California

(Gabriella and Mikey)

We decided that the road to Albuquerque should be by way of Taos , as there were some Indian ruins there, and why not see some more ruins? So we got off the interstate at Raton , New Mexico , and headed west into the mountains. It turns out that this was the most mountainous part of our journey, and the van did just fine. It was a really pretty drive, past Philmont Scout Ranch, where Nate went backpacking in high school, and past a few small towns around ski resorts. The mountain roads were really windy though, and we found out that Ella gets car sick on those kind of roads, so we had to pull over a couple of times so she could recover. We got into Taos about 6:30 and found that the ruins had been closed for the night. So we saw what we could through the gate, which was not much, and went to find dinner. There were a bunch of snooty looking places that were really expensive, but after a lot of walking we found a Mexican place with delicious food.

We left Taos around 8:30 and got to Albuquerque around 10:30 , with no more car sickness. Ella said she was sick once, but it seems she figured out that being sick means we stop driving and get out, so we didn’t fall for that one. We stayed at a La Quinta in Albuquerque that we got with credit card points. Ella slept in Nate’s bed and this time both beds were good. After a disappointing continental breakfast, we hit the road around 11:15 , possibly our earliest departure so far.

It was a huge driving day, so we wanted to get a good start. We drove through New Mexico and Arizona to Gilbert, just outside of Pheonix. It was a beautiful drive, with lots of mountains and huge cacti. We had a quick McDonalds lunch, wherein Ella managed to totally bite it running around, cutting her knees and bashing her head. Shelley was super worried that Ella had a concussion and kept asking if she recognized us both, and if she remembered her name, long after Ella had forgotten that she even fell. The portable DVD player was a great friend for the drive, and we played lots of hide and seek. We pulled into our penultimate destination Nate’s cousin John and Shannon’s house around 7:00 pacific time, then went to dinner with them and their little baby Mikey. We tried to go to T.G.I.Fridays, but they weren’t open yet. The area John and Shannon live in is growing a ton, and everything is so new you can’t really tell if things are open yet or not. Chili’s, being open, provided an excellent alternative. Ella was so tired during the meal that she fell asleep leaning on Nate’s lap about halfway through.

We woke up the next morning to have an excellent breakfast cooked by Shannon for us, and then tried to figure out what to do. The temperatures were in the high nineties for our stay in Pheonix, so we didn’t want to be outside too much. We decided to try and take Ella to the movies, and found a second run theater with Happy Feet still playing. Shelley’s friend Jenny met us there. John and Shannon had only been in their house for two weeks, so they stayed at home and cleaned up their garage. Ella was a giant scaredy cat for the first part of the movie. The previews were really loud and that scared her, and then the movie itself scared her. She did like it a lot though, when the penguins sung and danced. She did pretty well, but by the last half hour or so, she was just playing around and climbing all over the seats and Nate. We also got our first of what will surely be many In-N-Out burgers and grilled cheeses, much to the delight of Shelley.

That night, it being St. Patrick’s Day, Shannon cooked a huge meal of corned beef and cabbage, which was really great. We wound up the evening by playing Trivial Pursuit, which John and Shannon won, but we gave them some decent competition. The next day, our hosts had plans for a barbeque, so we went to hand out with Jenny again. She is living in Tempe and working for Campus Crusade at ASU. She loves it in Pheonix, and took us to one of her favorite stores, Rancho Market, which is a really cool Mexican market, with all sorts of fresh produce, meats, cheese, juices, all sorts of good stuff. We grabbed all the stuff we needed to make a dinner that night, and then went to Jenny’s apartment complex, which has a pool. We swam and layed around for about an hour or so, and then we went back to John and Shannon ’s where we cooked up beans and taquitos. The next morning we said our goodbyes and left for California around 10:00 or so. We were finishing up our trip, and it turned out that Shelley drove the entire time, with only a quick stop for gas and some food before we crossed into California . Jenny had warned us to fill up on gas before leaving Arizona , and it was a good thing she did because the price jumped a little over sixty cents just across the border.

We got to Shelley’s mother’s house in Valencia California after 15 days and 2987 miles. We were kind of sad we didn’t get to 3000 miles, but were too tired to drive around the extra 13 miles. We’ve been here a week our so already, but we’ll discuss that later.