Well, you can prepare yourself for a lot of things, but sick kids, flat tires and infants screaming at midnight for no apparent reason may be exceptions to the rule. No matter what you do, this will take it out of you. And after 465 miles through mostly desert, at an average of 107 degrees, I feel like some kind of marathon runner.
We had planned to leave at 5 am to skip the heat of the Mojave desert and get to Utah by around 2pm. But V cropped up a 103 temp on Sunday and C was up between 12:30 and 2am for reasons she kept to herself, although she let the whole neighborhood know about it.
Tam got a flat tire and ran around the county trying to find one to replace it at the eleventh hour, when everything was closed.
Better a flat yesterday than today, though.
Also, in a moment that can only be described as vain and hopeful, I went and got a spray tan. The effect on my white, Irish skin, was less attractive than it was orange and fakey looking. Now I'll be a single mom on a road trip with two kids and baby on my hip AND I look cheap and trashy. Excellent. At least Tammy looks put together, although that may just be for show.
My mom made us zucchini nut muffins with notes on the top that said "Extreme Sport Traveler and Mother" - and after today, I think that trekking with kids should qualify as 'extreme sport'. At least pursuits like mountain climbing and scuba diving allow your full attention to be focused on the task at hand. The rigors of watching the road, looking at the map, passing out snacks, negotiating truces with two backseat politicians, and stopping every 20 minutes to let someone out to go to the bathroom leave absolutely no room for anything else. However, Tammy and I think that by the end of this week, we should have our system down, and these kids will be trained to leave their shoes in sight and ready to go at a moments notice, and be filling the gas tanks for us.
It's 11:30 and our intrepid crew just crashed on the floor in a swirl of multi-colored sleeping bags, although it's much to hot to think of covering any of them up. We did pretty much nothing all day but pass eighteen wheelers, color (girls), worry about the temperature gauge (me), and sleep (Clem. - although this may have been the trade off for last night). I was pretty proud of making it to St. George, given late hour that we left Santa Barbara ( almost 9am). The high point was probably the swimming session at our hotel after we got here - it was still over 100 degrees when we pulled in at 8:00 tonight. The low point was the dinner hour just past Las Vegas when we pushed on through without stopping and during which Clemmie screamed for about 40 minutes. In an act of desperation, I began feeding her small bits of chocolate that I had softened in my mouth so she wouldn't choke on them. This was an instant success and resulted in 10 minutes of gooey happy baby and then another 30 of quietly napping baby. She's never had chocolate before so we'll see how tonight goes...but at the last hour of a day like this, I would have fed her caviar and champagne if it would keep her happy.
We saw tons of Joshua trees, about a zillion Alluvial Plains and, sadly, not one single Saguaro cactus. I guess we're not far enough south (or east?) to see them. Next trip.