7 States in 2 Days

So my wife drops me off at the airport Friday night for my flight to Seattle, Washington. I know I tried my best not to start crying, and I could see it in her eye. Can't even tell you how hard it was to push that back and fight the knot in my throat. But I made my way into the airport and straight to the security check, and the lady checking ID's knew something was wrong. She must have seen my sad face, cause she asked me if I was okay. So after that I'm getting ready to put my bag on the moving belt, and I see a guy taking out his laptop and I'm thinking to myself, "Man, I'm glad that I didn't have to bring my laptop and only my...... wait....... MY CAMERA!!!!!" I had forgotten my camera. I can't even begin to tell you how angry and disappointed I was in myself for that. Erin offered to turn around and bring hers to me, but she was already on her way back. So disappointing. So I bought myself a slice of pizza and a bottle of water and I sit and wait for my plane to arrive. While I'm waiting there was a group of kids, maybe around 15 - 20 kids all with their school shirts on, which I'm assuming were either returning or going on a trip. I'm thinking, "Great, what a great setup for a tragic plane accident. A group of kids on a field trip." So I board the plane and I put my head phones on and off we are.

WASHINGTON
The trip didn't seem too long and it was good to see my cousin waiting when I got there. As soon as we got in the car, we were off on our trip. I can't really say much about the State of Washington, cause I didn't get to see much of it, since it was already dark. I did see downtown from the plane and it was very nice, especially with the needle. I did however catch the smell of some of the refineries there, which smelled like brand new rubber tires. Nice.

OREGON
The first half of Oregon I missed cause I was half asleep trying to catch some rest before it was my turn to drive. I did however get to catch the sunrise and the beautiful green mountains covered with pure white snow. Gorgeous scenery. I also learned that in Oregon, you're not allowed to pump your own gas. Very strange. We stopped and the man filled us up, and my Cousin told me that you can even give them tips. And I'm like, "For what? Pulling the trigger on the hose and stand there to talk to you?"

CALIFORNIA
Okay, so we drove the Northeastern part of California so it wasn't "fun in the sun". It was the cold, snowy mountains. It was still quite nice, but we had to take a different highway to Reno, cause the original highway we were gonna take was snowed in. The high way was really cool looking cause all the snow that had been plowed was all along the edges of the roadway. And when you would reach the area where there were lakes there was nothing but white covering the ground. What's so special about that? Well, you're talking about a Texas boy that doesn't get to see much of snow, and when we do, it rarely makes it to the ground in it's white form.

NEVADA
Once we mad it to Reno, we met up with my two buddies, Alan and Adam. It was really good to meet them in person and we ate at a local place. 50 wings. Really good stuff, cause they weren't small, they were almost full size. Good stuff. We chatted and ate and joked about all kinds of things. Really cool couple of guys, you should actually catch them on Adam's show. www.theadamvarashow.com . So after that, we made our way down to Las Vegas. When we reached there, it was late night. Have you ever driven at night and as you're coming up to the city you can start to see the city lights? Okay, well nothing compares to the City of Las Vegas. It was amazing. We were really tired and decided to stop and rest, but we didn't want to stop in Vegas cause we figured it would be too expensive. We stopped right after it right before the Hoover Dam. We stayed in a little motel, which was so ghetto. In the shower there was used bar of soap, broken in half, an open and used pack of shampoo, and a use and still wet wash cloth. Nice. Thank God my wife packed my stuff that I needed already. There were so many other things I could just go on about this place, but I would rather not. It was a mess, and I hope I never have to stay there again. We slept for about 5 hours and we were off again around 6 AM.

ARIZONA
We crossed over Hoover Dam and it was pretty cool. I'm sure you probably have walk it to get the full effect, cause it wasn't all that driving over it. Arizona was okay, nothing too special. I will tell you this, a warning to everyone, do not drive over the speed limit!!! The speed limit was 75 MPH, and the guy pulls us over and says, "I got you doing 77 to 79 in a 75 zone". I thought to myself, "You have to be kidding me!!!" What can you do. He did let us off with a warning, and we just kept on our way. The one memorable thing from AZ was in Phoenix we were on I-10 and we went in the tunnel. That was pretty cool. That was about it. We went from sweaters and hoodies to taking those off from North to South.

NEW MEXICO
I don't know if you've evern seen the map of New Mexico, but there is this little piece at the very bottom that sticks out. Yup, that's all we saw of New Mexico. We passed through Las Cruces, which seemed like we stopped in a rough neighborhood. We stopped stretched our legs, used the restroom, got some candy and headed right back out.

TEXAS
It's always good to be back in Texas. Soon, we were already in El Paso, which is a big city. It seemed like it took forever to drive through it. But we finally made it out and we made our way back home to Houston on I-10. It was late night to morning, so there wasn't any traffic at all, which was great. We made a few stops during this, but to be honest the toughest time through this whole trip was from San Antonio. I wanted to keep driving, but I just couldn't anymore. My cousing took the wheel and as we're driving into Houston, the sun starts to irratate his eyes and he keeps splashing water on his face to help out. We ended up catching traffice hour here, so we got stuck in that for a bit. We finally got home around 8:30 AM and we both crashed out. He only waited a couple of hours before taking off again, but he said those two hours of sleep really helped a whole lot. I woke up to let him out and I decided to take a nice long shower and ate a banana before going right backt bed. I didn't wake up till my beautiful wife returned from work. I didn't have any trouble going to sleep around 10:00 PM.

All in all, I had a blast with my cousin. We caught up on so much and just talked about so many different things. But it was a VERY tiring trip. I'm still tired now. It was really awesome being able to experience that. I wish we could have had more time, but it was really great, regardless.