Back on the road. On our way to Las Vegas right now. We had dinner with Nick’s grandparents last night and breakfast there this morning. It’s nice to be leaving. We are en route to Elko, Nevada. Bleh. Nevada isn’t much nicer as far as getting out of the desert/hell. Elko is still pretty hellish. It will be nice to see my grandmother though. I haven’t seen her in a long time! She is 84 now. She’s the sweet little old lady grandmother. See, Granny? Nope. She’s as feisty as they come!
We had to set mouse traps in our car last night. We had a car buddy move in on us in Joshua Tree. We hadn’t actually seen this little guy, but we saw the evidence of his presence that he left behind. He got into our hot dog buns and hot chocolate, and he even managed to find his way into the glove box to eat my Tums!! What?! I guess eating all those carbs gave him some indigestion or heart burn or something. Nick baited 3 mouse traps with a doughnut and left them in the car last night. I went to check the traps this morning and he had eaten the food off the first two traps. I guess he got a little cocky and went for the third trap but he wasn’t so lucky that time. Now he gets to hang out in Granny’s so-called garden (gardens don’t exist in the desert…). He had been living in our dash board for the past week. I think he was eating up our seat foam or insulation and building a nest in the dash. Every time that we would start up the car and the A/C a whole bunch of shit would blow out the vents! I’m just glad he didn’t die in there! It would smell to high hell whenever it would get hot or when we turn on the heater. Gross. I almost want to gag just thinking about it. But seriously? WHO has a mouse move into their CAR?!?! It just makes me want to start laughing, it seems so ridiculous!!
Speaking of ridiculous. I was talking on the phone with my mom as I walked across the street to the Family Dollar store to pick up some mouse traps. There was a woman at the register talking to the cashier about a calling card. She was so confused because the kept insisting that she had to scratch off that spot on the back of the card and the cashier was just trying to tell her that all she had to do was swipe it and be done. It was such a stupid argument and my mom and I were listening in and couldn’t help but start laughing when we got out of ear shot.
We stopped at an auto shop in Parker, AZ to pick up some tape. Apparently it’s too hot here for electrical tape, which is what we use to tape our driver side mirror on. Nick picked up some heavy duty stuff to tape it back on since our electrical tape melted. Damn! Hopefully this stuff works better. We have such an awesome car. It used to belong to my friend Radar. Well, his name is Andrew but we all call him Radar since he looks almost exactly like Radar from MASH. Radar joined the Air Force about a year and a half ago. He left the day after my 19th birthday. L I miss that boy and I wish I had some internet or his phone number since we are only a few hours away from where he is stationed. I guess it just wasn’t meant to happen this trip. Lame.
We did make it to see the nudist book store owner yesterday. We got a picture with him with all three of us doing the Captain Morgan’s pose. The pose where you lift your left leg up as if it’s on a barrel and then holding your arm out as if you are holding a bottle of the Cap’n Mo. If that makes any sense at all. He’s a nice little old guy. He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on his body. At all. Nothing. He wears a little bag over his doodles and a string around his waist to hold it there. That’s all he wears! He’s got the right idea in this heat though. Hell, if I had a nicer body (like… no stretch marks and flabby skin from my pregnancy, ugh) and I lived down here, I might consider being a nudist! I could just move to Papua New Guinea and then I would fit in with the natives! Only I would be incredibly white compared to all of them. Well… and I don’t speak their language. That might make things a little difficult!
We just drove past a larger woman that was wearing grey spandex leggings. She had butt crack sweat! Unless you are Twiggy, you shouldn’t be wearing spandex. No matter how tight, it’s not going to hold in the rolls. Nope, it’s going to roll right along with you. I won’t even wear spandex! I’m not a fat girl, I just have a little more to love. I’m curvy, and I put on a few pounds with my pregnancy (but I’m still breast feeding, so shut up!) and I can’t say I’m all that happy with my body at the moment. I’m slowly losing the weight though. I just wish my skin hadn’t gotten so stretched out. I have stretch marks EVERYWHERE. On my boobs, my stomach, thighs and even a couple on my upper calves. Ugh! It grosses me out. Time for lipo and tummy tucks and all that weird shit. Okay- enough self-wallowing for today.
Afternoon-
So Nick is getting on my ass since I only started writing about our trip when we were in LA. Hmmm, so where to start then, eh?
We left Portland and made our way over to Lincoln City, OR and then wound down the coast to Newport. Nick’s best friend’s dad, Jeff, owns a sailboat in Newport. He gave us the code to the lock and let us stay the night on the boat. It’s a pretty neat boat. Built in the 1970’s with 4 crew berths and a cool aft cabin, the boat is really cozy. The boat was definitely fun to hang out on but it’s not a boat I would want to go cruising on. The layout isn’t quite prime for cruising. Too many berths and a lot of wasted space. I really liked the boat though.
