50+ hrs into a 9hr Trip

What an insane drive down to Arizona this has been, and it's not even over yet. We left Moab yesterday morning in a blizzard, woke up this morning in Blanding, about 20 miles away, in another blizzard. During that time there were things like radiator hose leaks, tractor pulling something large and green out of the snow, furnace only blowing cold for all 50 hrs in BLIZZARDS, and calling the police on crazy man from India. 

We tried to pull into the RV park in Blanding, UT last night but after aformentioned tractor/green/snow incident we didn't want to chance their snowpacked lanes so we asked the Super 8 next door, with the big open empty parking lot, if we could plug into their electricity for the night. After agreeing on $20 he let us park and we told him we'd be out by 7 or 8. He tries hanging around and talking with us telling us how he needs us to help him and give him more money. Tries to get us to then buy a room but I stand firm and say we just want the electric plug. He finally relents and leaves us alone.

Then this morning at 7:30 he bangs real loud on the outside of our bus and then runs and hides behind the glass door inside the hotel. So we get dressed, and fire up the bus and when Joey gets outside to go unplug he is out there trying to get another 5$ because we stayed too long and are driving their bill up! Joey's like no, man, we're leaving and then this "security guy" runs over and grabs our cord and yanks it out bending the tongs. He then starts cussing saying "I go call my boss!" Joey's first reaction was to grab him by the throat and pin him down for a minute, but he just snatched the cord back and put it up, all while this guy is yelling and screaming, and all we can make out is "more money' and "help him". We got out of there as fast as our air brakes would pump up and thanked him very much on our way past him.

Let's not forget this is happening in a blizzard. We try to drive out of town but there's no way we're risking it, so pull into the first place that doesn't look like we'll get stuck which just happened to be under a car wash. That our A/C barely made it under. The owner saw us pull in and came over and offered to plug us in and told us he had hot fresh coffee in his laundrymat next door. He refused Joey's money and told us we could stay as long as we needed.  Now how crazy is that?? Not two minutes after fleeing a crazy foreigner demanding we give him more money for something after the fact, to a local man offering up help to stranded travelers with absolutely no benefit for himself. These things can't help but affect us and our children got to witness this all. Of course, it led to discussions all over the map...race, karma, religion, war, assault, prison, compassion, customs, appreciation and relationships. When we talked to the local police about the incident we were not surprised to hear they knew exactly who we were talking about before we even stopped talking. It's amazing the Super 8 in Blanding, UT has any business at all, which according to the parking lot wasn't much anyway.

We ended up staying under the car wash until around 3 when they finally called the roads good. The roads were decent, some hairy parts but nothing bad, but man was it cold!! In order to help keep our toes from getting frostbit I cooked a pizza, then baked some brownies. It did the trick.

We've always known our kids were good travelers but this trip they've proven themselves to be Rock Star Travelers. These guys never complained, and have just taken it all in stride, even laughing with us at the absurdity of it all. Reminds me of the time the kids and I were in a shared hotel room with another mom and her two kids, when the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. After going out into the hall and determining it was indeed an emergency and we needed to evacuate I was able to get my six and eight year olds up and out of bed while I carried my four year old........in about fifteen seconds! On our way out the door I yelled good-bye to my sleeping roommates. We then stood outside shivering in the cold while my boys were barefoot and they did not complain, cry, whine, nothing...not once, while there were other kids crying while they each had a parent holding them wrapped up in comforters. I don't know what it is about these kids of ours, but I sure could take some lessons from them.

We left tuesday late afternoon for a quick 670 mile one nighter drive.....and here we sit two nights later and we've barely made it half way. We could have risked it and probably made it but we're playing it safe these days........not letting anything ruin our dream of getting to Hawaii!

Tonight Tuba City, AZ and hopefully tomorrow Flagstaff is good enough that we can make it to Phoenix.