Getting quality sleep on this trip has been an issue. It is always nice to come home, because you get to come home to YOUR bed, which is an awesome feeling. No hotel bed is going to be as good as mine. On top of that, there are five of us squished into a hotel room, so our normal sleep patterns are disrupted. The first night, Mr. T wanted to sleep with me because he was crabby and tired from our traveling. We had a king sized bed to share. About half-way through the night, I woke up to find him laying perpendicular to me. He also talks and whimpers in his sleep. This, of course, prevents me from sleeping well. I also didn’t have any access to wifi in our first hotel, and I normally listen to late-night talk shows on the TuneIn Radio app, so I was really having a hard time falling to sleep to begin with. And, when I woke up in the middle of the night (as I did a lot), I had nothing to help me drift off back to sleep.
The next night Mr. Rovira slept on the floor because sleeping with the two boys in one bed was just too crunched. Plus, he drank a Mountain Dew too late in the day, so he could not sleep and didn’t want to disturb us.
The next night, I slept with the boys, and it was squished, but I toughed it out on approximately eight inches of mattress. I had wifi that night, to listen to my shows to help me get to sleep, but with Mr. T attempting to move perpendicular again, I was woken up A LOT.
The next night, we put all the kids together in one bed. We could see quickly that wasn’t going to work: “Mr. T! Stop moving!” and “Thing 1, stop stealing the covers and burrowing!” and “No, I want to be in the middle!” plus some intentional farting made us decide to make Thing 1 and Thing 2 sleep in one bed while Mr. T had to sleep with Mr. Rovira and I. Again, not a lot of sleep, but this time it was because Mr. T woke up about five times claiming to have had a nightmare. Oh, and did I mention that I normally sleep on a king-sized bed? Yep, these hotel room beds were queen-sized. To spare ourselves all of the conflict the next night, Thing 1 graciously volunteered to sleep on the floor. I slept with Thing 2, and Mr. T and Mr. Rovira slept in the other bed. That was a pretty decent night’s sleep. But then we had to drive, like, 500 miles the next day. It gets tiring.
The NEXT night we lucked out! At this point, we had made it to Wichita. Apparently, when I made our reservations, I booked us a “two queen bed suite” so not only did we have the usual two queen-sized beds that we were trying to get used to, but also we had a COUCH! The kids took dibs to see who got to sleep on the couch; Mr. T won.
Where’s Mr. T? Can you find him?
We all got a pretty decent night’s sleep that night.
In Dallas, our beds were too hard. Mr. T volunteered to sleep on the floor that time. He serenaded us to sleep by singing “God Bless America” six times. It was awesome. I slept with Thing 1 that night. I should know this from our visit to London last summer, but he totally steals covers. I woke up cold at one point in the night and had to steal them back.
Now, at Uncle Marcus and Aunt Clare’s house, we have more comfortable digs (for free!) but it still isn’t home. I love everything we’re doing here, but it will be so satisfying to peel back the covers of my own bed and drift off to a peaceful slumber at home.
In the old Looney Toons cartoons, Bugs Bunny often jokes about “forgetting to take that left turn at Albuquerque” to explain why he may have ended up in the location he did. The Roviras weren’t driving through Albuquerque on this stretch of our road trip, and we weren’t exactly “lost,” even though it may have felt like it at the time. It seems there’s always an “off the beaten track” adventure we get ourselves into on one of our road trips, and this time I was behind the wheel. (Mr. Rovira was behind the wheel in 2011 when we last had an adventure we wouldn’t soon forget.)
Leaving Moab was uneventful. There wasn’t much to see between Moab and the Colorado-Utah state line. Once we made it into Colorado, the scenery improved dramatically. The Colorado River (they have rivers with water in them here!) paralleled the interstate for much of the journey. The rolling hills of western Colorado were a brilliant green. We stopped in Eagle, Colorado, for a gas top-off and some ice cream to stretch our legs a bit before heading through the Rockies and into Denver.
Mr. T describes just how far away we are from Uncle JM’s house . . . it turns out we were further away than we expected.
