Virginia to Phoenix...and back!

Talk about a journey!

Start time: August 10, 2007 0700 hours

End time: August 13, 2007 0200 hours

Kijuana and I drove approximately 3600 miles in 3 days! It seems like a lifetime ago now that we're back, however at the time, it seemed like we'd never be done! I am sort of what you might call an "expert" if you will at driving cross country...:)

It was sort of a full circle moment because as most of you know, I moved to DC after BYU in August of 2000. When Kijuana moved to DC in December of 2000 I flew back to SLC and we drove back to DC together in her crammed Jetta along the snowpacked roads of I-80 where we stopped in Denver for some delicious baklahva (thanks Janice!) and somewhere in Illinois or Indiana for literally the grossest pizza I have ever had in my life. It was worst than the worst frozen pizza.

I digress.

This time was a little easier, we had great weather, a great Volvo that wasn't AS packed, (but we still couldn't lay the seats back), and unfortunatley the same CD's as in 2000. But, I couldn't have asked for better company either time.

(kijuana jammin while driving)

The day started on Friday the 10th with me taking the Chinatown bus from New York to DC. It left at 7am. I got in to DC around noon and got some lunch for the drive, walked around as much as I could while I waited for Kijuana. We got on the road around 1:30.

When we started the drive, we told ourselves that we would try not to go to chain restaurants the whole way…little did we know that chains are overtaking the entire USA! It was pretty ridiculous.

The first few hours were uneventful. Mostly spent on the phone with my office, dealing with the temp who covered for me who apparently didn't know how to book a rental car, and breezing through Harrisonburg, Roanoke, and Greenville, Virginia - it was green, but uneventful.

We finally got to Knoxville, TN around 11pm which was the first major city in Tenessee. We had planned on stopping there, but the University of Tennessee was having a graduation and there were NO hotel rooms. So, we continued on and tried again in Nashville...but to no avail. Finally we found a spot in Dickson, TN at this Baymont.

It wasn't the best, but we were tired so it didn't matter too much and it was cheap. They had a fairly sick continental breakfast that consisted of these saucer-shaped sausage patties and eggs the same shape. It did not look normal.
I had cereal and a boiled egg.

On Saturday morning, we continued on until we got to Memphis. Neither of us had phone chargers so we tried stopping in Memphis at a Sprint store. Well, we got some bad directions and rather than back track we continued on and tried not to talk tooo much.

A bridge in Memphis where you cross over into Arkansas.

One interesting sidenote in Memphis. We pulled up to a gas station and there was a woman about my age with a baby and she saw our car all loaded up and asked, "y'all movin' here?" in a thick accent.
I told her no, that we were just passing through on our way west. We started chatting as we were pumping gas and I asked her how she liked living here and she said it was alright, but that people who came to visit always thought the prices were cheap, but she thought they were expensive. For example, Air Force Ones you can get there for $50 at certain places, but her friend from California said they are $200 in the store…

Huh? Tell me again how this place is expensive? I think she wanted to be friends with us if we were in fact moving there, but since we weren’t I guess we’re out of luck. Oh well.

So, we continued on to Little Rock where we found a radio shack who not only hooked us up with a great charger, but told us of a great local restaurant – Smokey Joes.

Here we are to prove it. It was pretty good bar-b-que and we definitely wouldn’t have found it without our radio shack helper.

On we continued. From Little Rock we veered south so we could stop in Dallas. It was a long stretch through Texarkana. (What kind of name is Texarkana anyway?)

The highlight was stopping to get a blizzard at Dairy Queen. (a chain) When's the last time you've been there? Soooo good!
We made it to Dallas around 5:30p and only stayed for about an hour and a half. We were greeted with 2 precious babes, 2 tired parents, 1 tired sister and one very energized Dresden. He put on a performance for us while we all sat and watched. It was such a great break and we only wanted to stay longer, but we had to keep on trucking.

We drove for another hour or so, then stopped at IHOP (another chain). We tried to make it to El Paso where my Aunt Mildred lives, but we got too tired and had to stop in Abilene around 2am.
After checking the rates on several hotels we decided to stay in luxury. Ok, not really (Hampton inn) but it was the only new hotel on the block, so that is a good sign. (We encountered some really sick motels) We pulled up and the first thing we noticed was these crazy black crickets that were overtaking the parking lot. I had to drop Kijuana off at the front with our suitcases and then go and park. I literally sprinted like Carl Lewis to the entrance. I honestly hadn’t run that fast since the 4 x 100 meter relay race during the State Track meet in 1996.

Anyway, when we were checking in around 2am, we talked to the front desk manager and asked him if the crickets ever come to the rooms and he assured us that they would never, ever come upstairs, etc.
Wouldn’t you guess, we walked into our room and there was one right there hanging on the curtain!!!
It was so sick. So we called downstairs and the guy came up and got it for us after it jumped all over the room.

We slept great despite the drama.
In the morning we went downstairs, ate a continental breakfast – much better than the baymont – loaded up our purses with fruit and muffins and headed on our way.
We drove through tons of nothingness, through midland and other non-descript towns. We were so burned out at this point, we couldn’t wait to get home!

At one such non-descript “town” or more like a gas station in the middle of nowhere, we talked to the worker who told us that one of the perks of his job is that he gets 4 gallons of free gas everyday! When we asked what in the world he does for fun around here, he said that they go to the pool. Or to the bar/restaurant in “town”. He lived 30 miles away from the gas station.
Such a different life – it seems difficult to imagine.

After driving 20 minutes out of the way due to a misunderstanding on how to say Alameda, (apparently Alma-getter to some) we finally made it to Aunt Mildred’s house who let us rest our weary bones, eat some fresh corn, pea salad, chicken parmesan, and candy. It had been years since I’d been to her house in Texas and way too long since we’d seen her. It was fun to catch up and we just wish that we could have stayed longer.
She had a few things she wanted us to take on to Phoenix to my Aunt Betty and to my dad – one of them being a “Yellow Meat”.

What is a yellow meat you might ask? Well, it’s basically a watermelon that is yellow inside. Apparently they don't grow them like that in Phoenix (or anywhere else that I know of) and my Aunt Betty had been craving them…right.
So here is a picture of our packed car after retrieving the yellow meat.
Kijuana was sooo bugged. It was hilarious.

The last 8 hours were brutal. We went through Las Cruces, Tucson and finally Phoenix!!! We had to amuse ourselves by doing some phone pranks and having mini dance parties, but we made it!!!

We stopped by my Aunt Betty's house to drop off the blessed "yellow meat" and we were dying to take a peak inside, so here she is performing the procedure.

Once we dropped off the precious goods, we had to unpack the car at Kijuana's new apartment and then we could finally sleep!
It was such a crazy drive and then I had to fly out the next afternoon (after getting delicious Mexican food of course!)