81 days later

Well, what have you been doing for the last 81 days? (and now it is even later than 81 days!)

I have already posted an alligator blog, because how do I put my road to Florida into words?

Me? I have taken 3 trips from Cedar City in Utah to Palm Bay in Florida. The last time was a road trip with everything we own in the shared space of a 16 foot trailer.

So yeah, I'm having a bit of an energy crisis these days. I am just dragging. But what a place to have low energy! I'm not in heaven, I'm in haven. The Haven, to be exact. What a contrast to go from a fixer upper house with a big unfinished yard to a luxury apartment called The Haven. This is new to me. So is the high price, but it will get us through until we find a house to buy. Except everyone wants to move to Palm Bay, so our realtor says there is a bidding war on every house, he has never seen anything like it. The good news is that I would love a bit smaller and quieter city and one that fits the bill has lower prices on housing. We have changed our sites to Titusville, a place close to where the rocket launches are.

And now it is about a week after I started this post, too. So much has changed, I need to hurry up and write this one. The next one is already calling to me.

I will post a lot of pictures. Let them tell the story.

First pick up the truck in Las Vegas, then drive three hours to Cedar City to start loading it. Didn't all get done in one night as hoped (though not so shocking, eh?). Spent the night in hotel in Cedar, after having a dinner full of laughter with family. The food filled our bellies, the laughter filled the near empty restaurant. We ended up not leaving until after 5pm the next day, with the car on a trailer behind the moving truck. First stop was in Page, Arizona. Driving through desert, a lot of it was familiar.

Then without all the little details that get lost when I take too long to write, I will tell you that we went from Page to Albuquerque in New Mexico. I love the world wide web! We were in a traffic jam in New Mexico when we finally got the lease signed using the data on our cell phones - so that the apartment we hoped to rent was finally in order. The view coming into Albuquerque was amazing. The hotel was not. Made the top ten worst list, and it's all my fault. Finding hotels is Ron's job. I picked one that had a misleading name. Quality Inn, it said. Quality Inn, it wasn't. Weeds in the front as we drove up. The sun was just setting, we had been on the road all day. We parked in the back and I prayed all night that things would be as we left them. We walked to the front and there was a car with a towel closed in the window, the front driver window was busted out. And it was still all over the parking space next the car. Yikes. The door at the back of the building wouldn't work, it was permanently jammed closed. The room wasn't much better. I was deeply relieved to find everything in place when we came down in the morning. We got out of there as fast as possible. But we didn't get out of there. The GPS was possessed and led us around a deserted part of town, it was early on a Sunday morning. We drove in circles for a bit before we finally broke the curse and put it all behind us.

We drove through to Fort Worth in Texas. Then we had a very delightful hotel with a huge spacious lobby with a hot breakfast. The only bad part was the big TV showed the weather channel. We were right outside of Dallas and Dallas was expecting a sever thunderstorm that night. And the next day another storm was due along the panhandle of Florida. The first storm was a problem because we had to drive around Dallas to get where we were going, and parts of Texas were still reeling from a hailstorm that caused massive damage. The second storm was a problem because it had the potential to cause flooding. Delays would be a big problem for us.

We made it through to Mobile Alabama the next day. The entire trip so far had good weather! Only some strong wind and five minutes of rain. We beat the bad weather on the last day too, arriving in Palm Bay to spend one last night before picking up the keys to the apartment.

What a trip. Deserted deserts, vast vistas, languid landscape. Miles of mountains that turned into forever fields of windmills. We encountered four accidents, I think. There were brilliant flowers sprouting up in all combinations of colors. There were a disturbing amount of dead armadillos, and we never saw a live one. It was a trip of contrasts.

The oddest town name was in New Mexico, called Yah-Tah-Hey. I think that was also the area where some houses had multiple car tires on the roof. To help weigh it down?

And I was thinking of how the road tells a story too, with the skid marks, the tire pieces, the burn patches, and memorial stations for people who died on the road.

Then we walked through the door at the new apartment. And that is another blog for another day.

Where were we when I saw the sign saying 7,750 feet elevation? Right before New Mexico, I think.

This first picture is the last of Utah that we saw.

Crossing Utah into a piece of Arizona.

I think I like it better in black and white!

Some of the stretches of deserted desert.

There is a kind of insanity to driving on a 2 lane highway. Other vehicles appear to be coming right at you. We'll they are, like this red truck. The only thing that saving you is their good wits, a broken yellow line, and your ability to stay on your own side. It's a road of trust in the rules.