“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything it is.” – Mandy Hale
This weekend has flown by! I got off work early on Friday so we cleaned and finished getting stuff ready for our garage sale, we had a garage sale then some friends over Saturday, and today has been spent cleaning up, trying to plan for our weekend trip to San Diego, and enjoying the outdoors. As much as I love this place, I fear that the Arizona desert heat will be here before I know it and we’ll be trying to find things to do inside all the time.
Today I’m going to talk about our move from Kentucky to Arizona. Leading up to the move, I had: made a moving checklist, scheduled cleaners to come, figured out things for us to do after the packers came, and planned for our family trek across America! Having two larger dogs, it usually takes some time on our part to find hotels that don’t cost an arm and leg and that have decent breakfasts (one of my musts with hotels). Of course the packers couldn’t come on a Monday or Tuesday like we were hoping, so instead our stuff got packed on Thursday and Friday. That weekend we packed the rest of our stuff into our trailer. After two moves, we finally had a system down!
So the first leg of our move was from Fort Campbell to Hot Springs AR. I had a hike and some exploring planned. Since it was only our first day and Justin was pulling a trailer, he was in ‘let’s go’ mode. Instead of hiking the next day, we drove to Abilene TX (about 6.5 hours). Although I had wanted to stop in Dallas, I didn’t want to add an hour onto two days or two hours onto one day. We just went for a run in Abilene before heading off to our third impromptu stop in Monahans TX (about a three hour drive).
Monahans was the first time we really stopped and were able to do things. This is where Monahans Sandhills State Park is located. If you’re ever in the area or anywhere with sandhills or dunes, I’d recommend that you stop. We rented a disc and went sledding down the sand dunes. It was the most fun we had our entire trip. We only got to play around for about an hour and a half since we had to return the disc by 4:00p, but we had a blast. Afterward, we ate at a local Mexican restaurant and then we all went straight to bed after showering. Having a toddler and being cooped up in the car for three days made this stop worth totally worth it.
I wished I would have looked more into this area. It really doesn’t seem to have much, but once we got there, we could have gone to the Million Barrel Museum in Monahans and the Odessa Meteor Crater. If I had known how crappy the hotel we would be staying at in Las Cruces NM was, I probably would have forced more family fun on Justin the next day before heading out. We originally didn’t have Monahans on our stops, but the girls and I needed a break from driving. We were going to drive straight to Las Cruces NM, then spend a day in Tucson, but I’m glad we changed our agenda.
We got to Las Cruces and, although finally seeing the mountains was nice, we just ran, ate, slept, ate, and left. We couldn’t turn on our A/C in our room because it hadn’t been above 65 or 70 for 3 consecutive days, so our room was hot, sticky, and smelled like wet dog. Not a great stop. I couldn’t bear to go and do things while our dogs were stuck panting in the room and we couldn’t keep our windows open because there were no screens to prevent them from jumping out or someone from coming in.
The recycled roadrunner in Las Cruces NM
Since we lost a day, we decided to go straight to Sierra Vista instead of driving to Tucson then driving an hour and a half back to Sierra Vista. I’m glad we did because the hotel we found had a heated pool and hot tub we were able to swim in that night. The next day we did a late check out so we could keep the dogs in the room while we were went and explored post some and looked at our house options. Plus, they gave out two free glasses of beer per paid room, which was a bonus after driving all those days.
Now I’m finally onto more ‘real time’ adventures. My next few stories are more vivid in my mind, so I decided to go through all of them, then maybe go back and talk about our little vacations while we lived in Kentucky. I’m exhausted, so time for me to hit the hay. Hope ya’ll have a wonderful week! xoxo Meghan
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