Our GPS said that it would be about two hours before we arrived in Denver. We hopped back into the car after first stopping off at the post office so Thing 2 could mail a postcard to her friend back home. We started climbing in elevation; there was still snow on the Rockies next to the interstate as we drove past, which was awesome to see considering it is JUNE. We made it to Continental Divide in the Eisenhower Tunnel, and then began to descend in elevation. That’s when all the roadwork started.
We understand that the road repair season here in Colorado probably isn’t what it is in California. They have inclement weather which prevents repairs at other parts of the year, but really? Stopping traffic every three to five miles on an interstate during the middle of the day? At least California roadwork is accomplished in the middle of the night a lot of the time. Since I was driving, I and the other drivers would have to slow down to about 40 mph and merge into either the right or the left lane. Often times, traffic slowed to a complete stop as we inched by in the open lane while the road workers re-striped the lanes on the other side or repaired the guard rails. Then we’d see signs telling us the road work has ended and “thank you for your courtesy” signaling to us that we could speed up. So we did, only to have to slow down again five miles up the road for another project. It got really frustrating. Then, at exit 234, traffic stopped completely. Just stopped. After nearly twenty minutes, we had moved not even a mile. That’s when we started looking for a way around the traffic. Our GPS system will do that for us, so we decided to try it.
It directed us to exit the freeway and head north on a road that supposedly led to other towns, such as Alice. Then, we would continue heading east before finally rejoining the I-70. At first, all was well. We headed northbound up an (albeit) empty road. Alongside were mailboxes for homes so it was definitely well-traveled, just not full of traffic. Then our GPS alerted us that we would be taking a right at the next intersection. I prepared to veer right, although we came to a stop when we realized that the road we were directed to take was a dirt road.
The lonely road our GPS took us on as part of a detour to get around traffic on the I-70 west of Denver.
Having no other alternative but to go back and rejoin the (stopped) interstate, we decided to carry on. The speed limit was 20 mph on the dirt road, but we figured that was still faster than we were moving on the interstate, so it was a win.
At this point, I should stop and say Mr. Rovira started making jokes GALORE at my expense. For four years I have never let him forget the last road trip we took to Louisiana and the freaky side trip he took us on after we stopped for gas outside of Needles. I’ll post the recap I wrote of that when we get home and link it to this one. But in a nutshell, we ended up on old Route 66, which was completely deserted, at 12:30 in the morning, passing little white crosses periodically on the side of the road, going up and down mountain switchbacks at 10 mph. We also killed some hawk that had swooped down onto the highway to pick up a critter to eat, but our headlights temporarily stunned it and we hit it. Eventually we ended up back on Interstate 40, but not after experiencing some seriously Psycho moments. We laugh about it now.
So on we went. The further we went, though, the narrower and more “rustic” the road became. I had to slow down to a stop and inch over boulders sticking half up out of the ground. Mr. Rovira was afraid that if I went too quickly over the boulders it would pitch the car over and down the hillside. (Some tall pines would have probably have stopped our roll. But then, making it out of the car perched precariously in the trees and back to “civilization” to get help would have been dicey.) It was about this point that I looked up to the GPS screen and realized that we weren’t “registering” on a road anymore. The green line that were were supposed to be following was off to the left of where we actually were. What did that mean? Did I take a wrong turn? Was this road, in fact, not in use any more? We had no choice but to bump along because we couldn’t turn around. There was no room. Woe to us should another car have come along in the opposite direction. Mr. Rovira was making jokes, so we were laughing a lot in the midst of our real concern for where we were.
Finally we made it back to a more “paved” dirt road, which (interestingly) took us past some old, abandoned mining equipment and buildings and into a town named Central City. From there we traveled on the Central City Parkway and back to the I-70. We made it down the pass and into Denver, only to hit stopped traffic AGAIN. More road work. Finally, knowing that there was no possibility of getting “lost” on a deserted road like we did before, we got off the freeway and traveled to our hotel via city streets. All in all, what should have taken us two hours (from Eagle to Denver) took us four. To say we were all frustrated and “losing it” by the time we were nearly at the hotel was an understatement. Mr. T, in particular, was extremely wound up.
After a quick shower, we headed over to Uncle JM’s and out to a delicious pizza dinner. While in the restaurant, we got to watch a heavy summer downpour drench the Denver area. (Apparently, they’ve been getting thunderstorms in the evenings around 5 p.m. each night for three weeks.) We got some laundry done at Uncle JM’s and played some video games while it dried. Then it came time to go back to our hotel and go to bed. That’s a whole other post that I’ll write about next.
