Life On the Road Week 5 – Friends

How have we been on the road for 5 weeks? It seems so crazy to me. It is going by so very fast. Thankfully, we still have lots and lots of time to go. This week we spent almost all of our time visiting friends. We visited our friends Marilyn and Dennis in Pheonix and then we travelled to Tucson to visit with my friend Corrina and her family. The remaining couple of days were spent near Tombstone, Arizona.

Spending almost a week with friends was an amazing break from staying in the trailer. We are actually really comfortable but it still starts feeling teeny after a while. Getting to stretch out in a real bed and take a shower without a timer (or any weird stains) is glorious! Plus having adult conversation (for me) and kids to play with for Evan gave us a little break too. We love each other but we get pretty tired of each other too.

Oh and we ate yummy meals. Real meals made in real ovens and on real stoves. Not meals reheated in our tiny galley kitchen. We do okay when I bother to try to cook but I have to admit that I would just rather not. I think it might be different if we stayed in the same place for a week or so at a time. Staying only a night or two gives me zero desire to actually cook. So we have soup, something super easy or we eat out.

The only thing that was NOT glorious about the last week is how behind I got on work and homeschooling. Honestly, though, I don’t see how it could have been any different. Fighting with poor wifi and timing left me hating turning on my computer. I did take a few hours at Corrina’s and finally got through updating the Calgary Birthday Party Venue List that has been on my “to do” list for months. I hope to get a few blog posts up about our travels soon. Writing about our journey is important to me but so is actually being present in the journey. I finally figured out that beating myself up over my lateness just made me enjoy everything less. So, no more of that because if we are doing this trip, we are going to enjoy it if it KILLS me.

As with all good things, our time with our friends had to come to an end (but only after a trip to Trader Joe’s, Target and In & Out Burger). We headed back on the road towards the border of Arizona. When we packed up, we figured out that our fridge had stopped working while we were parked. That is one way to get rid of food hanging around. For once, I was very happy for our tiny refrigerator.

A visit to Tombstone seemed like a fun way to ease back in to our journey. Little did we know that it was Helldorado weekend there. There were tons of activities so we decided to stay for two nights. It was cool to see all the people in costume but it didn’t take long for me to figure out that Tombstone is not for me.

Gunfire (even fake) and store owners with large, real guns on their hips made me on edge. So we went, we enjoyed ourselves (ish) but we cut our trip shorter than it could have been.

After watching the Helldorado parade, we hit the road (without the trailer) and drove the 20 miles to Bisbee, AZ. Now this town I loved. It is a cute little copper mining town that has become a haven for art and food.

The highlight was a trip into the mountain to see the copper mine from the inside. At one point there was 1000 feet of rock above our heads!

Spending Week 5 not on the road was good for our heads and our hearts. Hitting the road again feels good but we miss having friends to hand out with. Today we are in Silver City, New Mexico and I am calculating the days we have left before we need to be in Alabama. The hardest part of this trip is figuring out what to see when there are infinite possibilities and a finite amount of time.

Until next week…..

Catch up on our past updates from the road!

and make sure to follow our FB page for ongoing photo updates.