Mom and Chrystal take on America!

Day 1 of driving across America and our first stop was going to be Flagstaff, AZ.  We started early like I said before and we thought we start our journey on the freeway on the east side of the valley...because there won't be any traffic on the 118.  Hahahaha!  No traffic in LA - what were we thinking!  Of course that day there was traffic and it took us awhile to get out of LA.  Within the first 30 minutes of us being on the road my boss called and said they were going to try and find another opportunity for me to continue to work if I was interested.  Since that was our original plan I said yes of course I would like to continue to work.

We finally got through the traffic and turned on the I-40 in Barstow when I spotted this sign!

I had my mom pull over and since we passed it I ran back to take the picture.  There was a cop who had pulled someone over so I was hoping he was too busy with his business at hand than to notice a crazy girl running down the freeway to take a picture of a freeway sign.  I was lucky - he didn't notice or if he did I'm sure he didn't want to deal.

So after many miles of brown dry hills and talking about what I was gonna do about my job, my mom and I decided to listen to a book.  She suggested to listen to Couplehood by Paul Reiser.  I agreed - I loved him on Mad About You!  If you don't know this show that means you are too young to understand the 80's/90's TV sitcoms - the shows you watched with your family in the evenings because there was only one TV in the house.  And you may or may not have had to have one family member get up and change the channel on the TV - if you had a remote - you were kinda fancy.  These are before the days of Netflix, Hulu and DVR - you had to make sure you were sitting in front of the TV when that show started or you missed it.  Or you could again be super fancy and had your VHS hooked up to record it!

After listening to the book for awhile we got into Arizona and I was surprised - it was green!  I always thought Arizona as one big desert...but I was wrong.  Driving into Flagstaff was gorgeous.  We got stuck in a little rain storm, although my mom wouldn't say that - it was raining so hard we could barely see out the windshield.  But thankfully it was only for a short while.

We finally got to the LaQuinta in Flagstaff and was pleasantly surprised.  Had a nice area to walk the dogs and was nice and clean.  I have never stayed at a LaQuinta before but we chose them throughout our trip because they are dog friendly.  Although this one was a little more uptight than the others.  The lady told me that we could not leave the dogs unattended in the room and they were not allowed on any of the furniture.  One...we were planning on going to a nice dinner together and Two...my dogs sleep in bed with me.  I decided to only listen to one of the rules as you can see below.

We were all tired from the first day in the car we decided to stay in and eat dinner at the hotel.  This was the first time I had the dogs in the car for that long.  They are used to road trips up the coast to visit my parents - but not this long.  They didn't sleep at all in the car and I am sure they had some anxiety about what was happening.  So needless to say...they were pooped!

We had a good nights rest and was ready to start another day on the road.  One day down - four to go!