We picked up our rental car for the next month today. We opted to rent a car, rather then use our own cars because with our luck, we’d never make it there.
We wound up with Hyundai Santa Fe. It’s not a car that either Justin or I would’ve chosen, but it was the only SUV in our rental bracket that actually had Satellite radio, which was a must have for both of us because we can only take so much of my iPod selection and CDs before I want to throw both of them out of the window.
I got horribly car sick and nauseous after we picked it up and drove it back to our place, which is rather odd for me since I love riding roller coasters and other crazy rides and have always done so without ever getting sick. I recently took some medication for an infection i had and one of the side effects is nausea and upset stomach, so perhaps this is only a temporary condition. Even so, we stocked up on non-drowsy Dramamine and ginger ale, just in case.
I drove the car around for a bit tonight, when we had to run to the supermarket to get last minute purchases like an endless supply of cat litter for our three furbabies. I drove it okay, and even managed to park it well. The brakes and gas are quite different from my car, but it’ll just take some getting used to, and it’s also a bit weird to be above all the “normal” cars in an SUV, since we both drive regular boring cars.
The cats already know something is up and they’ve been trying to hide in our luggage, all night. We’ve left them before, but not for this long, and I’m sure they’ll be very pissed off at us when we get back home. Luckily, we have a wonderful cat sitter I found through care.com, who they love, and she takes really excellent care of the kitties. She watched them when we got married.
We’ve packed all day. It bewilders me how Justin can pack all his belongings for a month in a tiny little duffel bag, and I have two huge duffel bags, and that was me limiting my wardrobe, and I still haven’t packed shoes and have run out of room in both my bags from them. With me, it’s my all weather coat and North Face fleece that seem to take up the majority of the room in my bag.
Justin has set the Yeti [a wonderful wedding present from our best man] up with ice and our road trip essentials, water, Monster [him], Code Red Mountain Dew [Me], HEB cane sugar coke [Him], and Dragon Fruit Vitamin water [me]. We have essential road trip snacks such as trail mix, granola, and beef jerky.
We have our stuff for camping ready…. Our… SO NOT FIFTEEN MINUTES TO SET UP tent, sleeping bags, a nifty type bunsen burner thing we can use to boil water that some nice man in the outdoor store showed us yesterday, cots, dehydrated food, which is one of my favorite things… I also love airplane food, BTW.
All that’s left is personal toiletries, which will be packed tomorrow. Electronics for my backpack… kindle, gameboy 3ds [here’s hoping for street pass all over the US], iPod, laptop [which has been sitting in my backpack since school ended in May]… Oh and my THREE digital camera [one tiny purse-sized point and shoot], a more complex point and shoot with SLR features, and my actual Nikon DSLR…
Anyhow it’ll be off to bed because we want to leave at 6:00 am, so we can hopefully get to Amarillo before it’s night time and have some time to unwind.
So here’s goodbye from Houston.
Tomorrow, it’s off on a month long adventure.