Day 2: Rocky Road

Overall, our second day on our way back to Car-lie-lee was uneventful. Our stops in Baker, CA and Kingman, AZ to supercharge were super hot compared to what we have been used to living on The Peninsula.

Thankfully, the chargers in Baker were covered with solar panels which provided ample shade for us to walk under and not burn our delicate paw pads.

Then there were the wind tubines and a massive solar “city” we passed. The solar city had a “wow” factor as we came around a bend in the road and it sparkled like the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz!

The pictures kind of lose the impact of a true “wow” on account that we were driving and the lighting wasn’t optimal. However, you can see more pics/read more about it if you Google: “Ivanpah Solar Field”.

As it turns out, the road of renewable energy continued with lots and lots of windmills on the hills all around us.

Then there was the road of endless Joshua trees…unfortunately they were not in full bloom at this time of year or it may have been even more spectacular.

The Kingman stop is the home of a Route 66 museum and there happens to be an awesome park across the street with lots of grass, some trees for shade, and a large train engine which offers some good photo ops.

The one problem we encountered was a “25 mile stretch of rough road” (at least that’s what the sign said…it seemed to last a lot longer than that to us). This was on I-40 between Kingman and Flagstaff – a major route to the Grand Canyon. My only thought was this road was sponsored by some major tire company (or the whole tire industry) since the amount of blown tires and treads along this stretch was quite impressive. We were so glad that we just got new tires for the dog car AND that we didn’t have to drive both cars the whole way since the tread on our other car is on its last miles.

I will say… both Zoe and I were asleep when Mom appeared to go crazy. She slowed down and started swerving all around the place. We both sat up to reprimand her, and we saw semi-trucks in front of her doing the same thing. What is going on? Did the whole world go crazy? Then a really nice black car passed us going a “respectable” speed (speed limit-ish) and we were like Mom… chilax on the whole road thing. Well, a few miles later that black car was one of the ones on the side of the road with a shredded tire. Mom mentioned to Dad she hoped we were not feeling motion sickness, as the bumpy road was worse than most airplane turbulence, not to mention the additional motion of her trying to avoid the bad craters…

Which reminds me – there is a whole other saga about getting Pippi (the other car; the dog car / our car is Khalessii) transported from Menlo Park to Ann Arbor…but that is a story for another post.

Below is a short clip documenting some of the road conditions.

We arrived at the hotel for our second night of the first leg of our trek across the country. I immediately jumped up on the air conditioning unit to get a better look at our view.

I then checked out the tub/shower in the bathroom.

After settling in, our parents got dinner from the restaurant down the hill from our room. We had already eaten in Kingston, but we did get a sample of their tasty meals before one last bathroom-break -troll around the grounds and then off to bed.

More soon,

The Tempest

-just to let you know, we are now in NM and have additional travel tales to tell but being in the mountains our connection speed isn’t quite what it is in Silicon Valley. Not complaining. Just stating a fact that if you are basically living in a region with great views, lots of trails without many people (but lots of good wild life scents)…you may have to wait a bit to download videos and other blog accessories.

Day 1: Sapped

Today was our last in Menlo Park, CA.

Zoe and I obviously knew something was happening when the boxes and paper came out. This was reinforced when all our outdoor furniture was taken away by new BFF John (I have more recent stories about him that I will hopefully be able to tell soon now that The Scribe isn’t distracted by other things…like this move).

Of course, this being the third time we’ve packed up and took to the road since the start of the pandemic, we knew the routine:

1) Movers come and pack the rest of our stuff that we hadn’t previously packed.*

2) Movers take all our crap out of our abode and put it on a truck.*

3) We pack our kibble and dog beds, computers, clothes, pup treats, leashes, etc. into our car.

4) We say goodbye to neighbors (often with some tears welling up in the eyes of numerous people).

5) We pile into the car, and realizing it is going to be one of those long drives – not a short trip to run errands or a moderate drive to say, Half Moon Bay – Zoe takes up her spot in the foot well of the passenger seat and I curl up on one of the “beds” in the back of the car.

