California Here I Come!

Family and a great group from church helped pack the trailer. Be ready to be amazed, in that trailer safely packed are the entire contents of my apartment. There is a sofa, loveseat, chair, ottoman, office chair, queen mattress and box spring, kitchen table and four chair, 3 bookshelves, file cabinet, and many other odds and ends.

With a well packed trailer and a well planned trip courtesy of Mapquest, Mom, Dad and I were ready to hit the raod. It said the trip would be 23 hours. Originally we were going to do the trip in 3 days, but had to change the plans and do the trip in 2 days. The goal was to go to Albuquerque, NM a short 13 hours, leaving 10 hours for Monday. To be flexible we decided to wait on hotel reservations in case we could make it farther in the first day. It kept getting darker and darker and doing the math 13 hours was not adding up to get us to Albuquerque. We were exhausted and came pulled off at an exit for a hotel. It looked a little sketchy and hotel had a window to talk through and not enter into the lobby. We decided to hop back on the road and find a more comforting place to call it a night. We would see a sign and then couldn't figure out how to get to the hotel. There was another one, there it went. Before we knew it... Albuqurque was gone. No worries my mom said there were many other exits and we would find one. 100 miles later and dark windy highways through I think a mountainous area we emerged to a city and literally crawled in bed. Mapquest is a LIAR. We were on the road about 16 hours.

The next day was not too bad. The low gas prices were history. I expected Oklahoma and New Mexico to be flat... but good grief I did not image the extent of blahness of the high dessert in Arizona and California. Whew... was it HOT! The highest reading the car gave was 106. Upon entering California we had to go through a road check where each vehicle was checked. Had I remembered to bring my plants, this is where I would have either smuggled them into the state or left them at the checkpoint. No worries, we made it through without a problem. Yes as you can tell by the picture the scenery is not so exciting. We arrived, we made in two days... exhuasted.

But no worries we had hotel reservations. The hotel manager and I did not see eye to eye. My mistake and when I did the reservation online I accidentally did not change it to 3 occupants instead of the 1 that auto filled. The manager was not happy with me. And then he told us we could not park the trailer on the grounds because it would not fit in the spots, and my dad would have to jack knife it to get in 3 spots. A long drawn out ordeal occurred with me talking to headquarter to okay the 2 extra occupants and figure out parking. They were laughing about the trailer, and I just wanted to go to sleep. Finally the drive was over and I was hours away from moving in.