Having never planned a road trip before, I thought I had everything figured out. I Google mapped our route for each location, noted the driving time and added only two hours (for lunch stops and potty breaks). For sanity purposes, you should add in more time free time (so the kiddies can play around) and include gas stops. Long story short, this trip, that was supposed to take 11 hours (13 if you count the breaks) actually took us about 17 hours.
Here's the long story.
We left the condo at the appropriate time (8a) and proceeded to the gas station to fill our tank. While there, we realized that one of our tires was low and that we needed to fill it with air. Not only did we find out that we had to pay for air, the gauge to check the pressure was missing. Steve went into the store to buy one and found out that they don't sell any tire pressure gauges. He then went to talk to the mechanic there (there was a little garage at the gas station) and ask if he could borrow the one that was on the mechanic's belt. The mechanic told him that they don't have any. The mechanic gave us directions to an auto parts store that he was certain would have a tire pressure gauge.
We took the directions and drove to the store. Discovering that the mechanic sent us all the way to the OTHER side of San Francisco. We followed the directions exactly as given and found that they led to another gas station and not an auto parts store. There was no auto parts store to be found in the area. We stopped at that gas station to see if they sold tire pressure gauges, which they did, but their air pump was broken. We decided that we would drive toward the interstate and hope that we would come across another gas station before we got to it. As our luck would have it, the first gas station we came across (and actually the only one before the interstate) was the first gas station we went to. So, Steve pays for the air and fills the tire, making sure all the tires were good, and what do you know, the missing tire pressure gauge was actually inside the air hose thing and not actually missing.
So that little side trip took us over an hour and we needed to refill the gas tank, just to make sure that we would reach the next planned stop before having to refill.
Now it's after 9a and we are at least an hour behind schedule, hoping that we can make up time on the interstate.
Our pictures from the road trip. The kids were excited to see snow for the first time.So we cross the Sierra Mountains and as we're crossing, we see snow on the mountains. The kids screamed from excitement and we couldn't resist taking a ton of pictures of the snow. We also saw the warning signs for deer and wondered what the difference is between just before one of those signs and the next however many miles are specified on the sign to beware of the deer. I mean, do they cross the road on that side but not this side of the sign, and only for the next few miles?
The other thing we notice is that there are a lot of deer on the road. All dead. The weirdest encounter of a dead deer was we saw the back half of it on our side of the road and had to drive on the other side of the road to avoid running over it and about a mile down the road we saw the front half of the deer on the other side of the road. Very gross.
Anyways, we get to Reno and stop for lunch and also stop at Jiffy Lube to take care of the oil change and whatever else it is that they do (this was planned) because we did not have time to do it before our car needed to be taken to the shipyard to ship it to CA. At Jiffy Lube, the guy tells me that there are several things that the Jiffy Lube guys in HI should have recommended to be done since we've had our van, and given the fact that we were driving all the way across country we REALLY SHOULD have it done for safety and gas mileage purposes. So, our 1/2 hour stop turned into another 2 hours of waiting around.
We finally get on our way and discover that with me being pregnant, I am the one who initiated all of the extra pit stops. At one place, in the middle of Nowhere, NV I barely have one foot out of the van and this woman with long scraggly hair and missing and rotting teeth wearing clothes that are way too tight for her jumps up at me.
"Where're you from?"
I kind of expect that since our license plate was from HI. "Hawaii."
"I know that. Where in Hawaii?"
Kind of getting weird. "Oahu."
"Ooh, what part?"
Really weird. "North Shore."
"Wow that's so cool! I'm from Waianae."
That explained everything. Apparently you can take the person out of Waianae but you can't take the Waianae out of the person, and she passed it on to her daughter too.
We got to Elko. NV at about 8p and had to call my uncle to let him know that we weren't going to make our 9p arrival time. So we had to take another break for dinner.
We finally got to Uncle Cal's house at about 3a mountain time.
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