Road trip recap

Caitlin and I are road tripping. It is kind of a scene. Or atleast, that is the quote of the trip. Today is effectively day 3, and we are still talking to each other, so I guess things are going well. She is making the drive from Oakland to Houston, and I joined up in Phoenix, after making the short flight from Houston (through El Paso I might add, which seems a little counter intuitive, since we drove back through there the next day).

I arrived on Saturday morning to Phoenix and took a somewhat sketchy cab ride to the Biltmore Hotel (uh, yea, we are THAT fancy), and then napped, ordered room service, and laid by the pool while waiting for Caitlin to make the drive from Idyllwild to Phoenix. It was rough for me, but I made it through. Actually, I spent a lot more time in the room than I meant to, trying to sleep unsuccessfully. See, I seem to have lost the ability to nap since this thyroid business started up. Super disappointing. But, the bed was amazing, the sheets were like 10,000 thread count, and the air conditioning was freezing, so I was just fine laying there staring at the wall.

Well Caitlin arrived, met me at the pool, changed, and soaked in the salt water with me for a nice little catch up session during which I gave her the general life update, and she gave me hers. Pretty sure the lady sitting behind us getting a tan agrees that we pretty much could write a Lifetime series about our lives (ok, my life). Luckily, most of the Lifetime series doesn't make the blog. Not like you would believe some of the crap that happens to me anyway. Anyway, this lady was very intently listening to us spill our guts. Eh, hopefully she was entertained. I managed to get an awkward tan line from my bathing suit and burn (literally burn, as in, I couldn't walk comfortably until today) the bottom of my feet on the hot stone walkway. We then retired to the Adirondack chairs sitting around a fountain to dry off and enjoy the dry summer air (as opposed to the air you wear in Houston). After Caitlin finally bought into the fact that I haven't been eating too much recently, we made our way to CPK (yea, we are super uncreative when tired and hungry), and shared a nice little pizza and some water (talk about dehydrated after one day in dry air!). Pretty sure I got the best night of sleep in my entire life that night, considering neither of us got up for almost 12 hours. It was like a cruise ship room in there, pitch black, cold, and quiet. Amazing.

Sunday we made the drive from Phoenix to El Paso. We took our time getting going in the morning, and made several stops for food (it seems after I sleep enough, my appetite returns), including the always necessary In-N-Out burger! We rediscovered the Guilty Pleasures CDs Kelly and I made during grad school, and had some fun playing dance party in the car to all the old favorites. We drove through the really bad fires, and breathed in enough smoke to kill a small child. I think I have a sore throat today because of the smoke. I could never be a smoker. I took some fun pictures for all the Facebook fans, and then Caitlin as I spent the afternoon solving all the world's problems and talking about deep meaningful things, like free donut day, her nut/pit allergy, and the new Ben and Jerry's flavors. By El Paso we were both a little tired and a little frazzled. We made it to our hotel room, and it took some serious motivation to leave again for dinner. We had original plans to make a trip through some Diners, Drive-ins and Dives, but by that point, we just wanted food we knew, and we didn't want to make the wrong turn and end up in Juarez. We made it to PF Changs, where the entire wait staff was just watching the Basketball finals and not working too hard otherwise. I almost fell asleep in my soup, but we finished our meals and made it back to the hotel before I passed out (after pulling out all the sheets and rolling myself up like a burrito, as Caitlin made jokes at my expense).

This morning we again took our sweet time getting up (story of my life), and didn't leave El Paso until 11:15am. This might have been a mistake, seeing as the drive to the lake house took us more than 10 hours. See, Caitlin's bladder decided to go on strike yesterday after an unfortunately long time between bathroom stops, and she is peeing like a pregnant woman (she swears she is not pregnant, just in case anyone related to her is reading this). So, we stopped probably once an hour for a break today. This is harder than you might think on the road from El Paso to San Antonio, where there. is. nothing. We both relived our last road trips out this direction with constant quotes like "oh, that's where I stayed last time I drove to Houston...or maybe it was on my way back...or maybe it was where i was GOING to stay..." Needless to say, there was some giggling and much laughter, and towards the end of the evening we both got a little punchy. We made it through the random check stop with Border Patrol outside of El Paso. The guy gave me a rundown of questions, but let me go as soon as I said I worked at NASA. We government people have to stick together apparently. We stopped at Caitlin's favorite fast food ever, Culver's Butterburgers and Frozen Custard, which if you work with her ever, you have heard of. My stomach is pretty mad about that stop still. Tomorrow I will be needing some serious vegetables. It was in Kerrville, Sara's home town, so we went her a nice text message to let her know. We were pretty excited. Actually, several of you probably got random texts from me. Thank you to those that responded, it was kind of like you were on the trip with us! My mom even got on the text bandwagon AND learned how to use the spacebar in her texts. it was a big day in the Hutchings household. So, we made it to the lake house about 10:30, had to wake up Jessica for real instructions as to how to turn on the water (but only after Caitlin put soap on her hands and then couldn't rinse them), and freaked out the neighbors who were clearly partying it up on the porch (ok, that sounds dirty, its not, they were just blaring music). And now I am enjoying the fact that I am not in a hotel room, and dont have to make more than a four hour drive tomorrow. I wonder how long I could live at the lake house before Jessica kicks me out...

Tomorrow it's back to Houston, and real life. Don't get me wrong, I love real life, but I like fake, fancy, hotel life just slightly more. Maybe because I haven't even though about checking work email since Saturday. I am excited to get back though, I think there is some fun waiting for me...and two furry cats...aw man, and a house to clean...oh well!