Jackie's Blog

Well we are finally here! The last day turned out to be an eventful one- the driving was very different and so was the weather at the end. Its strange to think that we arrived the day before we were supposed to leave :-) So from the beginning... We left Needles CA back on I40 into the Mojave Desert. Picture some sand but largely rolling hills and miles of desert plants- low lying due to the wind, some cacti and Joshua trees. We found at later that Joshua trees only grow in the Mojave desert- (they look like large Yucca plants!!) As you can imagine there is nothing but desert for as far as you can see- very beautiful and calm, with just one road running through it and the occasional pullover area. Amazingly, we had cell phone coverage the whole way, and a local radio station that told us of the conditions for both road and weather too. Talking of cell phones, I have a Sprint phone and I think I've had coverage just about all the way- one or two small dead spots- I know because the

Yayyyyy!!! We are in California! Admittedly, only just inside, in a place call Needles- the first town across the state line on I40. We are still a long way south of where we will end up -about 450 miles north of here, but it feels good to be here, and in the same time zone as Dick. He has had a very bureaucratic weekend in terms of the new apartment, so he'll be glad to see us too. We've now done 2050 miles, and I can truthfully say that its been fun and not hard at all- the first day was definitely the hardest, but largely because of the early start after a very late night and the stress and sadness of leaving the house. It was also the longest day in terms of distance. However, today was almost 550 miles too, and didn't feel anywhere near as long. Maybe we are just getting used to it! We left Albuquerque early this morning- we haven't really caught up with all the changes in time zones and so we are still tired early and awake early. As I said before, the car is fil

Firstly let me explain to those of you who don't know, why we left earlier than originally planned (we were not supposed to be going until next Tuesday 27th). We planned our trip last weekend and made most of the final arrangements and suddenly realized that all we were waiting for was for Tuesday 27th to arrive, so it seemed logical to leave early, and be with Dick sooner. As you can imagine, he wholeheartedly agreed. Besides, Mary kept wanting to go shopping, and I knew if she did, we'd never fit it all in the car ;-) So she is now eagerly waiting to explore and shop in California instead. She is also addicted to Wal-Mart, and is getting slightly worried as we only saw 2 Wal-Mart trucks today! Obviously we made it through the tornado watch last night- it barely rained even. However.... we left to bright sunshine and headed back on Interstate 40. It's funny because we have started to recognize some of the trucks and even cars who are doing a long trip. There seems to be v

This is a copy of the email that I sent whilst traveling across the USA from Berkeley Lake GA to San Jose CA... Just thought I'd tell you a little of what we've seen and experienced on our travels so far :-) In case you don't know, we (Mary- Dick's mum and I) are traveling in a Honda Accord Wagon (estate) with a very full back seat (largely clothes and bedding vacuum packed in Space bags) and Pepper, our 13-14 year old collie-lab. We left Berkeley Lake on Thursday 22nd February about 5.45 am in order to beat the rush hour traffic. Luckily we got on Interstate 20 very easily and headed towards Birmingham, Alabama. The roads were very busy to start with but the traffic thinned out the further away we got away from the big cities. As you can imagine, a lot of the traffic is huge trucks- especially the big parcel companies like UPS and FedEx, however, much to our amusement we've also been counting WalMart trucks and saw 12 alone yesterday! We also saw 5 trailer (mobile