about her? She was the star of one of my great DC blogs from last summer…ya know, the one with all the ice cream stops? Oh wait, that was all of the blogs. But yea, Joy and I do a lot of travelling together. We are practiced at sharing a double bed in a hotel, sharing the free toiletries (and stealing more as needed) and
basically making anything more fun than previously imagined. We have also been to come pretty sketchy places, and added a few more places to that list on this trip. Oh, and she is pregnant. Right, hope that wasn't a big announcement to anyone close to us, and if it was, well, then SURPISE!
Ok, my car. Oh, my car…a 1996 silver Volvo. It drinks/leaks oil like no tomorrow, shakes if you drive it for too long, and apparently steams after long distances of 80MPH+. It has seat heaters that sometimes turn on accidentally. It has a 20 gallon tank, which is nice for those long trips across the great wasteland that is West Texas. Oh, and until the week before the trip, it was missing its registration tags from December.
Ok, so we started out about 11:30am on Wednesday morning (I know, I know, early start, right?). Joy's doctor assured her that she could travel to Texas while pregnant, despite not really understanding why she would want to. We loaded in her big cooler of snacks and the bathroom bag in case we had to make a high pit stop, and got underway. Oh, and I bought a lottery ticket for good luck (yea, right, good luck, one number out of 5 sets of 6…whatever). With a full car, a full tank, and two sets of AAA books and maps from both of our moms, we were good to go. Joy got out Trip Tik, checked the directions (10 East
all the way), and we got on the road. I think we made it to San Bernadino before the first bathroom stop. It was quick and painless, and we then kept a good pace up to Palm Springs. We stopped there for lunch, at this cute little Mexican place we both swore we had been to but never eaten at, and then kept driving. Oh, and we parked right across from the village pub, and took a picture in honor of Cara, who spent one of her last nights as a single woman there (and doesn't remember most of it):
Anyway, so we continued on down the road, stopped at this RANDOM rest stop across from a prison (trip prison count: 1). We got off the freeway just as the work day ended apparently, because were suddenly almost in traffic out in the middle of nowhere. After that stop, we made it to Blythe, where I bought my first tank of gas for under $3.00 in months. This is about the time I could have really gone for a Starbucks, but alas, just crappy gas station coffee, and I wasn't feeling it. We fielded a call from Uncle Ken, who tried to get joy to admit to being pregnant, but she wasn't talking. He gave us the update on gas stations past Blythe (although really we would have liked to have known that there were none before Blythe). We got back on the 10, stopped one more time at a rest stop (for those of you that don't know, one of us likes to use the bathroom A LOT…and when that one of us Is pregnant, It only gets worse). At this point we were deeply Involved in analyzing people we work with…we decided we could only talk to each other about these things for fear of people thinking we were huge bitches. I guess K could also hear about It, as he Is the third part of team 3. He usually tunes us out thought, so It doesn't really matter. We eventually made It to Phoenix, and stopped at a Sweet Tomatoes for dinner, per the request of my copilot. Tried to swing the AAA discount to no avail. Then we tried to find a hotel In Chandler, AZ. Yea, right. What I want to know Is, what the heck Is there to do In Chandler, AZ? Apparently something, since every hotel we called wasbooked, with the exception of the Super 8, which has a room so reasonably priced at $150. Right, time to keep going to Tucson. We sort of toyed with the Idea of staying In Casa Grande, which looked great on the map, but when we got there, seemed to just be some lights in the distance. Then we hit traffic. Now, when I say traffic, I mean the kind of traffic that makes you want to pull over and sleep In your backseat (not that I could have done that, considering my backseat had (and still has) my entire kitchen and half my shoe collection stuffed Into It. This traffic made me wish I had paid more attention to the signs on the highway earlier In the evening…something about Highway 10 being closed…right. So yea, three hours later, we rolled Into Tuscon at about midnight, after making a hotel reservation at some amazingly ghetto hotel right off the freeway. $50, and a free continental (or as someone recently suggested, craptacular) breakfast of donuts and coffee. We slept through It.
The next morning, we took these lovely pictures of Tucson (well, our hotel room, the view from the hotel room, and the fact that my car had made it through the night without being broken into or stolen) and then attempted to find somewhere good to eat.
The hotel magazine suggested someplace with the word egg in the name (don't remember), so we tried to find It. I was pretty sure we were going to end up In Mexico. We ended up In Denny's (hmm, come to think of It, they share many characteristics…). Oh, this was after a nice shaky drive down a side road as my car threatened to quit on me (on day 2! I don't think so). I checked the oil and water (yup, check me out, I am so handy), decided we had no choice, and kept going. Denny's seemed like it might have been the nicest establishment In the area, so we felt ok, and had ourselves some eggs and such, and I had my coffee.