However, this time after the house was cleaned, Mom had to walk through the house with our landlady who we’ve been renting from for the last 17 months or so. You’d think this would only take 10 minutes or so. Therefore, Dad, Zoe, and I, stood in the driveway. When it had been 20 to 30 minutes since we saw Mom go into the house, we decided to take another walk around the block for some sniffs, pee breaks, and to pick some more California poppy seed pods thinking Grandmother in New Mexico might like since she remembers them from her childhood.

By the time we returned, they were still NOT done! This was certainly going to delay our planned ETA in Bakersfield – our first stop on the way to NM. And no doubt Mom was probably becoming very impatient with the whole process as the landlady – although very nice – could be a little high energy OCD and repetitive when stressed… and today was a stressful day for her.

We saw our neighbor S working in her garden so we wandered over to chat with her a bit. She is a large animal vet and likes our type too – having two herself. Her and P’s two aged pitbull terriers are super chill – they are allowed to hang out in the front yard without a leash on and they don’t run off down the street…something we can’t comprehend. As the time for the house inspection was reaching an hour (or more) we figured it was about over so she went inside to get P so he could say goodbye as well.

Finally, Mom (looking drained from the experience) and the landlady emerged from the house and all we had to do was close the garage door with the openers that we had previously shown her worked perfectly, and then we could open the doors of our car with one of the key fobs in Mom or Dad’s pocket.

Then the strangest of strange things happened. Neither garage door openers worked. Dad thought he could try closing the doors from the car…but his key fob was not working. Mom not knowing what Dad was trying pulled out her key fob and tried to gain entrance to the car…but her key fob was not working either!

The only thing that we thought we could do was to re-connect the garage door machinery with the key fobs using the “learn” button on the unit. Unfortunately, this unit was out of arms reach and the ladder was on its way to Massachusetts. Luckily, the compost bin was tall enough to allow Dad to climb up on it (with Mom leaning on the other side so it didn’t tip) and reach the Learn Button. However, this did not help since the openers would not sync with the unit! Yes – to be clear – NEITHER of the openers worked. They flashed their lights like they were supposed to but they refused to connect.

As everyone’s patience was being taxed at this point and the landlady had to pick up her daughter, we suggested she go back into the house, unlock the door into the garage, push the garage door button on the wall to close it and then back out of the house locking the doors as she went. As I mentioned, she is not at her best when stressed, so Mom had to physically walk her through the process.

Finally, when that was completed we were finally able to get in the road after one last goodbye to P and S who had been patiently waiting for us to finally leave. This time, instead of watery eyes there was a lot of eye rolling between the humans – a behavior I’ve often seen but didn’t really understand in this situation given what I had seen in the past.

When we were all in the car – which we were able to do using our phones to unlock the car – Dad (being in the drivers seat) tried to put the car in drive…but the screen said no active key fob was in the car! Egad! Were we going to be stuck in our driveway in Menlo Park? Turns out that the phone APP was our saving grace and Mom was able to start the car and we were: ON THE ROAD AGAIN! We love road trips – so many new and diverse smells and sights.

Shortly she settled down and found her favorite spot beneath Mom’s feet!

Me? I made myself at home in one of my spaces in the back seat right away. I was particularly excited on the road to Gilroy where there were all sorts of cows, horses, goats, etc. along the route. Such GREAT smells!

At the first stop on our journey Dad bought new batteries for the key fobs and…voila – they worked again.

Our current hypothesis is that the nervous energy sapped the power out of all the batteries in the vicinity during the walk through of her house.

The interesting thing about this experience was for the first time, no one was sentimental about leaving as we were just so happy about actually getting on the road. It wasn’t until a few hours later that Mom made this realization and we all had a big laugh!

We got to our hotel about an hour or so after our original ETA, but we were safe and the hotel room was just like the last time we stayed here. And outside was an adventure waiting for us – even though we didn’t know it at the time this sunset pic was taken.

Hope all is well,

The Tempest

Epilogue: Our car was even more crazily packed on account of all the last minute items we needed for the initial cleaning of the house after the movers left and the fact we had some plants we wanted to bring back to MA (hoping against hope that they survive).