The Original Dashboard Diary [Day 19 & 20]

May 18, 2011

"U-Haul? More like Yee-Haw!"
Wednesday May 18, 2011

We were more than thrilled to return our rental car to our best friends at Enterprise. 
Chris was our closest “friend” there and once we received his card and read his last name, Josh couldn’t help but start the jokes.
The best one was “I wanna go to this guy’s family reunion so I could just look around and say ‘Man, thats a bunch of Baloney’”

On to vehicle number 3 . . . we are definitely moving on to much bigger and better things:

We are now cruising stylishly in a 14ft U-Haul truck.
Why a 14 footer you may ask?
Supposedly, it was the cheapest vehicle they had that provided seating for 3 people.
Whatever.

We have been privileged with the opportunity to listen to wonderful music options provided by the radio, which is torture for three people who tend to rely on their iPods for “wake me up” music when driving for long periods of time.
Britney Spears “Hold It Against Me” just doesn’t quite work the same magic as listening to every Dave Matthews Band Live Trax 1-19 consecutively.

But hey, we can’t complain.
We are blessed with the amenities of airbags, an air conditioner, and a cigarette lighter to keep our phones charged . . . and the best surprise of all:

Samoas! given to us by the kind folks at the U-Haul store in Scottsdale.

Naturally, as soon as we start transferring everything from the Tahoe to the U-Haul, the clouds roll in and the flood gates open.
It felt like we were in a hurricane. David, our buddy from the repair shop, told us that it hadn’t rained in Phoenix in 3 months.
Imagine that.



18 hours of quality time . . .

It wouldn’t make sense if we went the whole trip without getting pulled over.
 Why not get pulled over at 3 in the morning on the Texas/Mexico Border to make it a little more exciting?
We somehow managed to get away with just a warning, claiming that since we were from another state, we were unaware of the 65 at night speed limit in Texas.

"After this vacation . . . . we need a vacation"
Friday May 20, 2011

We were incredibly relieved to get rid of the U-Haul this afternoon when we picked up Josh’s new car that magically looks identical to his old car (minus the elk poo and air bag deployment).




We were SO excited to get back and see Charlie . . . but I think he may have been more excited to see us!

Even though this was our last major trip before we become grown ups and got grown up jobs, we still feel like we were forced to handle many "grown up" things in the past few weeks:
    -we totaled a car
    -we filed an insurance claim
    -got a rental car
    -got a u-haul
    -bought a new car
(all of which included a lot of impressive hassling & bargaining . . . our specialty)

Regardless of the fact that there may have been a liiiiitle stress involved, given our circumstances I think we all kept great attitudes and handled it everything so well. 
It all ended up working out to be nearly perfect in the end. 
We experienced the trip of a lifetime and will never be able to forget the memories we made in these past few weeks.

Josh had the idea to keep a runnin tab of how much we spent on gas. 
When we started this list, we would have never guessed that by the end of the trip, we would have had to fill the gas tanks of 4 different vehicles . . . 

At one gas station near Yosemite, we actually saw (and quickly sped away from) Unleaded gas for $4.99 a gallon. Yikes.

Anyways . . . we’ve been totally blown away by the reaction to this blog.
We just want to say thanks to everyone for keeping up with us and for all the encouragement! 
The blog has made many accomplishments in the past few weeks:
    -In only 20 days, we reached over 2,000 views
    -We have readers from 7 countries and 32 different states
    -Our most viewed entry was “When Life Gives You an Elk” (over 200 views!)

With rotations about to start, I definitely don’t have the time to keep blogging EVERY day, but I do hope to be able to continue blogging about our future adventures (and maybe some of our past too) so stay tuned! 

Present day follow up thoughts:
Even though I've been relatively busy with PA school, I have loved reliving this experience.
Funny how we were so entertained by those stats last year.
This was one of the greatest trips of my lifetime and I'm so happy to be able to share it with everyone.
I've enjoyed hearing the feedback from y'all and I CANT WAIT to get these darn tests over with and get back to blogging!

Here's one of my favorite comments on the original blog at the conclusion of our trip (from the blog's biggest fan, of course)

6 comments:

Carlee, Little Sloth said...

Hope you enjoy your vacation. I just wanted to stop by and tell you that I nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award.
Carlee

http://allthingsaveragegirl.blogspot.com/

Mary Michelle said...

I love reading your blog! I actually stumbled upon it while reading Today's Letters.
Your blog inspires me to start one of my own, although I have no clue what I would write about. And it also inspires me to travel and go to tons of concerts and ride my bike a lot more! Kinda jealous of your adventures.
Bonus fact: I also live in Shreveport and graduated from LA Tech (way back in 2007 with my BS and last Saturday with my MAT)! Go Dawgs :) I was pretty excited to read a blog by someone from my lil' ol' city! Enjoy New York and good luck on your PA tests!

life_lavender said...

Hope you have a lovely vacation! :)

Also, I just wanted to let you know that I nominated you for the Versatile Blogger Award! Check it out on my blog :)

mylifeinlavender.blogspot.com

Sadie Dear said...

Yikes! All these adventures: one day you can look back and laugh. At least, that's what people used to tell me. =)

ms.composure said...

LoL gotta love those 2 diff speed limits in Texas!

http://infinitelifefitness.com
http://mscomposure.blogspot.com

Hannah Crain said...

I looked up Phoenix before we flew in there...it supposedly only rains like 60 times a year...we flew right into town and took off on one of these rare days via a thunderstorm in a very bouncy plane. not cool! did i mention we were suppose to have direct flight from dfw to san fran (and flights got messed up via paypal and had to book the night before as a result of last minute planning) Not that this mishap could begin to compare to the awesomeness of your "grown up" lessons! you should be prepared for anything now! : )

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