The End of Day One: Journey to Prescott via I-40

Oh the best laid plans of mice and men. Wait a minute. These weren't the best laid plans, they were the hectic last minute plans... 

No wonder!

I hate out of order stories so even though it might make it more interesting to switch it up a bit, I won't.

We decided to go to the grocery store for ice, McDonald's for breakfast and Home Depot for some light timers since we couldn't get the X-10 to work. While I love me some Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, carb breakfasts don't work for our family. We need a little protein padding. McMuffins really are a good little breakfast. 

As we drove down our street, Daddy Doc was fiddling with his clunky old iPod (as opposed to my sleek more modern ipod.) Guess what he had loaded onto his ipod last night?

Holiday Ro-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oad! Perky People Are Easily Tickled. I started to tear up. As I was dancing in my seat and singing along, that is. (nick Iago) Perky People can tear up and dance at the same time. :sigh: 20.5 years and he can still make me melt. Along the way, we heard on the news radio that I-40 was closed to one lane for a haz mat spill at the 95. It's times like this when it's good to have that one person in your life who you can always count on to be within a few feet of her computer at all times. (And apparently the new iphone battery life isn't all that good so even DD is  little relieved he didn't meltdown yesterday...) So a quick call to Ohanananna and there were no alerts at all on the Cal Trans websites. She promised to check throughout the day and call us if the status changed. 

Captain Stubborn refused to be in pictures, so we have shots of him holding his cookie sheet desk in front of his face. The picture is kinda dark and I'm feeling too lazy to try to correct it so you'll have to believe me for now...

And with that, and light timers set, the car full of gas, and obligatory "Look at how packed our car is" shots, we finally pulled onto the freeway...

...at 10:51 am.

As I made notes in my little Vera Bradley Daisy somethingoranother notebook, I started to get very anxious. My primary purpose today was to visit Seligman, Arizona and see the store whose owner is featured in some of the bonus material in the Cars Blu-Ray DVD. By my estimates, we would not arrive until after 4 pm. If we were lucky. I really wanted to try to meet the owners if it was at all possible.

And so the journey began. Here's some highlights:

• It looks like there's a sign a the entrance to I-40 that says something about North Carolina but a big rig blocked it so I didn't see it clearly or get a picture of it.

• If it weren't for "J@AAA's" comment the other day, we would have realized why there were strange black rocks all around Amboy Crater. There are no signs that explain what it is. At first we thought the black rock was cool. Then I saw the hill and realized what it was! Even though we weren't stopping, I'd printed up some information. We made all the kids stop and look. We definitely will go back there for a day trip in the future!

• Based on the billboards in Barstow, we figured that Ludlow must be a pretty good sized town with good lunch options. Yeah. No. It turns out there's a coffee shop and a Dairy Queen.

Dairy Queen was inside the gas station. Guess what station? Yeah. It was "That Station." The company that laid Daddy Doc off 11 years ago. (And some of you thought that I can hold a grudge...) I ran in to use the restroom and check out the menu so we could grab some food to-go. The line inside was incredible. Ludlow, California could support at least one more fast food place. 

Thank goodness for that loaf of bread! DD and I threw together five PB&J's in the backseat of our car, passed out sandwiches and carrot sticks and water bottles, and jumped back on I-40.

• At some point, SBS asked if he could write in his travel journal. Ahhhh. that tickled me to no end (There I go again!) and warmed my heart. :sigh: 

• We DID figure out what the news radio report was about! At one point, there seemed to be a situation involving an environmental soil investigation along the side of I-40 outside of Needles. The freeway narrowed to one lane for about 200 feet. We didn't even have to slow down! PHEW! However, there was a much longer stretch of construction earlier that slowed us down a bit (not much below 55.)

• The kids were really funny about crossing the State Line. They did NOT want to miss it. This is not their first trip out of state, but it's really the first time where the older two seemed to have some appreciation for the idea of leaving the state and of wanting to pay attention.

• We hit Kingman at 3:30. It started to drizzle just outside of Kingman. The rock formations were amazing leading into Kingman. Mr. Genius really seemed to appreciate the interesting and beautiful formations. (Daddy Doc spent various points quizzing him on Cub scout lessons he'd taught. What kind of rock is that? What kind of clouds are those? This started at the Cajon Pass, by the way...)

Tangent -

I don't know why I might have underestimated my children. I always enjoyed driving and exploring National Parks and such, even as a child, I think I was a pretty good "Road Tripper". I think it has something to do with the DVD player in the car. Yes, I like my DVD player in my car. We never use it unless the kids will be stuck in the car for an extended period of time. And even then, it's not non-stop movies. It's just a nice thing to have. Ultimately, the rides seem to be pleasant so I don't have a lot of motivation to adjust how we use it. I guess I do worry that I'm not giving my children an appreciation for the process of the road trip. Like I'm encouraging them to demand to be entertained. Come to think of it, I think I underestimate my children and I underestimate my own parenting. 

(FYI: Of the people reading this, many of them are now nodding their heads saying "Well DU-UH, Perky Mommy! We could've told you THAT" Fine. Roll your eyes at me. I can't see you.)

/Tangent

So anyway. The kids really enjoyed rock watching with us. Mr. Genius commented on the tops of the hills plateauing. We talking about the views of the rocks, the angles of the rocks, the striking features of the hills, etc. 

