Tye and I decided that we wanted to be closer to family with the arrival of our baby girl. So, we packed up everything we owned and headed back west. The 2,900+ mile adventure was one we will not forget. Here is our behemoth of a truck - filled to the brim - and our car that we towed back.
Just for fun, here is a Google Map image of what our journey looked like.
We didn't have a strict agenda of where we'd be stopping, just a goal of around 600 miles per day. Unfortunately, the first day (Thursday, December 8) we got off to a late start thanks to our moving truck getting stuck in the front yard. We had to pay for a tow service to come and pull the truck out. Once we got going we drove for quite a while and ended up stopping in a very small town called Marion, VA. It was far from glamorous, but since we basically were in the middle of nowhere, we really had no other options.
The next day we thought it would be fun to stay in Memphis and explore a little. Well, when you're hauling a large truck and a vehicle, it's not so easy to just stop and do some sight seeing. We kept on truckin' until we reached Conway, AR. We literally hit another bump in the road when we pulled into a hotel parking lot. While driving up the small inclined driveway, the truck and trailer bottomed out. We were stuck yet again! Thankfully, we had some very nice and normal tow truck guys help us. Not what you expect at midnight in a strange town. Another challenge we faced throughout the trip was finding a hotel that would 1. allow pets and 2. allow us to park our large truck next to our room to avoid anyone breaking into it. We finally got settled into a hotel room around 1:30 am. Poor Tye was exhausted since he was in charge of the driving. Thankfully we got some decent sleep that night.
This is where the trip got interesting. We planned to drive all the way to Amarillo, TX. Once we got there we quickly realized that the area around I-40 seemed a little sketchy and we weren't comfortable staying there. So, Tye loaded up on caffeine and we decided to keep on driving through the night. We found ourselves in lovely Gallup, NM and decided to find a hotel and get some rest there. This leg of the trip was about 900 miles. Thankfully we found a nice place to stay, grabbed an early dinner and just relaxed/slept until morning.
At this point in the trip we had just under 900 miles until we arrived to our destination in California. We made the decision to drive straight through, unless weather or severe exhaustion got in the way. It started to snow as we were leaving Gallup, but we didn't come across any other "risky" weather until we passed through Flagstaff, AZ. Apparently we drove through the very beginning of a huge storm. Thank God we just barely missed that! I would not be too pleased if we got stuck in some random town and had to put the last leg of our trip on hold. This part of the drive was all desert and became boring rather quickly. We finally drove over the California state line around 4 pm. We decided at this point to continue until we got home. The only other issue we were going to potentially have was hitting a snow and ice storm in Tehachapi. Thankfully, we missed that by just about an hour.
Tye was extremely exhausted since he had done 100% of the driving. It was definitely a struggle for him to stay awake during the last few hours of our trip. I am not sure how much help I was as being 6 months preggy brought it's own challenges. No complaints though; we had a memorable but safe trip and finally pulled up to my parent's house around 11:30 pm. Thank the sweet Lord!
The next day was spent unloading the truck (mostly done by Tye and my youngest brother Mikey) and trying to get somewhat organized. Ever since then, we've been in a whirlwind of trying to get settled and enjoying our families during the holiday chaos. We are definitely glad to be home! Our main focus now is prepping for our sweet little girl to arrive in late March.
No comments:
Post a Comment