January 4, 2007
Happy New Year! I have fallen down on the blog! We were very busy visiting family and friends and playing with the Grandson’s. We had Ian over for a day, spent a day in
Martinez visiting family on the 1st, and spent an entire day pulling 3,000 slides out of the carousels, numbering them and putting them in groups of 10 in case we have to send them out to be scanned. They are boxed, as are all our photos and are now with us waiting to be scanned into the computer. I think we may now be overweight, well, we are after the holidays, but the trailer may be now too!Today we left Ukiah and instead of heading north as we had planned we are heading south and then east to Houston, Texas. My cousin Darcy, who is just a few years younger than me, had a bad car accident on Dec. 19th. We heard about it just a couple days ago. She is improving, but is still critical; that she is with us at all is a miracle. She was thrown 100 feet from her car and from a cracked open skull, fractured bones from head to toe and ruptured spleen and punctured liver she has managed to survive. She had moved to the Houston area several months ago and has no family there. Her Mom and sister and children flew out from California as soon as they heard, but couldn’t stay as long as they would like. My Aunt is still with her and is alone there so we decided to go be her moral support.
So we hit I5 south and then took 99 from Sacramento. We haven’t been on 99 in a lot of years so it was a nice change from the monotony of 5. We seemed to be just behind all the bad rain. The roads were very wet and parking lots looked like lakes but we just sailed on through. As we neared Bakersfield we decided to listen to the weather channel and they were talking about 75 mile an hour winds over the Tehachapi pass which we were heading for. We talked to a trucker on the ham radio who had just been over
there and they were bad, not close the road bad, but we decided to wait until morning. We didn’t want to get over to Mojave and have the winds rock us all night. So we have planted ourselves at 8p.m. across the road from the flying J where all the truckers are parked. We tucked ourselves in between two and will sleep here for the night to the lovely rumble of BIG engines. We had traveled 414 miles today and it was showers and bed for us!January 5, 2007
We slept surprisingly well with the rumble of engines to drown out noises and we were tucked between two trucks which were good noise blockers also. We thought about getting out early but decided to wait a bit. Traffic and ice over the passes were a concern.
We pulled out at 8:05 and didn’t hit bad traffic through Bakersfield. It was 29 degrees at the top of the Tehachapi’s and there was some ice so we were glad that we had waited. Once we got over the mountains and down into the Mojave valley, BIG wind, all the way to Highway 85 in Arizona. It is 
the Phoenix bypass and somewhere along there the wind let up. We went through big dust clouds and when we stopped for breaks the trailer was rocking like we were traveling down a bumping, winding road. I drove for 
over an hour to give Larry a break. We lost an hour in Arizona…hate that. We landed in Gila Bend, AZ at 9 p.m. We traveled 544 miles in 12 hours time. Glad to see that diesel has come down some!Our route today was highway 58 from Bakersfield to Barstow, then 40 to Needles, then 95 to Blythe and then 10 to 85 which heads south out of Buckeye (west of Phoenix) to Gila Bend on 8. Tonight we are sleeping over behind the Shell station in Gila Bend with all the big boys again. It seems quieter so far, yet as I am typing this I can hear a train horn off in the distance…hmmmm.
January 6, 2007
When we got up this morning in Gila Bend, AZ it was 38 degrees. It was 4 at the Grand Canyon! We thought they left out a number! Glad we stayed south.
We picked a good place to sleep last night. It was really pretty quiet. It wasn’t nearly as windy today which was nice. Yesterday the wind kept blowing the steps on our trailer out. Fortunately they hang up so they couldn’t drop all the way open, a bungee cord stopped that from happening any more.
It was a beautiful day today. Cool but sunny. It was nice to see the Saguaros, we hadn’t planned on seeing them again for quite awhile! We stopped in Benson a little before
noon to check out their new Super Walmart. It was the teeniest one we have ever seen! It was very busy, but the aisles and the space in front of the check stands was tight. Not a comfortable place to shop.Today we decided to only go as far as Deming, NM. We needed to get on the internet and do some research, I needed to blog and we needed to reorganize our home. When we left we had the intention of taking care of things when we got to Washington. We had some rearranging to do for a long road trip. So we landed today at 3:40. We got laundry done, some maintenance done and our computer work done. We traveled 346 miles today. We have traveled 1,304 miles since leaving Ukiah day before yesterday and Larry estimates we have another 860 to go. We were on highway 8 east until we ran back into 10. We’ll be taking that all the way to Houston. We paid $2.42 for diesel today in Deming.
This last pic is where we are tonight, Dreamcatchers, an Escapee park. We wanted full hook-ups.We have to have the truck looked at. When we left Bakersfield yesterday the engine light came on and it started acting funny. The book says it is an emissions problem and that the gas cap wasn’t closed properly and or we got bad fuel. We had just fueled up the night before we left Bakersfield and that is what Larry suspects, but doing what the book suggests hasn’t really changed much. The truck isn’t acting as weird, but it has lost some power and the light is still on, so we’ll have to find a dealership on Monday.
So that is about all for now. My cousin is off the critical list but she is still in the trauma unit and we haven’t heard when and where they plan on moving her. The scans show no brain damage, but coming back from major brain trauma is a long road. She still hasn’t comprehended what has happened and why she is in the hospital. I can’t wait to give my Aunt Gretchen a big hug. This has been hard for her. My Uncle Dan can’t be there with her because he is having his own health issues.
P.S. Just talked to my Aunt and they have started sitting Darcy up a bit and that is exhausting for her. Her confusion is starting to dissipate too, so every day there are slight improvements.
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