Wednesday, September 2, 2015

A Most Beautiful Drive

The drive from Los Angeles truly is beautiful.   This time of the year, it's beyond HOT (temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) for most of the drive.   However, the scenery is just astonishing.   As we drove across the southwest, we saw several pockets of rain around us, a lightning storm ahead of us, two rainbows and one double rainbow!  Not to mention, the mountains, the white sands and the overall beautiful landscape.   We lucked out that despite all the crazy weather we could see around us, we didn't hit any storms ourselves.  That is until almost 8 hours into our trip.  Just passed Wilcox, Arizona, the skies went black and it started pouring the rain.  We could barely see what was in front of us, then suddenly the skies lit up with lightning!   I thought for sure the car was going to get hit.  The dogs both got very quiet and tried to settle in.

Everyone knows I LOVE a good storm, but this was quite scary to drive in.   As anyone who has made this journey knows, there aren't many options to call it a night once you're east of Tucson.   I was starting to wish I had stopped in Wilcox for the night.   But at this point, I really had no option other than to tread on and make it to Lordsburg.    I was quite happy to finally rest my head on a pillow at the Hampton Inn.   Even after all those hours in the car, the dogs were ready to relax too.

A Road Trip with my best buds!

I was long overdue for a road trip to New Mexico.  I had needed to go for several weeks to take care of some things, but just couldn't seem to make it work.   Well finally the stars aligned and I was able to take enough time off to hit the road.   First question, should I take both of my crazy hounds?   As some of my loyal followers know, my hound Lucy Grace, is a great travel companion.  She's totally chill in the car and very well behaved when staying at even the fanciest of hotels.  Now Bella, aka, The Terrorist, is another story.  I'd only done one TEST road trip with her.  She was actually much more well behaved than I expected, but still that was a 90 minute car ride and 2 night stay.  How would she fair on a  14 hour ride and a week+ in a hotel?   After much consternation, I just couldn't bring myself to put her in a kennel, so off we went.  I loaded up the 4Runner and we began our journey!   Would it be a great adventure or something else?