Brandon and I hadn't really planned out the Arizona part of our vacation. We knew that we'd show up at Bryan and Kara's on Monday and then just figure it out from there. We didn't even know what day we would leave their house. All day on Wednesday we'd been debating if we wanted to leave on Thursday or Friday. Finally we decided we would hang around their house for one more day and then leave on Friday. We had no idea when we would see them next so we wanted to spend as much time with them as possible.
Bryan had to go back to work on Thursday so we didn't do any big things that day. That was okay because all the cousins had fun hanging out no matter what we had planned.
Brandon installed a ceiling fan for Bryan and Kara. I spent the afternoon going to thrift stores to find a dress for our upcoming Battalion Ball.
In the late afternoon Kara and I took the kids on a walk to the park. My girls were fascinated with the palm trees. We have palm trees in our part of Texas, but the girls have only ever seen them from the car.
They were also impressed by the oranges that grew on the trees. (I though the tree in this picture had oranges on it when I was uploading pictures. So just pretend.) They kept saying things like, "Oranges grow on trees in Arizona."
They went to bed really easily that night. I'm glad they did because then we were able to chitchat with Bryan and Kara without little kids interrupting us. (Easy is a relative term.)
On Friday we were anxious to hit to road early. Kara distracted the kids with her "elephant game" while we hurried and packed up the Honda. Everything was ready by, you guessed it, 10:00 am.
We put all the kids on the couch for a cousins picture. Somehow seeing all 6 of them like this explained a lot as to why I'd been so tired the past few days.
Derrick is only about 3 weeks older than Chloe, but he was so much bigger.
After a round of hugs goodbye we were on our way. We started driving south toward Tuscon. The kids staged a huge fight and we had to pull over to rearrange seating assignments again. (Part of me suspected that they were fighting so they could have different seats.) As luck would have it we pulled over at an exit that had a tourist info station so we were finally able to pick up a map of Arizona.
When we were back on the road we saw signs for Saguaro National Park. The map confirmed that the west part of the park wasn't very far away from the freeway so we went to check it out.
There were giant cactus plants everywhere we looked.
We thought we would drive to the visitors center and have a lunch break, but it turned out to be too far away. But we had a good time driving around anyway. We drove on a dirt road and the kids had so much fun going "ahhh ahhhh ahhhh" while we drove on the "bumpy road."
Veronica needed to nurse so we pulled over. Charlotte was asleep, but Brandon took Lydia and Derrick to touch a cactus. We wanted them to see how tall it was.
Then we got on the freeway again and drove through Tuscon. My brother Billy went on his mission to the Tuscon area a few years ago. I texted him and let him know where we were. He was really excited for us. Lydia kept asking me to take her picture.
We got off the freeway again when we came to the exit for the town of Tombstone. Brandon's mom has always wanted to visit Tombstone. Since it was practically on our way home we figured we should make a stop in her honor.
We hoped to get there by 2:00 am so we could see a reenactment of the shootout at the O.K. Corral. But our little detour in the Saguaro National Park made us late. That's okay (ha ha) because we weren't sure how our kids would react to hearing a lot of gun shots in 30 seconds. So instead we just walked around the main street area.
The kids were really cute. They were fascinated by every little detail of the town.
We found a penny presser and had fun with that.
But 51 cents wasn't the only money we spent in this town. We also paid $14 to go see a little comedy show depicting a bank robbery.
It was a funny show and was worth it.
The kids liked the show, but they were scarred whenever the actors fired blanks. Derrick cried every time. One of the actors said, "Hey kid, you don't have it that bad, at least you don't live here."
At the end we all took our picture with the main "bad guy." The kids were all kind of scared of him when they got up close.
Then we walked around some more. This guy was playing and dancing to music. The kids all thought he was really neat. Brandon and I felt like half the people in this town had a little too much fun in the 60's and 70's if you know what I mean.
The atmosphere of the town was really fun. It was cool to see so many cowboy era things. There was a stage coach driving around while the driver gave a tour.
Most of the stores were just souvenir shops, but it was cool to see how an old west town used to look. Tombstone was in Billy's mission area. He says that he's convinced that any building in this town that is more than 60 years old in haunted.
There was also a trolley driving around for tours. Next time we come I'd like to take one of those tours.
We stopped outside of the O.K. Corral and took a picture. I honestly have no clue why this building is important, but it is. I just don't care that much about the old west. I told Brandon, "Every time someone mentions Wyatt Erp I picture Owen Wilson in Shanghi Noon."
There was a city park that had a gazebo. Our kids still have an inexplicable fascination with gazebos so we let them run around in there for a little bit.
