Day 3 (June 21st) – Amarillo, Texas to Joplin, Missouri

Well the day started out with everyone sleeping late. With the events of the previous day and a very large Rum and Coke for a certain someone, we were all tired and needed some extra rest. This also meant that any sightseeing was going to be limited. When we awoke, that certain odor was much less, either that or I got used to it and I don’t think that was the case.

As my parents have joined us for the rest of the trip or most of the rest of the trip, I should probably introduce them to you. They are both retired. That is right, they are retired and have an RV and go across country. It’s only the natural thing for retirees to do, so don’t act surprised. This is their second trip since my dad retired two years ago. My dad, who is also named David, is a sort of Renaissance man. He can sew just about anything, and is proud enough to say so. He also paints pictures, can fix just about anything and does all his own handyman jobs. He tells those grandpa jokes. You know the ones. My mom, who is Mary, has been retired a little longer than my dad, but still volunteers at a hospital. She likes to rearrange things even if they don’t need to be. Growing up you never knew what drawer the silverware or what cupboard held the dishes and glasses. To this day, she keeps my dad guessing. She crochets, and loves to spend time with the grandkids.

So we really didn’t do any sightseeing except for seeing the Arkansas River. Yup, we drove right over it on a bridge. If it wasn’t for I-44 crossing it, we might have missed that. The other thing that we saw was a very large cross. The picture to the right is of the cross. Now, they (they being the ones that erected the cross) say it’s the largest in the western hemisphere. If you are going to erect a cross that large wouldn’t you want it to be the largest one in the world. Especially when it is in Texas and they are supposed to do everything big in Texas. Frankly, I am a little disappointed in Texas on this one. Their motto must have changed to “Everything is big in Texas, but not too big.” We didn’t actually stop to see the cross. You could just see it from the freeway. So if you find yourself on I-40 east of Amarillo look for the cross.

Nothing major happened today and only one minor issue. My dad drove off with his door step still lowered on his RV. This isn’t a big deal as long as you don’t start shredding or scrapping the car next to you or hit a big bump. He had to pull over after I called to let him know about it. The other problem was when the kids were swimming after dinner. They had to get out because a three or four year old produced a Baby Ruth. I didn’t see the Baby Ruth which is good, but his sister let everyone know that he pooped in the pool. The day was much better than on Saturday. Lisa is doing okay at taking pictures of the state signs.

The kids were pretty well behaved. Lisa had to tell Samantha to stop teasing Miles in the car, and when they were in the pool Samantha, who is a very good swimmer, was being a pest to Miles. He got mad at her and I had to tell them to go to opposite sides of the pool. This was all before the Baby Ruth incident. The kids had a meatball sandwich for lunch, and this led to the first punishment of the trip. Miles has this aversion to napkins. Even if the napkin is in his hand he prefers not to use it. His choice to wipe his hands and mouth is his shirt. Lisa and I have told him over and over again to use his napkin. So while he was eating his meatball sandwich, he once again used his shirt. His shirt was yellow and red. The yellow was the color of the shirt, and you know where the red came from. So I told him from this point on if he uses his shirt as a napkin, he has to do the laundry, which he did after dinner. Of course, my dad had to start with jokes about putting him in the washer and put it on spin cycle. I told you he likes the grandpa jokes. I'll let you know if has learned his lesson.

Tomorrow, we are planning to actually see something worth seeing. We will be going to the Meramec Caverns, Jessie James hideout (my mom wants to go see it), taking a look at the St. Louis Arch and crossing the Mississippi River.

Today, we traveled a total of 484 miles for a total of 1583 miles for the trip, which is about 25% of the miles to be driven. The cost of gas was only $74.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads.

Day 2 Addendum

Since we gotten into Amarillo late and I was tired, I forgot to mention a couple of things. The first is that we met up with my parents at the Oasis RV Park. As you come into Amarillo there is a diary or cattle farm. If you have been on I-5 between Bakersfield, CA and Sacremento, CA you have unfortunately passed by the same type of area. The smell is very very special. This same special smell can be found along I-40 before Amarillo. Oasis is about 5 to 10 miles from this odorous place, and the wind was blowing out of the west and strong enough that the smell reached the RV Park. The RV park was nice except that you need a clothespin or gas mask. My parents have stayed at this park before and said they never had this problem before, but I now know why the cost was only $15 for the night.

