Home Sweet Home

We left Tucumcari this morning and started heading back to Stillwater.  I had a kink in my neck because my dad left my very favorite pillow in Farmington and I used a blanket as a pillow. I feel as though I would have been more comfortable sleeping in the truck, and I think my family would have let me! 

We found a JoAnn's for grandma to find some material. Her and mom were in there for 9 hours. It was fine though because I slept in the car. quiet, bliss.  (Besides grandpa snoring but i'm used to that now.) 

All mom wanted was to go to Lotaburger so i could try it. There was one right across the street from our hotel and we were sure we would find one along the way, we didn't. So of course dad made us all starve to death until 3 because he was trying to get back to Del Rancho in Clinton, Oklahoma! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!! That man would do anything for a steak sandwich. 

The second we got out of the car in Stillwater I was sweating. It was 105 in arizona and WONDERFUL. I never felt hot or disgusting, no humidity. The weather here is terrible.

We had a great time and got to see some beautiful country. Even though Raymond said a lot of it was "a waste of good country and you couldn't even run a cow on it." 

I was so glad we got to see where grandpa was from and meet his cousin. Grandma and Grandpa had some great stories to share that I enjoyed listening to. 

It will be wonderful sleeping in my own bed tonight. I haven't heard coughing in about 6 hours. Grandpa and I are having a contest to see how long we can sleep in tomorrow. I told him that I bet he would win if he didn't have to get up and take his insulin. haha sucker! 

Until next time. 

Sitting in the hotel waiting on Raymond to take his shots. We are in Tucumcari.

Yesterday we went to Albuquerque. Mom and I bought beautiful turquoise rings.

We decided to head home today (thank jesus).

Last night raymond told pasty to stop telling stories from 50 years ago.  He asked if she had any new stories. So she told him.. "yesterday raymond slept all day, got up and ate, then went back to bed." it was funny.

On the road again...

We have been in cell hell and away from civilization for 2 days. Which also means scary roads. We drove to Zion national park. We all rode the shuttle around the park and mom dad and I hiked. It was beautiful. Mom and I hiked up to some small waterfalls in our sandals and almost broke our necks.

After that we went to Bryce Canyon and it was AWESOME. Who ever decided that the Grand Canyon was the best obviously hadn't seen Bryce yet. The Grand Canyon can suck it. Bryce Canyon has these things that stick up because of erosions and they are called hoodoos, which i love. Also, I decided that whoever created the little mermaid and who ever makes those little castles that go inside fish bowls has obviously been to Bryce because that is EXACTLY what it looks like.



















When we left Bryce Canyon it was about 8 and we were looking for somewhere to stay. Little did we know that mom had taken us on another scenic drive and there was no where to stay for miles except for the chainsaw massacre inn, so we kept going. We went through a HUGE canyon with a tiny road in the middle of the night. Dad almost hit a deer and an elk, and was laughing about it. He needs medicine. We finally found a place in Capital Reef. The guy at the front desk was on cocaine, but he did tell us that Disney just finished shooting a movie there.

Captial Reef was awesome to drive through in the DAYLIGHT. We took awesome pictures. We stopped at a place called Hog's Springs to eat a picnic, fitting. While eating these three hickdog men in bathing suits walked up and were looking for the HOT springs. Apparently they were hickdog and illiterate and dumb because I hadn't seen water for 3 days. We didn't tell them they were idiots, we just let them walk by us and look for the springs.

I made mom change her route so that we could go by the four corners. OOPS. It was on Navajo land and they closed it for construction. I won't even mention the racist comments Raymond was blurting out. I had to remind him that we are all feathers too. We made it to Farmington, NM and found a Casino. ding ding ding ding ding. I love Indian Reservations. Raymond got a JUMBO marg at dinner and probably spent millions at the casino. Mom and I played video poker the whole time, enjoyed being minorities and I spent only a couple dollars. (dad's money of course)

Raymond was about to poop his pants coming back into the hotel so to make matters worse for him I jumped out from around the corner and scared the shit out of him. Literally.

Mom has a terrible case of club foot and she wont quit eating salt. I told her i wasn't going to feel sorry for her anymore today as she was eating sunflower seeds. She walks with a little limp.


I have to get some sleep, mom said she wont bring me breakfast in bed anymore. Albuquerque tomorrow

She grabbed my trunk and jerked it.

