From There to Here Part III

We left Ft. Worth early in the morning in hopes of making it to Van Horn, TX. It always seems to be an ordeal to drive across Texas. Well, I mean, it does take about 14 hours to cross the darn place. We needed to stop in Tucson and then at Edwards. Those were the only scheduled places we had to be. The others were up in the air. The thing is, when stopping in West Texas these days the prices are high and the bed bugs are plenty. There's so much new oil in the area that all the people working on the rigs/etc. have all the reservations (And we're not talking about Mariotts here, We're talking Super 8s and the like) booked up. And because of the high volume/fast turnover of people/line of work/probably not the cleanest environment, the bed bugs are bad. yuck. We didn't want to stop in the Midland/Odessa area for that reason and El Paso is just a little too far for one day so we decided to stop in Van Horn (a little more west of Midland, but still East of El Paso). The area turned out to be fine, and we made it into town for dinner. We went to a little western steakhouse in 'downtown'. It looked like it might be the spot for date nights though, as we were the only people with kids. All the other patrons were couples that were dressed up a little and here we waltz in with the minions who are all stir crazy and look like a hot mess from sitting and eating in the car all day. Both Cory and I ordered the largest beer on the menu and tried to ignore the strange stares.
We spent the night there in Van Horn and headed to Tucson the next morning. We stayed with some great old friends from Korea, the Galloways. We got there after lunch time and let all the kids (7 in total!) swim and jump on the trampoline until dinner. In the evening, Doug and Dene' had arranged for a babysitter and the adults got to go to dinner! It was really nice to take a shower in a regular bathroom, put some makeup on and have some adult company for awhile. We had gelato afterwards and then headed back to their house for a fire pit night cap.
We stayed at the Galloways for another full day (of swimming/relaxing/eating more Chipotle) and had a great time. It was a good stop for a break in driving and it was so nice to catch up with friends. Carter and Clay love their boys and had a great time too.
From Tucson, we had planned to stop in Blythe, AZ. (Just on the border or AZ and CA) but we hit Blythe at lunchtime and wanted to keep going. There's really not anywhere past Blythe to stay, so we knew we would have to make it the whole way.
As I mentioned in my previous post, we knew the way the GPS was trying to take us was not the fastest way. We knew we wanted to go to the South gate but the GPS hates the south gate. Somehow we missed an exit and ended up driving around in El Mirage CA for awhile before finally arriving at the base.
Of course it was about dinner time and the base was having a water problem, so all the eating establishments were closed. We ended up driving to Rosamond for dinner, where everyone proceeded to loose their s#^@&. We trudged through dinner, drove back to base, and were finally.....FINALLY...home.