The second thing that I forgot to mention was the other incident that occurred on Saturday. This incident involved my parents. If you remember, I said that we had run into some rain. Nothing hard but it looked like we missed the hard stuff. Well, my parents were not so lucky. They ran into a huge downpour, which in itself is not a big deal, but they forgot to close a roof vent when they left in the morning. Almost all RVs don’t have anything to prevent rain from getting through the vent. So as you can now probably picture, a big downpour and the water is going right into their trailer. The vent that they left opened is located over there bed, so when they went and touched the bed it squished. It had sopped up a large amount of water. They spent the rest of the evening drying the sheet and the bed. Saturday was just not a good day on this trip.

Day 2 (June 20th) Kingman, Arizona to Amarillo, Texas

We started our day at 6 AM. We ate breakfast and hooked up the trailer and on Interstate 40 by 7 AM. This was the long driving day. Today, we needed to get as far east as we can. This will make the rest of the days shorter distance wise. This would also allow us to get to Benton, Illinois on Monday. Benton is our first major stop and where Lisa’s aunt lives. With that in mind we were hoping to go to Tucumcari, New Mexico. We had to definitely get to Morarity, New Mexico.

As I said, the day started out well. We made our first stop at a rest stop outside Flagstaff, Arizona. We then stopped at Navaho, Arizona for gas. As the picture to right shows it is basically a gas station.

As we crossed into New Mexico, I tried to get a picture of the “Welcome to New Mexico” sign but I didn’t get a good shot. Well you can see it but it was like, “Oh, where’s the camera”. I fumble for it and take a snapshot. Not my best effort. I should mention that I tried to get the “Welcome to Arizona” sign and totally missed it. At this point, Samantha says that I should have Lisa take the picture. I would have, but I did not realize that we were at the border. I thought it was a little further down the road.

When we crossed into New Mexico it started raining and there was some lighting. We were lucky to miss the heavy stuff, but we did get some drops on us. So at this point, your thinking that this is going to be an uneventful day, well you would be wrong. This is a road trip and with any road trip, things happen. It so happened that we got to Tucumcari pretty quickly, so we decided to push on to Amarillo. This was a mistake as about 10 miles from the Texas border the trail blew out a tire. We called AAA and they sent someone out to change the tire. Now before you say, “What, you can’t change your own tire?” I don’t have a jack that will lift the trail to put it on, so we had to wait about 30 to 40 minutes to get it fixed. What dismays me is that this is day 2 of the trip and I have a blown tire and rim that is destined for the scrap heap. I hope this is it for these types of incidents.

Well, I can’t just end today’s entry without mentioning the stars of this little blog, the kids. Today, they were pretty much subdue, except for one fight in which Lisa had to yell at them to stop. It seems Samantha thought it was a good idea to grab a stuff animal that Miles brought along. Miles didn’t think much of that idea and started to get mad. The next thing that you know it turns into a World War III. Lisa set them straight this time. When we got to Tucumcari, I asked the kids if they want to stop or go on. Miles responds that all he wanted to decide is to go to sleep. Samantha said to go to Amarillo. Samantha didn’t like the way her peanut butter sandwich was cold. We made sandwiches in Kingman and stuck them in the cooler.

This to here was heresy and refused to eat the sandwich until it was room temperature. We made to Amarillo at about 9 PM Texas time, so we were in the car for about 12 hours with a long rest for the blowout. We drove a total of 724 miles for the day, and a total of 1088 miles for the entire trip, so we have done about one-sixth of the driving. The total for gas was $143 for the day. Tomorrow should be a much shorter day and we may actually stop and see something other than rest stops and gas stations.

Day 1 (June 19th) - Los Angeles, California to Kingman, Arizona

We started our little adventure today. The destination for today was Kingman Arizona and we made it here in about 6 hours, and that isn't bad on a Friday afternoon/evening through Los Angeles. Of course, it didn't take use long to run into our first accident. It happened only a half-an-hour in to the trip. There were a couple of cars that thought it would be fun to see if the law physics could some, how cease to exist on an LA freeway. Time and time again this little experiment is played out on the freeways. Lets be clear here. Two objects cannot occupy the same space. I know some of you will start talking about sub space, etc. But in real space it just cannot be done.

Once we got past that little experiment, we soon ran into another little experiment that someone was conducting. In this experiment, someone wanted to find out if a truck went up a hill sideways would it stay upright or roll down the hill. Well, the answer was roll down the hill and back onto the freeway with it finally resting on its side. I can't tell you what makes a person decide that its a good idea to try these little experiments, but I do know that its getting real old because it took us 2 hours to get to the El Cajon pass.

From that point on we had a very good ride. That is if you don't count the number of times that the truckers decided to swerve into other lanes and almost wipe out the car next to them. Again someone wanting to test physics on the freeway. One trucker was so bad that he couldn't decide which lane on a two lane high way he liked the best. I was guessing he liked the middle lane since that is where he spent most of his time. He eventually went into the right shoulder and then looks flabbergasted as we passed on the far left lane. He looked like how did I end up here. I want to be in the middle lane.

