Driving with a four year old and a four month old was not as bad as pop-culture would have you believe. It helps that Cass is rather mature (sometimes and somehow) and Camille is very chill.
Anyway...here's a breakdown of the drive, in map form:
We drove the northern route to Texas, and the southern route back.
Corrie had a trip to Anaheim that was supposed to be over quickly, but took until nearly 1 pm, which changed our scenic route plans to a more direct, high-speed chase of the horizon.
The first night, instead of stopping in Flagstaff after a day playing at Lake Havasu, we powered through 90 more miles to Holbrook, in Northern Arizona.
On Day Two of driving ,we stopped in Albuquerque to have lunch with one of my dad's brothers, Uncle Matt, oddly the only one of my dad's nine siblings Corrie had yet to meet in our nearly twenty years of being together, before keeping on for points east.
Corrie's dad, Ron, has been intermittently living on the Farm, and texted us as we got close to pick up beer before arriving, but we hit Amarillo at 9 pm (having lost two hours to time zones)(and traveling with kids, of course), and were out of luck due to pandemic-mandated closing times.
In the past, I may have made a bunch of posts about a trip like this, but I don't have the inclination now.
The Farm is a magical place where stress dissolves away within moments of arriving, and staring off at the prairie as storms roll by, or just chilling in the shade, is more entertaining than many, and most, things.
The first day was better than the second in the car, but even that wasn't so bad. Nineteen hours or so, over two days, surprisingly chill. No bathroom accidents, which was a concern of young parents. (Note: while I wouldn't qualify Corrie and I as young, per se, the kids are, as as such, we're still in early stages of parenting.)
Cass, also, didn't spend the majority of the time on the tablet, which I'm very proud of. He did spend some time on it, just not the majority of time.
Burls
I learned a few things on this trip, and I liked the way they sounded together in my head when mulling over the title of this trio of posts about our road trip.
The first thing is a burl. When the bark of trees grows irregularly and turns knobby, that's a burl:
There was a nice burl on one of the trees where a hammock was set up, and Ron joked that we were waiting for it to get bigger before cutting them off and making things with the burled wood, since it looks very nice.
Batting
Another thing I learned about was batting. I helped Ron change the bats on the swamp cooler. When he first mentioned it, I thought he was talking about batteries because I'm an ignorant city-boy.
Batting is a shredded product that is wedged like insulation inside a swamp cooler. When it's old and terrible, it must be replaced, and that was one of the jobs we needed to do while on this trip.
The old batting was an absolute nightmare. It was dirty and cancerous to breathe (I'm sure). The new stuff looked so much more normal, but still a terrible environmental product. It looks like the shredded stuff is actually wood, instead of a totally industrial product:
It's brittle and crunchy, and working with it makes one appreciate the manual labors and working with your hands.
We even installed the swamp cooler, which makes you feel like a helpful person, a helpful member of the team.
In any case, we made it safely to the Farm, our first week-long respite from the cramped city life we normally live through.
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