We Made It!

Last night around 5:30 PM, we landed in Atwater, CA, at John's parents' house. I can't believe we made it in just four days. The night before we wanted to stop and sleep in Salt Lake City. We rolled into town at about 9:00 PM, and pulled up to our favorite cheap hotel that takes dogs, Motel 6. The boys were in need of a break and John was getting tired. Turns out almost every hotel room in the city is full due to some big convention. The guy at Motel 6 suggested we go the next stop--some 80 miles down the road. Two+ hours later, we stopped for the night. That was our longest day of driving--5:00 AM to 11:00 PM.

When the boys get cranky, they ask to go swimming. (It's hard leaving the Lakes Region, where you get to swim just about every day.) Yesterday around noon, Jackson got on a "I want to go SWIMming" kick. Even he started to giggle, as we looked around at the desert like landscape of Utah, with not a drop of water in sight. Luckily, we've been able to swim twice on the trip, in the lovely Motel 6 pools. (Did I mention its our favorite cheap hotel that takes dogs and has pools!) Maybe today, we'll get to visit John's sister, Lin, and take a drip in her pool.

Although John and I missed it, the boys reported seeing lots of interesting wildlife on the trip. Alden saw many bunnies, a black bear and some sort of unidentified creature. Jackson saw a antelope. We weren't sure what it was, but then he drew a picture of it, and we decided it must have been an antelope due to its many antlers. One thing I did see that kind of freaked me out, was in Nebraska at the rest stop. A sign that said, "Beware of Rattlesnakes." Especially near the pet area. Yikes.

John is a rock star when it comes to driving. I think I drove about 3 hours tops on this trip. We only got turned around once when getting out of Salt Lake City. But he got us right back on the highway. Whew! Our dog also gets kudos. She's really stiff now (she's 11) and tired. I'll be happy to get her into our rental house and settled.

I just remembered, the house we're going to rent doesn't have a refrigerator. (Details. Details.) Oops. Will have to buy a used one I guess, along with the other furniture that we were not able to fit in the trailer (which I think is just dining room chairs.) We fit way more into the trailer than I thought. We got our table, two kids dressers, our dresser, our bed, the kids' bed frames (John's mom found us some new mattresses to buy out here for them) our couch, bikes, and tons of boxes. I think I got all the boxes I wanted and almost all the boxes that were in the 'bring to CA if room" category.

We're going to sign the lease with our landlord this morning. I can't wait to check out Oakdale. I hope it like it. It's the (gulp) cowboy capital of America. Yeee haw!