Right now I am in Texas, in the beautiful Texas hill country. It is dusk, and I am on a deck high in the treetops, where I can capture a bit of free wi-fi access, so I decided that while everyone is inside, watching TV and relaxing from several adventurous days, I would start to document some of our trip, so I won't have so much to do when we get home and school and seminary start, and life gets really crazy.
We set out for our LONG road trip on a Friday morning. Well, actually, that was the plan, but by the time we finally got loaded and settled, and all the odds and ends taken care of, it was more like early afternoon. It ALWAYS works like that with our family. I was so happy to finally hit the road!
The drive was pretty uneventful which is a really good thing considering the bucket of bolts we are driving. Maybe all the cash we have been pouring into that stupid Suburban lately might have actually done the job (knock on wood - we still have the long drive back).
I loved it, actually. Road trips are about the only time I can sit and read a book or really devour the stack of my favorite magazines that I love but never seem to have enough time to get to. I spent the first part of the trip reading a few church history books to kind of prepare me for seminary, and then rereading the two Hunger Games books to prepare myself for the third and final book coming out next week! Both serious business. The magazines are for the trip home!
And as far as the kids go, they made the trip without too much fighting and squabbling. Let me just say, thank heaven for modern technology! Things might have been quite different without the two PSPs, one Nintendo DS, an iPad, a CD player, and two personal DVD players! (Oh, and my iPhone. I could not have survived this trip without my iPhone!) I was just so glad that we did not have to resort to a rousing round of "Ninety Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall" like we had to do as kids in the back of the station wagon on long road trips.
On Sunday I read to the boys the entire book, "The Marvelous Adventures of Edward Tulane." It was a wonderful book, and they all enjoyed it very much. I would highly recommend reading it to any kids on a long road trip like that with kids of any age. It also promoted a lot of good discussion.
There was on little adventure on the road. We stopped the first night at a rest stop somewhere in New Mexico, I think, that was literally CRAWLING with the big stink bugs and grasshoppers! It was a nice rest area, and you could tell that it was well cared for, but the bugs outside were just huge and crawling on each other. Under the street lights they just piled on the rocks like something from Indiana Jones. It was really quite creepy, but the boys thought it was so cool, and if it was any indication of what was to come on this trip, it meant we were gonna have a great time!
Even though we go a late start, Dennis decided to keep pressing on until we got to El Paso. By the time we rolled into El Paso, it was nearly 3am, which turned out to be a very good thing in fact, because the Residence Inn gave us an early check-in for anything after 3am for that next night. Which means we could finish the night there, have the free breakfast, stay the next night, and have another breakfast for the cost of one night! Not bad for $89. So instead of just finishing the night there and traveling on where we would have to find another hotel the next night, we decided to take the deal and spend Saturday just exploring El Paso.
That seemed like a brilliant idea until we started exploring El Paso.
Have you ever seen El Paso?
I can describe it in one word - YUCK!
We went to explore downtown and it was exactly like walking around Tiajuana. It was filthy and stinky, and people were peddling junk. It didn't help that it was hot and miserable. We walked up a few blocks and decided this was not quite the family friendly atmosphere we were hoping for, and walked back to our car a quick as possible, stopping only once to visit a local pawn shop because the boys were drooling over some weaponry in a window display (this is still Texas, after all). We ended up buying two official Boy Scouts of America regulation harmonicas. They seemed harmless enough.
Above, Luke is bored to tears. Also above, we found it funny that in just a few short blocks walking around we found two perfume shops named after members of our family. That is me under Perfumeria Rachelle, and just around the the corner was Alex Perfumeria. We were pretty sure that if we keep looking, we could find a perfumeria named for each member of our family.
Truth be told, just standing there to take that picture, I thought I was going to throw up, because it smelled so bad of urine right in front if the perfume shop. Putrid. Aren't perfume shops supposed to, oh, I don't know, smell kinda nice?
So we left downtown and went looking for something interesting to see or do. Everyone we asked just gave us a blank stare, even the lady at the front desk of the hotel. We finally gave up, and decided our best bet was to go to the movies. Smart move. We watched Despicable Me 3D. What a great movie! It turned out to be the perfect way to spend an afternoon in El Paso.
El Paso has now officially been added to my "Cities I Hate" list, #2, right there under Las Vegas.
On Sunday morning, before heading out, we went to church. That was really the best part of our whole visit. The building was old and kind of cool (above) and we enjoyed the meeting very much.
Then we hit the road - the long, long long road through Texas. There is not much out there for a long time, but after another day of traveling we got off 10 and headed into the hill country, and there it finally started to feel like Texas - cowboy hats, old buildings with the square top wood facades, pecan trees, and lots and lots of metal stars adorning everything. One town that I loved to drive through was Fredricksberg with its old Germanic and Victorian architecture, pretty parks, old growth trees, and the funnest little shops! If it were not Sunday, I would have insisted we stop. Oh well. Maybe someday we'll be through these parts again, pardner.
It was pretty late by the time we found our timeshare up on the shores of Lake Travis. We had quite a welcome, though, as not two minutes from the time we stopped the car, a couple deer came right up to the boys - another good sign to a bunch of boys that this was going to be quite a trip.
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