7 States Down, 3 To Go

Well, I must say that for the most part this trip has gone quite smoothly. Although we have had our moments where our laughter has been so hard we could not breathe there have not been any moments of near death experiences or where we felt as if we were in danger (thank the Lord above)

Although I picked my mother up in Indiana I have officially traveled and hit 7 states in this journey. Starting in Michigan, I said good-bye to family and friends, packed up the car and headed out. I then hit Indiana were I said good-bye to even more family and friends. On the first day of travel with my mom we headed through Illinois (where we had a slight incident with a toll booth) and on to Wisconsin where I was fortunate to see my brother perform in Beauty And The Beast - he was amazing by the way - where we hit another bump in the road with Cooper in our hotel room. The next day there was even more good-byes to family and friends and we went through Iowa and most of Nebraska. Today we managed to hit Colorado and Utah - both of which there were spurts of absolute beauty and absolutely nothing. When you pass a sign that says "no services offered for the next 99 miles" a slight bit of panic goes through you as you realize it would take forever for any help to arrive if you needed it - which we didn't (again, thank you Lord).

Tomorrow we are hoping to get up bright and early and head through Nevada, a tiny piece of Arizona and on to California which will come to about 5 hours before we hit our final destination of Twentynine Palms, Ca.

As mentioned earlier our incident with a toll booth came when the dumb ez-pass didn't read and the arm of the toll booth wouldn't come up. Did I mention this happened right outside Chicago so needless to say it was busy which resulted in a quick pile up of cars behind me and it all being my fault...

Also, we attempted to leave Cooper in the hotel room while we went to Tanner's production of Beauty And The Beast. Before intermission even hit I had received a phone call with complaints that my crazy dog was barking and disrupting the other patrons of the hotel. Not wanting to miss any of the musical mom and I managed to get Tanner's room key, run to the car, drive to the hotel, get the dog and cage in the car, drive to tanner's room, lock Cooper in Tanner's room with the hope and a prayer that no one found out, and get back to the theater before the 10 minute intermission ended - whew! As winded as you were reading that on-going sentence, try and just imagine how winded we were when we finally took our seats!

I guess the most overlooked part of this adventure is that even though we are only 5 hours away from our final destination we still don't have anywhere to stay...literally - no where. We can't find a hotel that allows dogs that has an opening while we find a more long term place to stay while we wait for on base housing...this could be a blessing in disguise or a really bad fiasco. I guess we shall see :)