May 2nd: A Long Drive Home
So, this day we were supposed to only drive to St. George. Well, we got a late start and didn’t leave California until about 11:00 Utah time. Then we stopped in Barstow for some lunch and of course for me to nurse the baby. Then we stopped in Las Vegas to play at the park so I could nurse. Then we ended up stopping again for dinner and….to nurse. By the time we pulled into St. George it was 7:45 or so at night. I just wanted to check in and go to sleep. Unfortunately when we got to the hotel it appeared like our reservation was canceled. Yes, I had originally booked two rooms and canceled one but the employee didn’t see anything but the canceled rooms. He couldn’t give me our room for the $55 price but could possible do $65 for one of the three remaining rooms. Instead of the walk in rate of $99. OI! So I went back out to the car incredibly frustrated and began to try and pull up the booking.com info. on Brandon’s phone. Meanwhile he drove to McDonald’s because we were going to let the kids play a wee bit. At this point we were planning to just drive home. I wasn’t willing to pay more then my original price. But then I saw that NO according to booking.com we still had a room at the hotel for our evening. We ended up driving back over there and speaking with them. By this point there were two employees and the female said that there were no rooms left at all or they would give me one. (Which may or may not have been true.) But that we could check with the Best Western. We had already pretty much decided to just drive the rest of the way home but thought it wouldn’t hurt to just check. Uhh, yea they wanted to charge us $85 for the night. SOOOOO, we buckled up our boot straps, saddled up our horse, and settled in for the long drive home.
By this point it was 9:00ish. I drove the first leg to Beaver and then I was too groggy to drive anymore so Brandon took over. Unfortunately I could not sleep in the car. Oh, I imagine I dozed off one or twice but mostly I was just tired and uncomfortable. It was a nice peaceful drive though because once the boys fell asleep about 11:45 it was silent. We didn’t get home until about 1:30. Brandon stuck the boys in their beds, I nursed Isaac just a little bit to calm him back to sleep and then we hit the hay. It took me the better part of the weekend to get back to my usual amount of tiredness as opposed to being dead on my feet.
In fact even today we still haven’t completely re-assimilated all of the stuff we took back into our usual belongings. We are almost to that point but life is busy and we are all sick with a cold and have been needing to take it easy a little.
While the long drive was unplanned and (at least to me) unwelcome, it was nice to be home in my own bed and to have all weekend to laze about. Our trip was definitely one crazy whirlwind of a trip with it’s many ups, downs, and unexpected twists from the plan but all in all it was a good family vacation.