And then it was back to the Honda. We walked past the courthouse on our way to the car. This courthouse reminded me of all the county buildings in Texas. It made me feel a little homesick.
And then we started driving and driving and driving. Brandon was tired so I drove from Tombstone to Lordsburg New Mexico. We stopped for dinner at a McDonalds. We aren't real big fans of McDonald's food besides ice cream cones, but we were actually really impressed by how good the food tasted. Or maybe we were just so happy to be out of the car.
While we were at the restaurant Derrick made friends with an older couple that sat next to us. He kept running up the the man and hugging his leg. The man loved it. I told him that Derrick was already missing the attention from his Grandpas.
Then we went out to the car and changed the kids into their pajamas. Charlotte kept telling me that she wanted to sleep in a hotel. I told her that we might stop in a hotel if we got to El Paso in time.
But we didn't make it to El Paso until around 11:00 pm. All the kids were asleep so there was no point to getting a motel and worrying about waking them up. So we just kept driving. Brandon and I were able to see Mexico from the freeway. That was pretty cool. We also went through a border control check point. All they did was ask us if we were US citizens and then waved us through when we said yes.
We had to get gas around 2:00 in Fort Stockton. (We were near the time zone line so it might have been 1:00.) All the kids woke up when we stopped. I discovered that Lydia had thrown up. Luckily I had accidently packed two pairs of pajamas for Derrick, so I changed Lydia into the extra pair. She was pretty happy despite the throw up.
All the kids were wide awake so we let them play around while I fed Veronica. I'd climbed into the back to help Lydia change and so I just stayed there while I nursed. We were still at the gas station pump, but no one was around to see the strange party going on in our car.
I liked nursing in the back because I could stretch out my legs. And the front seat was free for the kids to jump on. Derrick had developed an obsession with the door lock button and he must have pressed it a million times while we sat there.
We all had a great time during that break. I think we knew we were getting closer and closer to home.
We put the kids back in their car seats and turned on a movie. It was then that we discovered some thing interesting about our DVD player. The DVD player came with two headsets. From what we understood the only way to listen to the sound from a movie was to listen on the headsets. Brandon jerryrigged a way to pug the headsets into the tape deck and play the sound over the car's radio. All through our vacation I'd been balancing the rigged up headset on our center console, and dealing with the cord that stretched to the tape-deck. It'd had been mildly annoying. Well this night I hadn't plugging in the headset yet, but we could still hear the sound. It was playing over the radio which was set to 91.9. Apparently that was the frequency for the DVD player. We laughed at how it took us 18 days to figure that out.
The kids all fell asleep and we were tempted to pull over. But we were worried that they would all wake up if we stopped. Around 4:00 am we decided that we
had to stop. Both of us were too tired to keep driving. We said a quick prayer that they kids wouldn't wake up and then pulled off at the first exit we found. We kept the engine running for a few minutes to trick the kids' bodies into thinking we were still driving. Then we turned it off. Lydia woke up, but she fell asleep when Brandon brought her into the front seat to cuddle. Veronica also woke up so I brought her up front with me and fed her. I wasn't in a very comfortable position but I still got a lot of rest. We were all asleep for probably 2 hours or so.
Then the sun came up and we started driving again. We kept driving through hills that had been cut through. I never knew the "Texas Hill Country" extended so far West.
It was a really pretty morning. Every thing looked so wonderful. It's like the sky, the hills, and the trees were all saying, "Welcome Home!"
The last two hours of the drive seemed to take forever. But eventually we were driving past familiar places in Copperas Cove. The girls kept exclaiming, "That's OUR Old McDonalds! That's OUR store with the fishies! That's OUR HIB (HEB) store!" I was pretty happy to see everything too. It was so good to scan our ID's and go through OUR gate.
And then we were parking in OUR driveway and walking through OUR front door. I thought I appreciated this house when I first saw it last year. But nothing compared to how great it was to walk into my own house that was full of my own stuff. I really appreciated all the family and friends who had opened up their homes to us on our trip, but I was so happy to be back in MY space. Brandon felt the same way too. He said, "look it's OUR fridge, with OUR food." Yes it was good to be home.
We unpacked the Honda. I washed all the kids' carseat covers. Brandon vacuumed out the car. Soon there were hardly any traces of our long road trip left. Nothing could take away the wonderful memories though.
And guess what? We didn't completely traumatize the kids with all the hours in the car. Saturday night Derrick kept trying to go out to the garage and get in the car. And a few days later Charlotte told me, "I want to drive all night and visit people again." I guarantee that we will.
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