  We went to the Grand Canyon at it was wonderful. I was the only one that had already been there.  We suckered the lady into giving us an ALL ACCESS pass for the shuttle route. Usually only the shuttles can drive down those roads but she gave us a pass so that we could drive and raymond and patsy could just get out of the car instead of getting on and off the bus. It didn't really matter because Raymond only got out twice anyway. He said he was over seeing the big ditch. He also said it was the biggest case of erosion that he had ever seen. Well, I'd imagine so.

On the way across the hoover dam, we had to have the bed of our truck searched. Which was kind of funny. I was hoping we wouldnt be arrested for the items we stole from the national park.  The Hoover dam had already changed so much from the last time I was there. The bridge they are building is almost finished. 

Because we waited til the last minute, there were literally no hotels in vegas that weren't sold out or 5million dollars. We wanted to stay downtown to be easier/ less walking area but the golden nugget was the only place i thought wouldnt be sketchy. Well, apparently we thrive on sketchy hotels. We ended up staying at the four queens. It really wasn't that bad (compared to these super 8s we kept getting. puke.) 

The first night we just stayed downtown. Grandma and grandpa stayed in the four queens the whole time and raymond was still amazed at how big it was. its tiny. We finally got grandma to step outside to watch the light show on fremont street. 

Yesterday we had a lot of fun. Mom and I must have had 5billion drinks. Everytime we turned around the little lady was walking by saying "cocktails?" You can't say no to that, even though they have about one teaspoon of alcohol in them. We drove grandma and grandpa down to the strip. Grandpa was amazed, he said "recession, my ass." Grandma on the other hand, was still convinced that all these casinos were there when she went for a bowling trip in 1835. She was more concerned with looking at all the license tags on the cars. We also went to the pawn shop that is on Pawn Stars and to Henderson to gamble. I was the youngest person in there and my dad was runner up. Kind of a confidence boost. 

Last night mom and I had more drinks and waited around on dad until he was done playing craps. Four hours later we took the bus down to the strip to look around a little.  When we were in the venetian we saw a guy that was on shrooms or something. First, he was trying to fight himself then we was trying to fight the gondola. Note that there weren't people in the Gondola, he was trying to fight the boat itself. Then we walked up to me and was calling me sam sam? Once he had my dad's big mustache in his face he finally opened his eyes, they were crazy dilated. The security guards came to get him. I thought i was pretty dressed up until we got to the strip. No matter your size, if you aren't wearing a black spandex dress that shows your vagina you aren't dressed up. It was not a pretty site, about 5% of the girls looked good in them. 

Today we made our way to St. George, Utah. We got a nice room and I get to sleep on the couch instead of my cot! woo hoo! haha, I will never again take for granted being able to sleep on the couch. We talked raymond and patsy into suiting up and we went down to the pool. They wouldnt get in but they got in the hot tub with us. (The first rule on the wall said if you are diabetic, have heart disease or any of the 50 conditions patsy has consult your doctor first.) Sorry boutcha dr. Jenkins. 

We got 3 kinds of beer and played cards in the room the rest of the night. I think patsy liked that more than anything we have done on the whole trip. 

Right now Im laying on my couch and listening to 2 people snoring and 1 person coughing. I was making fun of grandpa for snoring when he is wearing "Wendy" (his CPAP) and he said when he does that patsy grabs his trunk and jerks it because he thinks it looks like an elephant trunk. 

Tomorrow we are off to Bryce Canyon. I can't wait! 

Patsy takes a tumble.

This morning we took a scenic drive from tempe to flagstaff.
Before we got going the HOLY HALITOSIS was rocking in the car. The air conditioner was creating a magic carpet ride for the stank to get to the back seat and into my nose. I started passing out gum.

We stopped off and stole some cholla skeleton from a national forest. wonderful, we are probably going to be arrested. It still had a few stickers on it and i told everyone that if they start to annoy me i was going to bop them on the head with it. Yea right, i don't have an endless supply of bandaids to give out.

It was labeled as "a white knuckle drive" and "not for the faint of heart." They weren't kidding.  Not only were we driving on a curvy road but it was in the mountains, one lane most of the way, no guard rails on the side and dirt road for 23 miles! Oh and we saw a car that had fallen over the edge. The whole way I was thinking im SO glad im not riding with Maurice German.

