Tumbled Words

Leon finally found hotel coffee that actually resembled coffee rather than colored water yesterday. Today we found a Starbucks, finally.

Perfect weather, yet again, for travel. Hotel last night, well, let’s not talk about it, either. Tonight’s is not much better… most were full by the time we got here. So, did we choose the right place for dinner tonight?

NO! The waitress was a gem with her Texas drawl and wonderful personality… I left talking in a similar drawl, I was born a Tar Heel, after all. I’m sure I will loose it in a few hours.

Sleep would be a nice addition to our trip. Last night and this morning, I was rashed (vs ravishing) and itching from washing our clothes in detergent I was allergic to… tonight, we bought our usual detergent (which we had with us, but it was buried in the SUV some where), so we spent the evening rewashing.

Tonight we chose BBQ for dinner, something Leon loves, but gets little of in our neck of the woods. HA! Murphy, the keeper of the law, showed up and the dinner was just a tad better than only edible. But there were fun moments at dinner, like when I ordered a beer, something I rarely do. I asked for a Coors with lemon or lime…

I had to ask Leon which type I drank when the waitress questioned me… He said original. (Can you tell I don’t drink it often?) She brought the bottle, I mentioned that it had a different label than the ones we had at home. I squeezed that lemon into the bottle and was amazed at how good it tasted. It wasn’t until we were nearly through with dinner that Leon realized that I had ordered a Coors, something I had never had, when I meant to order a Corona… no wonder the label looked different! We had a good laugh over it and I have now officially changed beers for that occasional chug. (That was a figure of speech, I would never chug!)

That he didn’t immediately catch it, as quick as he is, well, that just shows he, too, was tired… after all, how could he sleep, when I was tossing and turning.

And to continue with rest stop bathrooms. The only one I went to in New Mexico was OK… thank goodness.

And to update the Verizon wireless card… I have been able to use it out in the middle of nowhere with the antennae. But most of those attempts it was using the National account and not the Broadband account and it was soooooo s l o w …. a couple of times servers timed out. But otherwise it has worked quite well… but our blogs and emails sure have a lot of data in them, that is why I haven’t been commenting or uploading a lot… trying to save it for emergencies. This is on the hotel internet…

Back to laundry… (OK, so Leon is really doing the laundry, I had to put on pajamas so it all could be washed… but I am folding it all, practicing for the new helpful me, grin.)

We are only in Albuquerque. I think we are in the semi-retirement mode, even getting up early, we leave late… how does that happen?

The sun was shining, the winds were cool (and then cold) on the trip today. Tomorrow morning is a freeze warning. Ahh, just like home!

I have found that as much as I dislike the high humidity of the South, the 14 percent humidity I am experiencing here does not work either! The Pacific Northwest is still reigning supreme in our hearts, both in climate and overall courtesy — though, so far each place we have stopped has not only had courteous employees, but downright friendly employees.

I was in the “I just want to go home” mood today. I had enough of CA and AZ crummy rest stop bathrooms… They need to send whoever manages them to WA and OR to see how it is supposed to be done. Seriously, it is not doing the public a service by having bathrooms in the shape most of theirs are. Leon even turned around and walked out of one, and in his job driving all over the state in both WA and FL he has had to use public restrooms all day long for 25 years or more.

In fact, as far as I am concerned, I won’t make the trip to those latter states again by car… and I don’t do planes, so they won’t get our money, not that they will probably miss it.

And the mood I am in after suffering through them, I don’t want to drive my RV through those states when I finally get it, even though I can avoid rest stops that way.

That said, the views are awesome, the drivers have even for the most part been courteous to each other and few people acting reckless. This doesn’t feel normal, but it sure as heck feels good!

Now, apparently our son did not win his fortune in Las Vegas this weekend… I was so hoping he would call to say he had just purchased our RV so I didn’t have to stop at a single rest stop again.

Oh well, guess we will have to just get it the old-fashioned way and work for it, grin.

Hotels/motels and I do not get along. That is the primary reason I started working on Leon to want to RV… Previous trips have been a nightmare because we couldn’t afford top hotels and I hate chemical smells like Pinesol, etc.

We checked with AAA in Los Angeles on the Santa Anna winds that the weather map showed over a large area, were told going to Bakersfield we would be just fine, and we were! Cool winds, sunshine. Speaking of sunshine… it was a rude reminder of why we left Florida to begin with, the car heated up ridiculously fast… What were we thinking moving back to Florida? Oh yeah, earning a living and seeing our son… who is, by the way, in Vegas right now trying to lose all his money, I think… or was that trying to win big? But I digress, as usual.

This trip started out OK, we found bearable rooms. We never really caught up on our sleep and were looking forward to staying at a hotel next to a restaurant with country music and dancing, thinking we would just walk over and grab a beer just for an hour or so. The hotel REEKED. Leon doesn’t react like I do to odors, but it even knocked him back a step or two. We drove down to another exit to a chain we usually have luck with - it was not in an area we felt comfortable, too industrial. We drove back up, tried another hotel that looked pretty new… It was clean, but whatever they cleaned with had a powdery like smell… I chose to breathe, so we left. Finally, we found one that was OK, and actually quite nice.

After all that driving around hotel to hotel, we just ordered in….

and PS to Shelby, Oregon and Washington still rule!