The morning drive on Thursday Is foggy to me, I don't remember much. We did see 2 more prisons (prison count: 3), and we did stop for Ice cream at this great rest stop where they sold Mexican blankets and random jewelry. Life was good. Then we drove through Deming, New Mexico. We both sort of thought this was some sort of po-dunk town, but apparently It Is the biggest thing before Lac Cruces, NM. It even made the weather map that evening. I don't necessarily recommend it, but It does have a Walmart.
We made a bathroom stop at some random McDonalds, and took a picture next to the random dinosaur. People stared at us, but we continued with our antics.
We stopped in Las Cruces for food, bought some sandwiches at an Alberstons, and continued on before my car had a chance to stall from all the shaking. Feeling really great about the Volvo at that point. I did stop on the border (actually on the freeway on the border) and made Joy take a picture of the Welcome to Texas paraphinalia. Very exciting:
We made a hotel reservation for El Paso that night on the road, to avoid the same siutation we had faced in Chandler. We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the Embassy Suites In El Paso. A lot happier than we were when we got off the highway and almost turned right Into Mexico. AAA warned of a sudden urge to cross the border. I had no such urge. It was worse than Tiajuana, just looked completely sketchy. We stayed In the hotel, didn't even vernture out for food. I had a nice workout break while Joy sat by the hot tub, read her book, and babysat the cockroaches. Oh, and she made some new friends, who were celebrating their anniversary at the suites. They are from El Paso, so this was high living for them. Gof the low down on the Texas school systems from them. We spent much of Thursday night calling every hotel in San Antonio to try and find a room, to no avail. We gave up about 12:30 and went to bed.
So, Friday morning we got up, filled up at the full breakfast that came with our room, and continued on our way. Filled up with gas (under $3.00 again!!!), and hit the road. Friday was the longest driving day, we covered about 700 miles before San Antonio. We had to stop at a check point for border control (in the middle of west Texas, random). We finally booked a hotel for the night while on the road, and happily made the LONG drive across what Joy called "a huge amount of wasted space." We stopped for lunch at this GREAT IHOP in Fort Stockton, which was just a lovely town (sense the sarcasm?). We had the most random waiter, he had gold teeth and was confused. We were just cracking up the entire time. We actually did a nice drive through of Fort Stockton, took a great picture of what was apparently an important bird for the town:
Back on the road we made the daily Dairy Queen stop, and then pulled into San Antonio around 7 that night (prison count: 4). We found our really fancy hotel room, dropped our stuff off, and headed out to the highly recommended RiverWalk (thanks Dad and Uncle Ken!) It took us a while to find the actual cool part, but once there, it was quite the fun evening. We had dinner at the cute Mexican Restaurant, outside by the water, with a waitress that was horrible and therefore got no tip, and the did some walking around. We also took the boat tour of the canal at about 11pm, it was a really nice time to do the tour, and we were able to see the town at night. For those of you unfamiliar with San Antonio, it has this Riverwalk which is a level below the streets and has all these resturants and bars on the bank of a river canal type thing. it has a lot of history, and offers boat rides all day long with a tour guide. We saw the Selena Bridge where Selena sat and where the movie was filmed about her life. We also saw the stage where Ms. Congeniality was filmed. Random, but interesting.
So, the next morning, St. Patrick's Day, we headed out to find te big festival the city was having. One block later, we had seen it. We had also invested in some green decor for our heads and met some bagpipers:
We ate lunch at an Irish Pub, got some green beads, and walked around watching the drunk people (open container law on the riverwalk, as long as you stay on the lower level and don't go up to the street, sort of like a mini-Vegas). We took a nice picture in front of the Ms. Congeniality stage with all our gear on:
Then we thought maybe we should tak in some history (we had walked the riverwalk and the mall, gotten some ice cream and made sure there was nothing we needed to buy first). So, we headed over to the Alamo. We wanderd for a while (picture, two hisotrically challenged girls looking at some old buildings). We eventually figured out which building was the famous one in all the pictures (mostly because there is a picture of it on the Alamo Resturant menu in NP), and took the necessary pictures:
We then attempted to walk back to the hotel, and we stopped by the Irish parade going through the center of the city:
Yup, they had an Irish Queen and everything.
Ok, so by 3pm, we had seen what we needed to see in San Antonio, and we began the last leg of our trip. Three quick hours later, we once again found a closed 10East Highway just west of Houston. This time we got off the highway early, side streeted around it, and got back on. Stupid texas highway people, who closes the 10 anywhere???
We made it to Houston safely, and you have all been reading up on the excitement since then Joy stayed Saturday night and then headed out on Sunday as I attempted to find a grocery store. The road trip was great though, and not something either of us will soon forget. And just because these didn't fit anywhere else, some extra pictures:
