Today I think "J@AAA" rolled her eyes at me. I couldn't actually see her through the telephone, but I heard it in her voice.
See, here's the thing:
On Saturday we will be driving from our home Somewhere in SoCal to Prescott, Arizona. The quickest way to do this would be to take I-10 East. The problem with that is that my original expectation was that we would drive to AZ via I-40. (For those of you who follow these kinds of things, one of the first things on my Fourth Step lists is that I build these expectations in my head and then I get all upset when they don't work out. I'm much better than I used to be, but this is one of my big issues.)
But beyond my neurosis, I have GOALS. This trip is about Route 66, remember?!? I explained to "J@AAA" that if we go I-40, we go through Kingman, Arizona. Her response was "Exactly. Why would you want to do that?"
Uhm, Hello?
1- The song. The line isn't "You go through Palm Desert". "Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona, Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino."
2- A lot of the original Route 66 stuff is on or around Route 40. I've used the links from this website and also this one, to plan several Griswold stops.
That's right. We're going to stop in Kingman, Arizona, even if all we do there is get out of the car and take a picture in front of a sign that says "Kingman, AZ." All I'll have to do is invoke the name of St. John Lasseter of Emeryville to get cooperation from the boys.
It's not just about the destination. It's like Sally showed Lightning McQueen, it's about enjoying the ride. (Ahhhhhhhh.)
According to GoogleMaps, the I-40 Route will take about an hour longer than I-10, but I expect that to be an hour well spent. And we won't have to backtrack when we come home I-10. If we leave around 9 am, that will give us plenty of time to get to Prescott by late afternoon. And knowing us, if I say 9 am, we'll leave around 10 or 10:30.
This evening I have the boys' car bags pretty much ready to roll. Each boy has a soft-briefcase bearing the logo from a Chemistry or Pharmaceutical Chemistry conference and a large cookie sheet with slight edges. The cookie sheets serve as desks. Each bag has a pencil box. MG has crayons and colored pencils. SBS has crayons. CS has triangular shaped no-roll crayons. Each boy has pencils and pencil sharpeners. The big boys have a couple of mechanical pencils and I have extra lead. There are sketch books, lined paper books, coloring books and some pages I printed up with coloring pages/word searches/mazes I found online, for each boy. CS also has some color wonder things I found in a closet. Crayola came out with a really cool box of 64 washable markers that are the size of crayons. It looks just like a classic 64-pack of crayons! I saw it and plotzed. But it was 13 bucks. There was no way I was spending 13 bucks per kid on a box of markers. Sorry. (Yes, I know that at least one person I know calls me "notoriously cheap.") But the big boys immediately said to me "We can share it!" So I bought it. The big boys will probably want their ipods, too. Each boy will have a set of headphones. We'll bring a selection of DVDs to play on the MommyMobile's DVD player. We won't play movies constantly but usually about one per every 3 to 4 hours or so.
I have also created the world's coolest travel journals for each boy, if you ask me. Each has a cute graphic on the front that I searched forever to find. Each boy's journal is customized for his age. (We'll be helping CS write in his, of course.) And for about 4 bucks each, I had them spiral bound at Office Max with clear covers and black vinyl blacks. They look REALLY cool in a totally unprofessional Mom kind of way.
Tomorrow the air conditioning dude is coming to give our a/c a tune-up. Mr. Genius has an orthodontist appointment. I get to pick up my stylish Anne Klein prescription sunglasses. And I'm off to Target to buy replacement pharmaceuticals for our expired supplies, plus some more shorts for Daddy Doc.
We're packing duffle bags instead of suitcases because I'm convinced that will make packing the car much more efficient. Hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, the duffles will be more or less DONE and I can focus on lining everything up that needs to go into the car, and figuring out what else we've forgotten.
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6 comments:
"J@AAA" would like to point out that if she had known this trip was "all about Route 66" there would have been no eye-rolling. She would even have suggested you visit Amboy and Peach Springs. *rollseyes* ;)
Have a great time!
So now I'm googling Amboy and Peach Springs...
Sara and I were coming home from the Grand Canyon a few months back, and with Natalie Cole singing "the song" on my iPod, we headed out of Williams on Historic Route 66.
We didn't get very far.
Apparently big chunks of Route 66 are either in bad repair or just flat out don't exist anymore. We started down one road, but got the feeling we were heading the wrong way and turned back to Williams. After studying a map, I decreed we had taken a wrong turn and proceeded down another road. That way came to a dead end after about two miles.
Anyway, be careful out on Route 66. As long as you stay near major cities (and Kingman is one of the biggest on that route), you'll be okay. But be wary if the road starts taking you out into the boonies. After I got home, I poked around the Internet and discovered that there no longer is any true "turn-by-turn" map of Route 66. It is a decommissioned road after all!
Have fun on your trip!
We're not "really" going on Route 66 that much. The things we're going to stop to see are mostly still on or just off of I-40.
Are you going to spots that actually appear in "Cars", in one form or another? You should watch those sections of the DVD when you're actually in those locations.
Some locations are actually "homaged" in the movie. Some are featured in the bonus material of the DVDs as "places they visited to do research." We have both the movie and the Bonus Material Discs already packed. :D
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