We are tired. Last night we all had some kind of problems sleeping. Hunter decided that he couldn’t keep so much milk in his stomach, and burped up a lot of it all over Heather and the bed. He had to get new clothes on and calmed down enough to go back to sleep. I had to put on headphones and find a radio station to listen to in order to get to sleep, but then woke up a couple hours later and couldn’t immediately return to sleep. Eventually I did, but not before listening to a bunch of oldie songs on Cola 99.9FM. Reminds me of the old KFRC.
We left at ten o’clock and drove about ten minutes to California Speedway. Unfortunately, it was gated off so we couldn’t get any good pictures. A few minutes later we were on I10, which goes all the way to Phoenix. The first part of the trip was fairly routine, but Hunter didn’t stay asleep for long. He entertained himself with his toys. The way to Palm Springs has a lot of windmills. Huge ones, little ones… just fields of them. Most of them were churning away. We hopped off the freeway at Palm Springs to get gas. It almost windy enough to blow hats off heads. I could see why they put all those windmills there. We stopped down the road a bit in Desert Palms to get Heather some new jeans, since the ones she wanted to wear were baby-pukey. Back on the road, we headed toward Blythe.
Halfway to Blythe, Hunter started fussing so we pulled over to let him eat and stretch after being cooped up in his carseat for so long. He was so happy to be out and playing with mommy. Unfortunately, that all ended when we needed to get back to the road. He fussed most of the rest of the way to Blythe, but since he finally fell asleep, we decided to get something fast to eat for lunch and keep driving for as long as we could. Since we weren’t going to eat inside someplace, I had to stretch my legs before we got back on the freeway. We stopped in a lot near the onramp back to the freeway and I stretched a bit. Hunter woke up and continued his fussing before we were back on the road.
Once passed Blythe, we crossed the calm Colorado River. Of course, so far south it isn’t very interesting. It’s interesting how it’s easy to notice that you’ve just entered into a different place. It didn’t seem so smoggy or hazy, and the rocks seemed to be a different shade. Since Hunter was awake and fussy, we stopped at the first rest area to stretch, then continued on. It’s pretty much a straight drive through Arizona. Only a few times does the road actually bend a little or go up in elevation. Since the little guy eventually fell asleep, we bypassed the next rest stop, but we did stop at the third, about an hour from Phoenix. We were actually surprised that all three were open. We found that in California, about half of the rest areas were closed for maintenance.
Traffic picked up once we got into the more suburban areas. We saw the results of a multi-car accident that I am sure we missed by less than a minute. I think about seven or eight cars were involved. The speed didn’t pick up after we passed it, however, and we found out that the reason it happened in the first place was an accident about a half mile ahead. Cars had been slowing for that one when they created the one we saw. Before we had even known about it, I decided to tell the GPS that we wanted the best route that wasn’t on the highway. It calculated a parallel route that we could take until the freeway traffic picked up. I edged over to the right lane and took the next exit as the highway went up an overpass. Waiting at the bottom of the exit, we could see a couple RVs and a few cars, as well as a couple fire engines and ambulances. Since they were at the top of the overpass, I just went straight back onto the freeway and saved us ten or twenty minutes. A mile down the road, what did we see? A third multi-car accident on the next offramp.
Civilization rose up around us and soon we were in Phoenix. We pulled into the hotel parking lot with a few minutes to spare before the sun set. After unsuccessfully driving around to find a pizza place, we took a fussy baby back to the hotel and ate dinner at the next-door Denny’s. For as much as I usually have them down the list of places to go to eat, they’ve really got a good menu. We might have to go back later in the week so I can try one or two more things.
Heather and Hunter have passed out on the bed. I don’t think we’re setting an alarm clock for tomorrow, since the first thing we have to do is the baseball game between the A’s and Dodgers, and that doesn’t start until 1pm. So as long as Hunter is sleeping, we’ll be sleeping.
So yea. Baseball tomorrow!
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