Raymond said, again, that he was going to call the governor. This time about the roads.  His voice started getting raspy and he said it was from saying oh shit so many times. He was scared. He got mad at dad and called him a fool, said "we are just a few feet from death and you're laughing and carrying on." Dad was kinda scaring us, it is not ok for a man with ADD to drive on these kinds of roads. Only the passengers should look other places besides the road. We tried to find a place to have a picnic down in this canyon. Raymond wanted to leave he said "you're going to make me eat down in this hell hole?" Apparently he was over it.

I was very glad we went on the scenic route, props to momma. It was really really pretty. We went over the roosevelt dam and lake and two other lakes.


We finally found a hotel in flagstaff. Hope that little baby can hold out a little longer, aunt Kami is going to vegas!

Snot Rags.

Well, It happened. I am officially going insane.

Patsy coughed all the way from Tucson to Phoenix. Midway she ran out of cough drops. Imagine my hysteria.

I found a brochure in our hotel about a green house and we had nothing else to do in Tucson so we stopped by. (At that time I didn't know my friend Carla lived there once!! geez) The greenhouse turned out to be awesome i never knew there were 3 billion types of cactus, and the owner knew about all of them. She had been running it since 1964 and she looked like it. Her ol' hands were so callused she was just grabbing cactus left and right. Every five minutes you could hear mom around the greenhouse "ouch, ouch, ouch!"

We took a tram down into Sabino Canyon it was really pretty but really hot. Mom, dad and I took a "hike." Actually it was a little baby mini trail (less than .3 miles) that broke off the parking lot. I thought I was going to have to start crawling back to the parking lot like in a movie. It was so dry and hot. ugh.

Drove to phoenix and i TRIED to sleep the way there. yea right. somehow Patsy found the damn sunflower seeds that i hid. I hid them better this time. :) hehe sorry grandma. We drove around downtown a little. Mom and I got out to take a picture of me on some animals for Karli and dad lost us. We could see him driving around in circles but he couldn't see us. It was kind of amusing.

We made it to tempe, found a hotel and a delicious mexican restaurant where we got Margaritas. My oasis. I told patsy to stop drinking or i was going to call her a cab. She told me she would just roll me back to the hotel. Thanks. Went shopping a little and came back to the hotel. Mom dad and I swam and then we came back and all played cards in our pajamas. Dad won, shocking.

Gonna sleep on this cot again. Really? we are so cheap that we bring a cot?! yes. Because that extra hundred dollars a night I am gonna need to pay for psychiatric services when we make it back home.

Flagstaff tomorrow.

Border Patrol.

We started the day off with aching backs from the gangsta hotel we stayed at, so we were all a little grumpy. Headed toward tombstone, we drove all morning.

The ride was getting a little boring so about halfway there i turned around and mooned Raymond. He didn't sleep anymore after that.

We all have sore tongues and lips from eating sunflower seeds. Mom will surely have swollen club foot in the morning from all the salt.  Patsy must have ate 5 pounds of seeds all by herself. one at a time. sitting by me. AHHH. We were eating Dill seeds and regular but when we stopped at a gas station dad bought some Jalepeno Hot Salsa ones and secretly mixed them in with Raymond's. It was so funny dad cried. Raymond said "i hope they don't make rat poison flavored ones, you will all say 'lets feed these to Raymond too.'"

We made it to Tombstone and thought it was pretty boring at first until we stopped in a jewelry store and the owner told us that the historic places were on the other side of the town. oops. We almost drove on through. We saw the OK corral and the birdcage theatre. It was fun and right up dad's alley. We stopped by some ridiculous graveyard where a whole bunch of people were buried that none of us knew. Maybe dad knew some. One headstone said "two cowboys, drowned" and one said "hanged by mistake." Tombstone reminded me of Cody, Wyoming.

I've never even seen border patrol in my life and today we got stopped by them about 4 times. Mom took us on this scenic highway to some lake and we were just a few miles from the border. I was looking through the fields to try to see some mexicans running. I would have at least given them some water and definitely Patsy's sunflower seeds.  Border patrol was everywhere!!

We ended up in Tuscon, Arizona. Found a comfort inn and had to switch rooms because the air conditioner wasnt growing icicles, therefore not cold enough for my dad. Laying in my little cot right now and ready for tomorrow!! Phoenix, here we come!