We made one stop today if you don't count the stop-and-go-and-stop-and-go caused by LA traffic and the many experiments. When we head east to Las Vegas, Colorado River or somewhere beyond like now, we make a stop at Lynwood which is better known as fast food heaven. Lynwood for those who don't know is a little town (take that with a grain of salt) just outside of Barstow. The little town has every known fast food chain known to man and every gas station known to man. It seems the city council (who are they kidding) want people to come and go as quickly as possible. Lynwood is also known for one other thing, and that is an outlet mall. Anyway we did as the city council demands, buy some food and fill up the car and leave.

The kids settled in to the trip pretty well. They really didn't fight today. I'm looking forward to some really good matches tomorrow. Miles misplaced his headphones which isn't surprising. He has a knack for putting things down and not remembering where he put them. He wears glasses for reading and at school. Lisa and I find them everywhere but on his face or his glasses case. It is hard to say who he takes after in this regard. I can be messy but I know where things are. Lisa is almost always neat and organized and she has her lists. If we look at other family members, we can't say that they have the same trait as Miles, so in this regard he is branching out on his own. I'm all for him branching out, but I wish that he just remember to put his dirty socks in the hamper. As for the headphones, I did have to lay down the law on the headphones, because I don't think that I will be able to handle five times a day. In a panic voice... "Where's my headphones?" We will see how long it takes before he misplaces them.

We arrived late in Kingman so we didn't see any sights. We are staying at the Blake Ranch RV Park (picture to your left), which Lisa thinks is a really nice RV park. She thinks that the trees just need to grow some more. We are in a desert without any major source of water running though the town, so I don't think they are going to grow very large or very fast. Who starts a town in the middle of nowhere? The railroad did it. The town of Kingman was founded in 1882. It was built to support mining operations in this part of Arizona. Route 66 goes through Kingman as well.

We drove a total of 364 miles today and paid $90 for gas. Tomorrow is a long day of driving as we try to get as far east as we can so no sightseeing tomorrow. We hope to get to Moriarty, NM, but I'm shooting to go even further than that.

Preamble

Welcome to our blog on our summer family trip, which will take us a across the United States. We will be traveling about 600o miles round trip and visit 17 states in three weeks. Currently, we will be going as far east as Columbus, Ohio. Why Columbus? It is were my dad grew up and there is still many family members living in the area. So we plan to drop by and stay awhile and be that guest that seems to never leave.

As a matter of fact, this trip was designed to torture our Children, Miles and Samantha, or at the very least pay back what our parents did to us when we were kids. We really can't pay our parents back, but the law allows us to put the kids in the back of a car and drive across America. I could say that this is sweet revenge for all the times in the last year that Miles and Samantha caused us grief, complained about homework, dinner, bed times, taking a bath. Yes, they fight each night on who has to take a bath or shower first. I could go on but why bring up all those feelings again. This is a vacation and its supposed to be fun.

As we go across America, we will stop and see relatives along the way and see some sights. What sights, that all depends on time and daylight. We are planning to see the St. Louis Arch, Lincoln's Tomb, Cross the Mississippi (twice), Mt. Rushmore, the rockies and much more or less. Does this sound like a well planned trip. Well, it is. Just look at the route map.

If you don't know us. We are a family of four. Lisa is my wife and we have two kids which I already introduced earlier. Samantha is eleven and going on twenty-one. She likes all things Twilight (the vampire series, maybe you have heard about it) and Robert Paterson. At this point, I think should could recite the books by heart. Miles is nine years old and he likes to tease his sister about all things Twilight. He rather watch Star Wars, Action flicks and Myth Busters. Like all boys his age, computer games rule all things. Lisa likes all things books, HGTV, cooking and me. She hasn't redecorated the RV, but give it time. I'm Dave, and I like Star Wars, Action flicks, and Myth Busters. Hmm. Sounds like Miles, but I like to camp, play games and a few other things that I won't mention here. I also like Lisa, which is good thing since we are married.

Today, we finished packing up the RV with clothes, food, booze and anything else that we need or don't need. We got everything that needs to be squared away prior to a trip. This really is a first, since I usually will be running around at the last minute doing things that should have been done way before the night before. And in generally pissing off Lisa, who would remind me that if I made lists everything would have been done. Anyway, we are ready to go. The picture below is our RV that will be home for the next three weeks.

My plan is to write an entry each night on that days events. The high and lows. The funny and sad. And everything in between. So check back each day to enjoy a good laugh, because this trip has all the trappings of great entertainment.