To Texas and back

Aaron and I decided to help out his brother Jason by flying to Texas to clean out Robin's apartment down in Houston, and move all of their belongings back to Sacramento. So we ditched our plans to camp in Yosemite (Sorry George and Sherry, we will have to do it another time!) and flew to Houston on April 19th. We dropped Camden off with my parents in Salt Lake during our layover so that they could tend him while we were traveling.

We arrived in Houston. Then the challenge began. We had about 2 hours to get the moving truck before the place closed for the weekend. Our goal was to be able to pack up the apartment all on that day, spend the night, and start driving early Sunday morning. Since we were totally shooting in the dark on everything, it didn't quite happen that way. We had no idea how we were going to get from the airport to the apartment or the truck place. While in the airport we saw a sign for Super Shuttle, which ended up being a life saver. They took us straight to the Budget truck rental, where we had only minutes to spare before they closed. We guessed on the amount of boxes/moving supplies to purchase for the truck rental store. We got directions to the apartment, and finally we arrived.

I forgot to mention that I was totally sick with the stomach flu or something like it. On the day of Robin's funeral, I was so ill that I was throwing up on the side of the road, and up all night with vicious stomach cramps. I couldn't eat a thing, nor could I sleep due to the sadness that filled me and the cramping that kept me awake. At the end of the day of the funeral, Aaron and I were at Robin's cousin's home where we were staying, and we were all chatting when the room starting swirling around me and the voices got far away. I totally passed out. After I came to and rested for a little bit, we went to bed for a very short night's sleep since we were flying to Houston extremely early the next morning.

I was still quite ill that first day in Houston. I hadn't eaten for about 3 days at that point, was still very nauseated, etc., and very dizzy. I tried to be the best help that I could be to Aaron, but unfortunately, he had to do most of the packing. The LDS church in Houston was very kind to have about 5 men come to the apartment to help us load all of the heavy furniture into the truck. By about midnight, we were only half-way done with all of the packing, and we were totally out of boxes. At that point there was nothing we could do, the moving store was closed, and apparently there was no Wal-Mart or anything like it nearby where we could go to attain boxes. We would have to wait until the morning.

We underestimated to much on the boxes because we were told that there were specific items of furniture, and a full kitchen. That's what we expected to find, but instead it was a fully furnished, and full of everything, 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment. So, the following morning, Aaron went to get more boxes while I slept. One of my mission friends, Elizabeth McKee, came to visit us and bring us breakfast. It was so fun to see her and we were so appreciative of her organizng the help that we'd had the previous night.

I was still so sick, and I slept until about one in the afternoon. I finally forced myself out of bed, I had to help Aaron. I tried to ignore the stomach pains and nausea and just work really hard. We finally turned the keys in and headed out of Houston at around 7 p.m. So, we were twelve hours later than we had planned, but given the circumstances, I thought we did pretty good.

We drove several hours that night, finally stopping at a Motel 6 in a town called Junction, TX. We awoke early the next morning and continued driving through Texas. We discovered that the southeastern part of Texas is very green and pretty. Then the further west you go, the more arid and ugly it gets. They do have very nice rest stops though that all had high speed Internet. We were most impressed with the Texas rest areas. We finally made it to El Paso, TX, at about 4:30 p.m. on Monday. The driving was taking longer than we had hoped for a few reasons. First, we had to keep stopping for me as I was sick. Second, that truck naturally got terrible gas mileage, so every 2-3 hours we had to stop to gas up. Third, you just can't make very good time in a moving truck.

El Paso had some very good Mexican food, and I tried eating for the first time in about 5 days. I ate about half of a burrito, and realized that I had pushed it. I let Aaron have the rest and I stuck with crackers. As we left El Paso, we looked to the left of us (South) and saw some pretty interesting architecture. It was a hillside full of colorful, run down houses with a river at the base of the hill. I commented on how diverse the architecture in El Paso was from one side of the road to the other. Aaron commented that the south side looked like something he would expect to see in Mexico. I thought it probably had a lot of Mexican influence since Mexico isn't too far from Texas.

As we kept driving, I pulled out the map to see how long before we crossed into New Mexico. I started laughing so hard as I realized that we had been looking at Mexico, the city of Jaurez, and the little river was the Rio Grande. Ha, ha! I felt like such a dope for not knowing that as we were driving through it!

It seemed like we flew threw New Mexico and then we hit Arizona. We debated on staying the night there with my Aunt in Phoenix. But we had some serious making up to do in the way of time, so we decided to keep pushing on until we reached Arizona. We found a little motel there on the border of AZ and CA, in a town called Blythe, CA, where gas was $4.09/gallon. We had driven about 19 hours that day.

Early Tuesday morning we headed out again. I decide that I would drive the beginning part and let Aaron sleep, and then when we got to L.A., I would let him take the wheel. Aaron was sleeping so soundly that I didn't want to wake him. The next thing I knew we had hit the Inland Empire and it was quite apparent that I would be driving through L.A., as I was scared to death to try to maneuver the moving truck through traffic to try to exit the freeway and change drivers. I white-knuckled it all the way through L.A., through all of the freeway changes, the construction, the speeding, etc. Once we were out of the city and headed for the grapevine, I found a place to pull over so Aaron could drive the Grape Vine (I refused to do both L.A. and the Grape Vine). When I finally let go of the wheel, I had imprints from the steering wheel in my hand!

We finally arrived in Sacramento at about 7:00 that night. We helped unload the moving truck, got our car, and drove back to Reno, making it home by about 10:30.

It was a long trip, and by the last two days I was finally feeling better. If the circumstances would have been different it would have been really cool to take our time with the drive and sight see. We passed by Carlsbad Caverns, and that would have been neat, as well as Tucson and Phoenix and the Joshua Tree National Forest. Oh well, maybe another time! Aaron and I spent more time together than we had in probably the last 2 years. So I thank Jason for giving Aaron and I the opportunity to help, and the chance to actually spend some long overdue time together.