We left at 7:30 am Saturday to start the long drive from Arizona to Albuquerque New Mexico. We had gotten everything packed the night before and felt great about getting started. During the two weeks we’d been in Mesa house sitting, we’d never had any problems with the garage door opening and closing. But sure enough, when we went to leave that morning we couldn’t get it to close electronically. After several attempts Joel manually closed it and we made sure it locked. (Since then the home owners say it works just fine!)
Our first goal was to find a Starbucks and get our morning tea. Though we know there are half a dozen Starbucks in the area we were in, we just couldn’t seem to find one. We finally gave up because we wanted to hit the road.
So we headed off to 87 only to find the way we wanted to go was blocked off due to a cycling event. After consulting the map, we realized we could head in the wrong direction for a bit and eventually find a way over to 87 and be on our way. The good thing about all that was that we did find a Starbucks along the way and had our morning tea!
But that wasn’t the end of our adventures that morning. After about an hour I heard Fiona say, quite calmly, “Mom, I got sick.” I turned around and sure enough she’d been sick all over. The winds were very strong and gusting but we pulled over so we could clean up. Our extra water sure came in handy. The large garbage bags did also as they held the dirty items until we could wash them that night. Afterwards Fiona felt great and was very happy! It seemed it was only a slight carsick thing and not a nasty bug. We got to New Mexico that night and had a great visit with Sonja and her kids.
Sunday when we left New Mexico there were weather alerts about the high and gusty winds. Sure enough we went through quite a bit of wind. Fortunately it was pushing us and helped us get even better gas mileage!
Heading into Denver that evening we ran into a snow storm. As ice started to form on the windshield, Joel was getting pretty nervous. We stopped at one point to clean the ice off the wipers and continued safely. We arrived in Longmont and were greeted with a warm welcome by our hosts.
So we’re house sitting here now while Rita and her husband are off to Prague for a week! Let’s hope they don’t have any adventurous mishaps.
There will be mishaps aplenty before you’re done.
Snow, wind and vomit—yikes! You probably didn’t foresee them because you weren’t able to read your early-morning Starbucks tea leaves. Stay safe, my friends.
I’m sure these aren’t the only small mishaps we’ll have. It all is part of the adventure and gives us great stories to tell. What would we have written about on our blog if everything had gone smoothly?