And Away We Go!

Doggies in the desert
Well, here we are at the Quality Inn, in Kingman, Arizona! I always wonder what would compel a person to live in these types of places in the middle of nowhere… But we found decent, pet friendly accommodations, which is always the first item on our list when we roll into town! We’re traveling on the infamous “route 66”, which fascinates Michael, and he is snapping pics of every “route 66” reference he runs across. Mike is off, the mighty hunter, trying to find some grub for the family.
The morning started out like a shot. Jump up – run to get my nails done (hey, I have my priorities!). A million last minute details around the house to attend to before I finally started packing, and by 1:30 we were actually on the road! I made it about 20 minutes driving, when I realized that I was dead tired. I’ve been running around like a high speed silent movie getting ready for this trip. So Mike had to take over the wheel while I caught a mid day nap. As I drifted off, the things that I had forgotten began to float into the awareness room of my mind…pajamas (who forgets their pajamas!!??) Swim suit. (good grief, and it’s not easy to find a good one!) It just never fails. I always forget something. Am I the only one that finds it to be nearly impossible, to plan all the details for 2 weeks on the road with your husband and dogs? Well, maybe you haven’t actually traveled across the country in an SUV with 2 dogs before. My husband? He never breaks a sweat. He is perpetually calm. He prepares as though he were preparing to go down the street for milk.

At first, Zion looked a little bit confused and tense. Having Belle there to reassure him is such a big help though. When we stopped for a Quizno’s sandwich, I went to get the dogs out of the car. Belle hopped right out, but as I reached for Zion, he started to SCREAM!! I tried to get my hands around him so I could look at him to see what was wrong, but he bit me and kept screaming. I was just scared to death, not knowing what on earth was wrong. Eventually, as he continued to scream, I saw that he was limping. That calmed me a little bit. If it was only a limb, I knew it wasn’t life threatening anyway! And then, slowly, he started to quiet down. I took his paw in my hand and rubbed it and he was nervous but he let me. Mike and I concluded that either his foot fell asleep or he got a cramp. He caused quite a scene though. When we went into Quizno’s, everyone looked at us judgmentally out of the corners of their eyes. “Dog Abuser!” Was written all over their faces. That was fun. Well, Zion is fine, but it was the strangest thing.

At Quiznos after Zions’ trauma
When I was walking the dogs tonight at the hotel I had my first casualty; my shoe broke. Unfortunately, it broke when we were in a weed and sticker-bush filled field, so with both dogs pulling for me to walk faster, I tiptoed my way across prickery desert terrain with one bare foot. Oh well.
Well, food has arrived and I’m going to go see what the mighty hunter as brought home!