In Kingman, we took a few photos, just like I said, to prove we'd been in Kingman.

We also stopped for gas at 4.29 a gallon. The boys picked out ice cream treats: MG had a really fantastic treat! It was a Nestle Tollhouse Ice Cream Sandwich - Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Mint Ice Cream! I'm going to have to recreate that one at home... (For the record: SBS had a fruit covered vanilla ice cream haagan daas bar, CS had Dibs, DD and I split a Chocolate Almond Haagan Daas bar.)

(Apparently he'll smile for ice cream. Plus you can all see the hole in his mouth now...)

By the time we left Kingman, Seligman was an hour away and it was after 4:00 pm. I figured that if nothing else, I would get a picture of the store. And we pressed onward, through more beautiful landscape. I just love red rocks. They're amazing. 

We turned off I-40 at Seligman at just about 5:00 as expected and rounded the corner into Seligman. The Route 66 Gift Shop is on the east end of town and we were approaching from the west, so it took us some time to get there, but we found it. 

And we found the front door. 

Open.

OPEN!

O-P-E-N!

I was like a kid on Christmas morning. You're picturing me in full-on Pixar Dork Mode, aren't you?

That's fine. 

If you're not, just stop right now, close your eyes, and go right on ahead and picture it.

Follow link to the store just to help you along with that!

We went in and saw the clerk right away. I told her how HAPPY we were to find them OPEN! She smiled and said they're open until 6:00!

I told her that we'd seen them on the DVD and we just HAD to stop by. "Oh, you're Cars fans?" We chatted. This lady was Mirna, Angel and Vilma's daughter! She showed us the framed piece that John Lasseter gifted to Mirna and her dad. The store was jam PACKED. I could have spent hours pouring through the table full of... SCRAPBOOKS! The books were full of newspaper clippings, business cards, photos, and more. 

But this was a Griswold stop! HA HA!

SBS and CS decided to spend some of their money. SBS selected a pen and CS got a Route 66 antenna topper. MG did not see anything he liked. I collected several postcards (by the way, I have plenty of postcard stamps if anyone would like a little postcard. I don't have everyone's addresses, so please e-mail them to me if you'd like a postcard. If you don't know my e-mail ask someone else who knows me. :) ) and three Route 66 patches. Mirna suggested going to her uncle's business across the street, which I'd already planned to do. We quickly took some pictures.

As we got into the car to leave, I asked Daddy Doc if he wanted something first. They'd had some 100% cotton shirts that resembled Reyn Spooners but weren't. They had some great Route 66 prints. We commented that they looked like something St. John of Emeryville would wear. They were somewhat reasonably priced (about $20-$30 less than Reyns anyway...) So DD went back to get one.

Oh we were so relieved as we drove out of town!!

• The ride into Prescott was smooth.  We hit some rain on Route 89 which got quite heavy for a brief stretch. Our children so rarely see real rain that they were a bit surprised. Mr. Genius's exact words were "HOLY CRUD!" My reply? "Thank you for saying Crud and not Crap, Mr. Genius." The road was not windy at all. For some reason I had been expecting more mountainous terrain. Nope, it was a pretty straight shot! 

• Our hotel is a Marriott property: SpringHill Suites. The room is very spacious. The staff is very friendly. They recommended an amazing restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, they compared it to Applebee's. I hate Applebee's. I really really strongly strongly don't like Applebee's. After dinner I told the guy to never compare this place to Applebee's AGAIN. I suggested "Grill with a Pub."

Here's a Link.

We had: toasted raviolis, pistachio chicken salad, asiago chicken pasta, banana bread pudding, apple crumb and the kids had cheeseburger, pasta & MG had adult fish and chips. Daddy Doc tried the Prescott Red beer and I tasted it. It was so good!

But the BANANA BREAD PUDDING WITH RUM BUTTER - O.M.F.G. Pardon the internet abbreviation French. I NEEEEEEED that recipe. It was SOOOOO good. I can't imagine how they made the banana bread part, but I may just have to try to figure it out...

Now we're back in the room. Stuffed to the gills. I want to try to upload some photos before I post this. 

I'm just feeling relieved. DD has a headache. I'm sure staying awake until 3 am didn't help. I'm hoping he'll feel better after a good night's sleep. We should try to leave town by 10 in the morning. 

Oh, and we have to pick beds. We're going to draw names out of water cup tonight to set the rotation we'll use for the rest of the trip.

Oh and I probably won't get to it tonight but the kids made some realllllllllly cute drawings of Wall-E and Eve and M-O. MG even did the cockroach.

Funny quotes from Today:

Captain Stubborn, 10:51 am, "I want to see Arizona!" (Yeah, it was rather random. Nothing really prompted him. We laughed.)

As we were driving through the town of Hesperia, California, Sweet But Sneaky said: "OooooH! A SUPER Target!"

Later we were driving through a really small, unattractive desert town off I-40. We saw a free standing, rather modern looking "Dollar Tree" store. We chuckled at what a NICE Dollar Tree it was. (Don't get me wrong. If you're going to shop at a Dollar or 99c type store, Dollar Trees are actually pretty nice little stores. They're actually clean!) DD suggested that the Dollar Tree was this community's version of Tarjay. Yeah, you guessed it. I'm just that witty. I said "OOOH, so maybe that's SUPER Dollar Tree."