So were on the fourth day of our road trip. We spent the weekend in Las Vegas, and then yesterday we drove to Moab. This morning, we got up WAY early (for vacation!) and hiked out to the “Delicate Arch” at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. Below is a little wrap up our our experiences so far:
Vegas — It started off AWESOMELY at the House of Blues Foundation Room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. We dropped off the kiddos at Uncle Walt’s house for some cousin fun while the adults had a chance to hang out at the balcony of the Foundation Room at, like, the 72nd floor (or something) of the Mandalay Bay hotel. (I never usually get to go to things like this; thanks, Uncle Larry!)
The Las Vegas strip, as seen from the balcony of the House of Blues Foundation Room at Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino
From there, some of the adults (including Mr. Rovira) went to go see the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. (Not me, because I’m not that old, and I have no idea who that band is or what songs they sing.) Others of us went down into the casino. My niece, Ms. A, had never been gambling before, so Fairy Godmother Aunt Jennifer (not me, I’m Aunt Jenny) and Uncle Steve showed her how it was done as my other niece, Ms. M, and I watched. Then Mr. Rovira came back to pick me up to go back to Uncle Walt’s and pick up our kids, after which we checked into our hotel room.
The next day, Mr. Rovira and I took the kids to the Paris Hotel and Casino for a real Vegas buffet breakfast. We wanted to go to that hotel because that’s the hotel at which we got married. On the way back to our hotel, we stopped at the iconic Las Vegas sign for a touristy pic, before hopping into our bathing suits to spend a couple of hours at our hotel’s lazy river pool.
Yep, doing the touristy thing in Lost Wages . . . I mean, Las Vegas!
That was awesomely relaxing, until some rude Australian boys showed up. 🙁 We went back to the hotel room for naps before we had to get ready for Uncle Walt and Aunt Joy’s big party.
Mr. T was the HIT of the party. It was a combination wedding vow renewal and retirement party. He danced the night away and had lots of fun with his cousins in the photo booth.
Mr. T, with his godmother, Cousin M.An almost-all-cousin pic at Uncle Walt and Aunt Joy’s party.Mr. T, Thing 1, Thing 2, Mr. Rovira and Cousin S get down at Uncle Walt and Aunt Joy’s party.Mr. T and the DJ at Uncle Walt and Aunt Joy’s party!
Waking up the next morning, we packed up and went to have some breakfast with Uncle Walt and Aunt Joy before hitting the road to Moab. The trip to Moab was about a six and a half hour trip, and we made stops along the way in St. George (for In-N-Out lunch!) and Richfield for gas. We got rained on outside of St. George, which was awesome, as it cleaned off our car of bugs!
Moab — We woke the kids up EARLY to go to Arches National Park. We wanted to see the “Delicate Arch” relatively tourist-free, and especially when it was a cool part of the day. When we set out, it was 55˚F — perfect! We got to the park so early, in fact, there was no one manning the ticket booth, so we got to enter the park without paying the $10 auto fee. There were only a few families at the arch when we got there, so Mr. T, Mr. Rovira, and Thing 1 were able to go stand under the arch and take a picture all by themselves. Mr. T was a trooper getting all the way to the top.
Mr. Rovira, Thing 1, and Mr. T under “Delicate Arch”We made it!A meditative moment for Mr. T at Arches National Park.Coming back down the ridge at Arches National Park.Looking over the ledge — it is a far drop! — on the way back down from “Delicate Arch”
Now we’re back in the hotel room, chilling out a bit and planning the rest of our day. The kids are chomping at the bit to go to the pool. We’re researching options for how to spend the rest of the day. Unfortunately, Moab seems to be a pretty expensive place! A one-hour trip on the jet boat on the Colorado River is $55 per person — kinda steep for us. Plus, Mr. T doesn’t weigh enough to go on the boat, nor is he old enough to go on the boat to begin with . . . or zip lining . . . etc. So, we’ll walk the main drag, get some frozen yogurt, go to the pool, not necessarily in that order. 🙂
