driving to Texas

A week ago today, Casey, Lucy and I headed out on a three-day trip to our new town in Texas.

DAY ONE
Saw a lot of this view:
and beautiful scenery as well:
Our first stop was in the Phoenix area where we met our new little cousin, Gavin. Only two weeks old! What a sweetie.
We met up with Karis and Marty for a Cafe Rio dinner and stayed at their house for the night. Always a fun conversation with those two. Thanks again!

DAY TWO
Slept in, worked on the sprinklers at our rental house in Gilbert, and made our first stop in Tucson for lunch. We drove by Casey's old house on Bear Creek Circle where he and his family lived for almost 20 years. What a cool house. Custom built on a large lot with a pool and a basketball court. The perfect house for 4 boys.
I have never seen so much cacti in my life. I know it sounds dumb. We're in Arizona. But his whole street was just covered with it. Pretty cool looking.
Casey's youngest brother Brady lives there and met us for lunch at their favorite sandwich place, the Sausage Deli. I have to agree, it's quite yummy.
On our way out of town we popped in to the famous Eegee's for a slushie. Casey wanted to buy an extra one to keep on ice and drink later. Not sure it would have lasted. Goodbye Tucson!
This day was exciting because for me, we were headed to uncharted territory. I've made the drive from Calif to Phoenix many, many times. But beyond there.....no idea. Nothing too surprising out there, but the vegetation outside of Tucson did look different than other parts of Arizona. Just beautiful.
We hit some summer storms and saw multiple rainbows (btw, please note that though I did plenty of other un-safe things while driving alone with Lucy I never actually looked through the camera lens for the road pics. I just pointed and shot. Rest assured, I tried to be a somewhat responsible driver.)
That night we had dinner in Deming, New Mexico at the local DQ.
The weather outside was perfect.
Lucy of course danced around for about 45 minutes in her jammies. She got all the energy out...and then crashed for the night in the car.
and just to prove that everything's bigger in Texas.....at our first stop just past El Paso we found these awesome squeegees. Now that's the way it should be!
Since Lucy was asleep we drove pretty late that night till 2am (really 12am to us) and got about 4 hours past El Paso. When we pulled into our hotel though, Lucy woke up and couldn't fall back asleep for about an hour and a half. She was an angel though and just laid there in bed reading books and being quiet while we fell asleep. Two days down. So far, so good!

DAY THREE
West Texas. Everything you thought it would be:
The weather changed our last day on the road from sunny to overcast with constant light rain. That combo sounds like winter-time in my brain so it shocked me every time to step out of the car and realize it was really 85 degrees out there. We drove through multiple small Texas towns, saw lots of ranches with cool family signs, and got our first sight of a the local Texas ice cream chain, Blue Bell. Natives rave about this stuff. I wasn't impressed with it 4 years ago but I'm gonna give it another shot:
and finally that night, we arrived at our house! 1500 miles total and approximately 20 hours of driving.
We had been telling Lucy for days that we were going to our new house. She would reply back, "our new big house?!" Yep! So when we finally got there and got out of the car she glanced over at the two-story home next to ours and said, "is that our big new house?" I pointed back at our one-story home and said, "no, this is our big new house." On the verge of tears she said, "but I need a big house." Oh Lucy just you wait. Anything is bigger than what you knew in Pasadena.
And yes indeed, she's been loving the space ever since. And without our moving truck here yet, we settled in for our first night at home with camping chairs and pop tarts.
Welcome home!