Saturday, August 9, 2008

Day 1: Henderson, Nevada 8-7-08





We left today for our longest driving family vacation that we have ever taken. A little over 1600 miles, one way! We are planning on it taking us 4 days. We should roll into the thriving metropolis of Diller, Nebraska sometime on Sunday evening. We are going to visit some special friends of ours (The Weer’s) that we met in China when we received our girls. They came out to see us in March & now we are taking the family truckster to Diller.
We got a little later start then we had wanted-even though Lindsay was done with her final by 10, she could not leave school early without being docked some serious points. She got home from school a little after 1 & we were on the road by 2:30.
Just outside of Morro Bay, on 41 between MB & Atascadero, we started plugging in all the different electrical devices-ok, the GPS, Lindsay’s phone charger & my laptop. The necessary things in life! J But one of our power inverters was not working. It was brand new. So we stopped in Atascadero at Kragen auto parts to buy a new inverter. We left home at 2:30 & stopped at 2:52! LOL Michael found a new one got in the car & plugged it in-it didn’t work. Now both the cigarette lighter & the aux power weren’t working. We figured it must be a fuse. We found the fuse box & after changing several fuses, we got the cigarette lighter fixed & could plug the GPS into there. That was the crucial one! We’ll just work on battery power with my computer & keep reading the owners manual to see if we can find a different one. So by 3:45 we were on the road again! We do have another aux power outlet in the back by Matt & I’m able to plug my laptop into that one. So life is great again! Haha
I think we made it to Bakersfield for dinner. Then our next stop was Barstow for a little bathroom break & change into jammies about 9:30 or so. Our ETA at that point was about 12:15 am. Then about 11 or so we hit a major traffic jam. I couldn’t tell you how many miles long it was. We could see red tail lights for as far as the eye could see. Not a good sign at all. They were working on the road. I think it took us over an hour and a half to go a short distance.
Madeline finally conked out sometime after 11. She was such a good trooper. She really just wanted to be held. So after some heart-wrenching cries, I climbed into the backseat & sat next to her & held her as best I could with her in her car seat & my seatbelt buckled. She slept for about an hour & then woke up again crying for Mommy. So I climbed back into the seat next to her. She had been sneezing a lot & a little runny nose, maybe allergies?
We finally got to the hotel, I guess about 2:15 am. I think by 3 we were all getting to bed. Maddie didn’t want to have anything to do with the crib in the room, so I brought her to bed with Lindsay & me & she fell asleep on me in about 20 mins. So put her to bed about 3:30.
Sleep well everyone!

1 comment:

Rachelle said...

LOVE all the pictures!!!! Hope today was a great day! Mark & I are off to his 25th (yikes) class reunion tonight with all 11 of his other class mates. I can smell the banana bars baking in the oven now, just for you!! Have fun Grizwalds!! Holiday roooaaad!!