No Turning Back

Some thoughts from the road...


Flagstaff
The drive to this point was tedious, but once we woke up and decided to keep driving West instead of East, we sealed our car-ride-sore-butt-fates. So, there's no turning back now. One thing I will say about Flagstaff, though, is it's a beautiful place. Very beautiful. Not knowing much else about it, I'd definitely enjoy living there had my life taken a compatible course.

Mountain-fornia
California is way more mountainous than I remember. Ridiculously so. In fact, it's almost completely mountains (obviously except for certain coasts and valleys. Have I mentioned that I don't like to drive in the mountains? I can tolerate day time mountain driving. But night time mountain driving sucks big time (fortunately today was day time mountain driving).

How about that heat?
Driving through the Southern California desert, I watched my car's external temperature reading reach a whopping 114 degrees. Darby complained at one point that she wanted her windows rolled down so she could feel the breeze. I had to explain that I rolled them up some time before because I noticed the temperature was climbing rapidly, and that she should consider that her face might melt off if I were to have rolled it down at that point.

Barstowming (third grade full circle)
We rolled into Barstow, California with three agenda items: Fuel, Food, and... well, okay, two agenda items, but while we were there, I figured it wouldn't be entirely a waste of time to go looking for my old elementary school. Yes, folks, Shawn used to live here in the desert of California. My mother, step-father (a Marine), sister, and I moved to Barstow (the location of a Marine Logistics Base) when I was half-way through kindergarten. I finished out my kindergarten year and also attended first grade at what I remember to be Cameron Elementary, though I couldn't find it (probably my memory sucks). However, I did find Montara Elementary, where I attended second and third grade. What's cool about this scenario is that Darby has just finished her third grade year, so I thought it would be easier for her to relate to my story. I explained how we moved away from Barstow during the summer after third grade, and that this was the first time I had been back to this place since that time. I asked her to imagine, as we were far from home, not going back to Oklahoma until she was 31. Her eyes got pretty wide at that thought.

Unfortunately while we were there, a pretty big thunderstorm blew through. We got soaked just walking form the car into the local McDonald's for lunch, and it ruined the photos of my old school.

Bad traffic timing (that could have been worse)
We got into the LA metro area right around rush hour. Man, it's crazy zipping up and over and around the bends at those speeds with so many cars around. I hated it. Not being much of a speeder (the vast majority of the trip I didn't go over five from the speed limit), it was quite stressful just trying to keep "out of the way" on I-5/I-10. I had to go 89 in a 65 at times, just to avoid possible death. It was mad craziness, and never once did I see a "Chip". But it certainly could have been worse. The traffic in the opposite direction was at a stand-still for as far as the eye could see at one point (five lanes of traffic stuck on a steep mountain incline... ugh).

DDD
We did Downtown Disney for Dinner. Our hotel is less than five minutes from the theme parks and entertainment district. We checked out the shops and had some Rainforest Café for dinner. Yummy on the tummy (but not the wallet).

The truth (about Disney) comes out
I used the dinner setting to break the news to the girls. You see, I use information strategically when it comes to the kids knowing what's going on in a given scenario, and it just so happens that, even though we had just walked through Downtown Disney, they had no clue we were scheduled to spend an entire day at Disneyland the next day. You should have seen their faces light up when I let them in on the surprise.

Broadbandless (No Live-Blogging the Vay-Kay)
I've chosen poorly. In this day and age, I CAN NOT BELIEVE OR POSSIBLY FATHOM EVEN IN THE SLIGHTEST a hotel NOT having broadband internet service available to its guests. No wireless, I can deal with, but no broadband even? That's so telegraph-era. My broadband-spoiled butt couldn't stand but five minutes of dial-up speeds, so I'll not be doing much same-day blogging for this portion of the trip. Sorry.

The stats
Here are the Oklahoma to California travel stats: 24 hours 22 minutes "on the road" time (doesn't count hotel sleep/get ready time, about ten hours), 19 hours 8 minutes of actual drive time to cover 1,338 miles from Del City to Anaheim. Can't say I enjoyed it, but it was definitely cheaper than the seven to nine hundred dollars I would have paid to fly us out here (and then there's the rental car).