Murphy's Law

(I couldn't get reliable wifi to post this draft, so it's a little postdated...originally written on Thursday 11/13/14)

Wow.  Where to begin?  Driving from Atlanta to northern California with a trailer in tow, a toddler, and a big dog named Biggie is a full time job!

We were supposed to leave a while ago but things kept going wrong, so we ended up scrambling to get things together and left on Tuesday November 11, 2014. I dropped my iPhone4 of 5 years with no so much as a cracked screen in all of that time and it was dead and gone. That probably should have clued me into what we were in for. Within the first couple of hours of driving, our trailer acquired a flat tire in Alabama.

Joy.

This was completely our fault, as we KNEW BETTER than to leave without having replaced the tires on our Shasta, but with all of the issues that kept holding us up, we totally flaked on safety and responsibility and not being idiots.  >.<  Lesson learned...don't do something you know is a bad idea.

Luckily for us, we left early enough to find a tire shop nearby that actually carried our not so common tires (13 inch), and that shop recommended a great and speedy roadside assistance company that replaced both tires and had us up and at 'em again within about an hour and a half total.  Fantastic!

All fixed up with a new pair of tires!

We were pretty exhausted from frantically packing up the last of our little things and cleaning up our apartment before leaving already, so the tire situation/stress left us feeling pretty drained.  Moving with an energetic toddler and enormous dog who want to "help" makes things a lot harder, although cuter at the same time. I don't recall exactly where in Mississippi we realized we could not go on, but it was far enough out to not know where the heck we were going to park and sleep for the night. Mitch pulled off the interstate and started going down some country roads.  He finally found a spot that he said looked perfect, and after attempting to reverse our trailer into the spot Austin Powers style for a while, I looked out and things went like this:

Dianne:  "Is that a graveyard?" 

Mitch: Scoff, Laugh "Uh, no."  [Looks again.]  "You've got to be kidding me." 

Dianne:  "Not just a graveyard, but a creepy as hell, old, haunted looking little graveyard in the middle of nowhere Mississippi.  That's where you just tried to sleep for the night." 

We both laughed it off in an "Are you serious?!" kind of way.

Heading back towards the interstate, we saw a tiny brick carwash port.  It looked perfect to our tired eyes.  As soon as we all piled into our freezing cold camper and started passing out--fully clothed and just ready to sleep--we heard a couple of knocks/thumps right outside our window.  At this point we were slightly delirious from exhaustion, and sort of alarmed. I've heard stories about Mississippi. Just sayin'. Mitch took Biggie out to cautiously investigate, came back in and said they heard someone up the hill towards the houses a ways from the car wash lot. It might have been someone messing with us, it could have been our imaginations mistaking something settling for someone messing with us, but either way we slept terribly that night as Mitch and I both kept thinking we heard something. I'm talking record breaking bad sleep--between the sudden cold weather, Cairo kicking me off our bed and me being so tired I couldn't fight it (I just curled up on the baby mattress with the dog who wouldn't sleep in his own spot), waking up at full alert after dreaming I heard something yet again, multiple roosters who thought they were supposed to start crowing at 3:30 am...it was down right miserable.

Needless to say, the next day's drive was also difficult. Both of us were cracked out on coffee and copious amounts of Red Bull, but of course still ready to sleep at the drop of a hat. I steered our trailer for the first time with white knuckles when Mitch needed a break--something I was apprehensive about first maneuvering on an unfamiliar interstate.  Of course as soon as I took over the long, flat, smooth roads disappeared and turned into rough, one lane construction detours surrounded by concreted barriers over numerous hills and bridges.  I'm lucky like that.  But I handled it just fine, and now I pretty much feel like I could drive this get up anywhere (and at 70 miles and hour, too...but probably not in reverse).

That night we checked into an RV park in Oklahoma City and got the best rest ever, or so it seemed. It was so great to drive through the states I had never been to-- Arkansas (they have A LOT more casinos than I was aware of), Oklahoma, and now Texas and New Mexico.  I'm pretty bummed that I wasn't able to check out Graceland when we passed through Memphis, but we couldn't exactly take Biggie with us on that tour. I still and always will love the King.

We were able to stop by Cadillac Ranch in Texas and throw up a couple of tags. Even Cairo got in on the fun, but then again this isn't little dude's first rodeo. It was great fun, and really cute to see all of the non graffiti/street artists out there with their spray paint cans getting up. I took some photos of people next to their work and they took some photos of our family. I'm pretty sure that most of the work that was put up while we were there is gone by now...people are constantly coming through. It's okay, I have plenty of spray paint on my boots and jacket to never forget.

The Mc-Riley clan at the Cadillac Ranch.

Tonight we're sleeping in Albuquerque, NM.  I thought it was supposed to be warm here, but there's snow sprinkled all over the mountains!  Our pipes seem to be frozen since in our streak of genius we decided not to use antifreeze in the gray or black water tanks...  We'll blame all of these common sense slip ups on sleep deprivation or something.  ;)  I can't wait for us to get to some place warmer tomorrow. We're hoping to travel to the Grand Canyon, so we'll have to be up bright and early if we're going to make that happen.

Sorry for the run on sentences, I'm about to zzzzzzzzzzzz........