The Great 2013 Vacation: Off We Go

I left a little early from work on Thursday to make sure we could pick up our rental car that evening (a KIA Optima--a very roomy, nice car with a deep truck that averaged about 35 mpg) and have it packed and ready to go Friday morning.  The plan had been to leave no later then 8:00 that morning, but the vacation gods rose up to smite me and I ended up needing to do some last minute, necessary things.  We didn't actually go until around 8:45 (Ben and Isaac were practically burning holes into the back of my head as they willed me to finish).  As I stuffed the last of the trip necessities into the trunk, Jennifer remembered she hadn't packed church shoes--there was room for hers, but that was all: "We'll just wear our tennis shoes." I said as I shut the trunk.  With a last minute check of the house and the locks and the alarm, I locked the front door and we were off!

Our first destination was a KOA in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  When we reached Barstow, I left the I-15 and merged onto the I-40 which is the interstate that follows the general route of the old Route 66.  I had burned ten "trip cd's" for our excursion.  Each family member picked about 45 to 50 favorite songs from our iTunes play lists and I spread them out evenly over the ten cd's.  With each cd I also added two "road" songs as the first and eleventh song.  Since we were following route 66, my pick for the first road song on cd number one was "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" by Nat "King" Cole.  I told everyone to listen to the names of the towns and look for them as we drove.  The trunk of the car had enough room for our tent, air mattresses, and tarp (our bishop suggested getting a tarp to lay underneath the tent and stronger tent stakes--I'm glad I did), as well as two rucksacks full of clothes, a zip-up holder for our church clothes, a camping lantern, a battery operated device to blow up our mattresses (I was surprised how well it worked) and a cooler (and a partridge in a pear tree).  Finally, I had gone to Costco the day before and bought about 5 different snacks.  We poured the contents of the boxes into grocery bags and I stuffed them next to the cooler.

The goal was to make the least amount of stops as possible.  We needed potty breaks and breaks to stretch our legs, but I think we did pretty good.  As I mentioned, our first gas stop was in Winslow, Arizona.  "Mystery place" was written on the itinerary, so everyone knew one was coming.  The eleventh song on the third vacation cd was "Take It Easy" by the Eagles.  I told everyone to listen closely to the song and it would tell them where and what the mystery place was.  When the line, "Well, I'm a standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona" came, the car erupted with, "Winslow, Arizona!"  Then Jen looked at me and said, "Wait, you already said we were getting gas there.  What's the mystery?"  I smiled and said nothing.  As I drove into Winslow and followed Main Street, everyone kept asking, "What's the mystery place?"  I told them to think about the line from the song.  "Okay, it says he's standin' on the corner, but what's the mystery place?"  Even with signs, I passed the statue and had to drive back around the block to come back to it.

  

As we pulled up to the corner, I pointed, "See, he's standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona." 

If you look behind Ben's left shoulder, you can see the girl in the flat bed Ford slowing down to take a look at him.

We reached Albuquerque sometime around 10 that evening.  I would have liked to have seen the city in daylight, but one interesting aspect was that many of the bridges were lit up with colored stage type lights (one would be all red, another yellow, we were quite fascinated by it).  Since I had booked and prepaid all our KOA stays, the manager left a map for us which directed us to our campsite.  The tent areas were not grassy, but had pebbles (made me glad we had air mattresses).  Before we left, we had practiced putting up our tent in the front yard several times to learn how to do it.  The wind was blowing a little bit which made things difficult at first until I got the idea to secure one side of the tent into the ground to keep it from blowing away.  I had an adventure trying to locate the bathrooms while the rest of my family found them without any trouble.  We finally crashed around 11:30.