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| Finally back home in AZ! |
We stayed in La Quinta the last night on the road. Only a short 3+ hour hop back over to Buckeye. We stayed at an Embassy Suites, so took advantage of their happy hour, as well as breakfast the next morning. :-)
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| Hot again as we got back into AZ!!! |
The drive the day before was pretty long, about 9-10 hours after adding all of the stops. Although they were all fun stops, it made for a long day...at least for the driver! :-) So of course, he got grumped up later that evening for no good reason! :-)
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| The hole I dug in the back yard prior to leaving and still couldn't find the leak! |
I used to spend a lot of time in LQ as we owned a rental condo at PGA West. I really enjoy the area, and it was kind of fun to drive around the Coachella Valley again. Although hot like AZ, I always enjoyed spending time over there in the summers, as it is very much a small town atmosphere.
We rolled into home mid afternoon. Bish got the proverbial pic of the girls on the back of the van, and then we all started to unload our stuff from the van. We sat and caught up with Tim who spent most of the month at the house with Maori. Tim got stuck dealing with my irrigation system which spring a leak just before we left, and I wasn't able to find/fix the leak before we hit the road, so it took some effort to actually irrigate our plants while we were gone! It was nice to finally be back in our own house and get to sleep in our own beds that night! Maori was very happy to see us (OK, happy to see me!)!
This year we only drove approximately 5000 miles vs. 8000 last summer on our cross country trip. I think I tasted over 150+ micro brew beers along the way, and we probably visited 15-20 micro breweries! It was the NW US, so there are a lot more micro breweries in this area than in most parts of the country.
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| Where the car carrier scraped against our garage door frame. |
Our neighbor Jason loaned us his luggage carrier for on top of the van (again) this year. I have driven approximately 13,000 miles the last 2 summers with this thing on top of the van. After arriving home and unloading the van this year, I drove the van around the park in front of our house while Tim backed out and headed home... and as I drove into the garage to park, I heard a loud scraping noise!!!!! After all of that driving, I drove into our garage with the damned thing still on top of the van!!! No major damage other than a few scratches on our garage door frame, and a few on top of the car carrier!!! I may owe Jason a few beers now!
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| Close up of the scrape. |
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| The brown stripe now on top of the car carrier! |
It was another epic driving trip with the Slackettes! I think we all enjoyed ourselves again, just as we did last year. And (again) surprisingly, no one killed another person while stuck in the car together for so long!. We've decided we've had enough long driving trips for the time being, and hope to travel with the girls internationally over the next few years! Stay tuned for those adventures!!!
I almost forgot to add my favorite item from our trip. Our neighbors, the Malkemuses, dog sat Maori for about a week while Tim was out of town. Melanie sent me a video of Rick and Maori coming home from a walk from their Ring doorbell that brought a tear to my eye and really made me appreciate having neighbors and friends like them and Tim!
