May 26 - Oddessa, TX

We had a surprisingly quiet night at Motel 6 last night. I expected Henry to bark and growl non-stop and the kids to be rolling around making lots of noise – especially since they had to share a bed, but everyone did quite well and I was the only one who didn’t sleep much…but only because I was worried about everyone else waking up and me having to shush them. I don’t think I’ll have too much trouble sleeping tonight.

There’s nothing very exciting to report from the road today. We got stuck on THE I-10 somewhere in Nowhere, NM due to an accident. We must have gotten there right after it happened as we were only about ¼ mile away and the emergency vehicles were just arriving as we were stopping. A helicopter landed and I guess we sat there for about 45 minutes or so before the vehicle was moved off the road. Driving past it, it appeared to be a one car accident so at least there weren’t a ton of casualties. All in all, there hasn’t been much fighting of traffic or idiots on this trip and for that, I’m very thankful.

Today has seemed super long. As I write, it’s 7:15 Pacific Time and we aren’t due to arrive at the next hotel for 2 more hours. With all 3 kids being potty trained our stops seem to take forever and it sucks up the time.

Below are some more pictures. One of Delaney with Tomas that was taken at Bella’s on Thursday night. For some reason we don’t have the group shot on our camera so if one of you can email it to me, that would be great. Other photos include the kids all in bed together this morning, William’s cut, Tinna’s art, landscape shots from the drive today, and Delaney using her “new” digital camera (our old one), and a photo of Juarez, Mexico taken from I-10 while going through El Paso, TX.

The landscape today was mostly flat, brown, and boring. Is there a word for flat beginning with “B”? I could make a nice alliteration if so. It was hot as hell every time we stopped, in general just miserable. Why people chose to live in any of the south west states is beyond me. Finally stopping for gas tonight in TX it was a LOT cooler but we were up in the mountains so who knows what Odessa will bring in the morning. One final question…what are the Dust Bowl states? This was a discussion in the car today. Everything we saw was dusty but I am almost certain the Dust Bowl was further north. Sue, you’ve been to SD and those upper states, can you comment? Anyway, we passed a lot of pecan and walnut groves and I had a really good praline that I picked up at a gas station. I remember picking up walnuts at my grandparents house when I was a little girl and I made a comment to Steven that I think I’ll have a walnut tree in the yard.

That’s all for now. We’re almost at the I-10 I-20 split so I better close and help pay attention.