That night (Tuesday, May 6), we watched some movies and caught some crab off the dock (shhhh). We cooked up the crab and ate, mmm it was tasty! Then we went to bed and slept like babies. I think Addison woke up only once that night, if at all. (I don’t really remember.) In the morning we woke up and drove down the coast a bit and found a diner on the side of the road. I think it was called Leroy’s Blue Whale Diner or something along those lines. The food was pretty awesome. Nothing quenches hunger like some diner pancakes and coffee!!! (I’m a hopeless breakfast lover.)
So we drive down and made it into California and find a campground in the Redwood Forest. That was SO COOL! Those trees are enormous and oh-so beautiful. We forgot to take cash out of the atm though and we didn’t have enough on hand to pay for the campsite. The lady at the campground told us that we had 8 minutes to get to this store in a little town about 4 miles away, but they were closed when we got there. It was the LONGEST 4 miles EVER. So we back tracked and got to the town that we went through right before the campground and there was nothing there either. We didn’t even see any other people. It was creepy. We drove south a ways and tried to find a place with an atm, or even just a place that was open. These people live out in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t a gas station to be found anywhere. About 45 minutes later we finally get back to the campground with some cash in hand and stay there for the night. Nick and I proceeded to get a bit sloshed while Addison was sleeping. You really don’t feel as drunk as you are when it’s pitch black and there aren’t any reference points!
The next day we drove through the Redwoods and stopped at the tourist trap that is the “Drive-Thru Tree”.
I got a picture of the Suby halfway through the tree. It couldn’t go all the way though since the bikes were on top of the car. We also stopped at this restaurant and ate the most amazing sandwiches… drool. We got off Highway 101 and got onto Highway 1 which wound down the coast instead of going inland. It was gorgeous but it too way to damn long!! The road was narrow and winding and kept going up and down, up and down. So we got back onto Highway 101 and made our way through San Francisco. San Francisco is an amazing town but I would NOT want to live there. There’s so much damn traffic!! We stopped at the Golden Gate National Recreational Area and changed a blown-out diaper. (Don’t give your child a lot of apple juice- it causes extreme poop explosions.) We would have walked around a bit, but the wind was a bit nippy, and we probably would have gotten run over by one of the 230,876,540 runners. There were runners EVERYWHERE!! I instantly felt fat and lazy. And poor. The town houses across from the park were incredibly swanky. It was neat to see Alcatraz from the park though.
We caught San Francisco right in the middle of rush hour, although I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s never NOT rush hour in the city of San Fran. We blew through and made our way back to the coast. We were hoping to find a camp site around the Big Sur area, but yet again we forgot to get cash out. We had to drive all the way down to San Simeon to find a campsite that was less than our measly $13. We searched for an open store with an atm the entire way down but there was nothing. All of the tent sites were going for 20-25 bucks too. The campground outside San Simeon was $11 so we pitched our tent as soon as we got there and crashed. In the morning Nick woke up early and looked out the tent door and saw a deer standing right in front of the tent. Nick made a surprised noise and his first words to me were “If that deer hadn’t moved, I could have reached out the tent and punched it in the face.” J Then he corrected himself and said that maybe he wouldn’t punch it in the face, but he could have touched it. (Hahahah, I laughed.) We got up and Nick started the car at 6:47 am and when we backed out of the site, it was 7:03 am. Record time!! We hadn’t been able to pay on the way in since there was nobody working at the booth, so we were planning on paying on our way out but there was still nobody working and there was a sign that said not to use the drop box! Okay, well… it told us not to pay! We poached a camp site. But hey, it was their fault, right? They weren’t very clear about how to pay, and we had every intention of paying!
We stopped in Morro Bay for some McDonalds breakfast and a cup of coffee from the local coffee shop and headed on our way to LA! We drove down through Santa Barbara and Malibu and all those rich towns that just made us sick (and bitter). We stopped at one of the beaches somewhere along the road and took a walk. We made it down to LA that afternoon and that’s when we met Bob Bitchin’ and yadda yadda yadda. You are now updated about that bit of the trip.
So now back to present. We crossed the Hoover Dam and drove through Las Vegas not too long ago. Vegas is a lot bigger in person than it looks on the map!! The Hoover Dam was pretty cool though. I got a couple of pictures, but nothing that will stop you in your tracks. Nothing worthy of an award or prize money or fame or anything. I talked to my mom again today and she thinks (but isn’t sure) that my great grandfather’s company, Barrett & Co. worked on building the Hoover Dam. I will have to ask my grandma when we get up to her place. We have a picture of Barrett & Co. working on the Golden Gate Bridge. That means I practically own part of it, right? (Hahaha I WISH!!) I think I should demand royalties. A dollar for every toll paid to cross. Yessss, then I can be all rich and what not. Sounds like a decent plan to me!! Bwahahahah, then I can take over the world!! But then I might just be getting carried away.
Nah.
