Itinerary

Y’all, I’m an old fart. As in, my mom and dad dragged us out of bed when we were kids to watch the moon landing. As in, when Adam West was Batman, I watched it before it was in reruns. As in, I saw the Beatles live on the Ed Sullivan show.

Y’know.

OLD.

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This might be shocking to normal people, but the last time I took a vacation lasting more than 2-3 days was when my oldest son was a baby. And trust me, it wasn’t a vacation for me then, with a little one to take care of and an asshole addict for a spouse. We rode cross-country with my parents (another pure-misery factor) to visit my grandmother in northeastern Iowa, in the summer of 1979. It was the last time I saw my grandma, so glad I went – but fun, it was not.

My older son moved to central Iowa four years ago. He followed his daddy’s footsteps with drugs when he was younger. Thankfully, unlike his dad, he got clean and stayed that way, but it wasn’t smooth sailing.

He split up with his wife of nearly 20 years not long after moving. I’m not a fan of how it went down, but I understand it needed to happen. Son told me he’s now happy, for the first time in his adult life. He loves his kids to pieces, but the ex-wife wouldn’t leave Mommy. Ever. I love my daughter-in-law, even as an ex-daughter-in-law, but I don’t pretend she was or is perfect. And while my son’s former mom-in-law saved my kids’ butts (and mine too) a couple of times – dealing with her can be a challenge. There were more issues over the years, but that one was the whopper.

Nobody needs to spend 20 years living with their mother-in-law, which is precisely what happened.

So yeah. I get it.

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As you might have gathered early in this post, I’m waaaaay overdue for a vacation. Stay tuned, because the two disparate threads really are connected, I promse.

Older Son finally set the date. He and his fiancee are getting married the first week of October. Therefore, in about a month, the spousal unit, the furbaby unit, and I are packing up and driving back to rural Iowa for the wedding! We’re so jazzed it’s ridiculous. It’ll be a physical challenge, I’m sure, but we’re planning a trip to maximize the scenery,  balance driving with rest stops, and enjoy ourselves for nearly two full weeks. We plan to drive there the longish way, going through Denver. I’ve never been that way and always wanted to visit. We’ll take the southern route coming back, cutting through Missouri, a corner of Texas, and a little bit of Oklahoma, and across New Mexico. The rationale is since it’ll be the first few days of October, hopefully we won’t run into snow and ice when we skirt the Continental Divide. Coming back will be the safer route in terms of weather. I hope.

As expected, spousal unit’s initial reaction to the idea of driving was HELL to the no, because of course it was. I know him well and this is always how it goes. It takes him a day to get past the knee-jerk reaction and do a full 180. Never fails. Any idea I present – from buying a house to buying a car to whatever – NO flips to a just-as-adamant YES after he has time to think about it.

Expect my pages to drop lots and lots of photos, probably along the way and once we’re back. We’re taking both cameras, laptops, extra camera batteries and SD cards, etc. We’re stocking up on necessities for the trip itself, though that late in the year bug spray may be overkill. I’m hoping for mostly gorgeous weather, knowing it’ll rain along the way, probably several times. We’re good with almost any weather conditions we’re likely to encounter that time of year, along those routes. In the small event it does get somewhat nasty, our new wheels are even 4WD. I still don’t wanna drive on slick roads, obviously, but we’ve covered about as much as we can for a couple of desert rats. I draw the line at buying snow tires or chains.

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For the record, still glad for the new car. We’ve put more than 800 miles on her to date – more than usual, considering how many trips we’ve made to Phoenix metro and back this month. For the moment we’ve dubbed her, “Stormtrooper”. Waiting for the new license plate to see if it suggests a different name.

She doesn’t get the world’s best mileage, but she’s not what I’d call a gas guzzler, either. So far we’re comfortably above the manufacturer’s predicted mpg average, just like happened with our Soul. Thankfully, I don’t drive 100-miles round trip daily any more, or it would be a different story. This little monster still does pretty well for the engine size and being a 4WD.

Minor qualifier here, referring back to hubby’s habit of yelling NO to any changes. Actually, G did a fast flip on his view toward buying a new car, and gave me a lot softer NO from the get-go. He did balk when we were dealing to buy this specific vehicle. This is the one I wanted (a Sportage), he wanted the next size down (a Seltos). What we bought is no monster truck. But I think the subcompact crossover G was looking at might actually have been smaller than the little hamster-size Soul we traded in. We passed one on the road a few days ago and it was tiny. Seeing one in the showroom is a whole ‘nother thing from spotting it on the road. G also wanted a fancier color. I did too, but not enough to pay an extra $500+ for a paint job. This little beast does everything we need and has lots and lots of perks we didn’t even know we wanted.

Getting the bigger animal required a three-pronged solution:

1) The Seltos G wanted is sold out pretty much everywhere. That wasn’t just coming from the dealer: I did my homework before we ever drove to the lot. You can’t drive in and buy one same-day, anywhere within a 100-mile radius of us. They’re advertised everywhere but nobody actually has any in stock. You have to backorder one, there’s a long wait time, and there are no buyer incentives for it. (Furthermore, it was a new model introduced 2021 and bugs are cropping up…) The Sportage we bought was one of a rapidly-thinning inventory of new cars on their lot, too. Matter of fact, while we were dealing for this one, at least one other party was trying to buy it out from under us. Car dealers are making bank these days.

2) The dealership made us a sweet deal on this. I had already looked online and was expecting to be told a monthly figure about 150 dollars higher than the payments we negotiated. Part of it was having good credit (hallelujah for that one – it was a long time coming!) and part was our immaculate trade-in. Part of it was also that I wasn’t going to pay more than $XXX. I let them know I was ready and willing to walk out without buying anything. I was, too. We liked our little Soul and it was still a good car. I asked for an unrealistic payment (knowing it wouldn’t happen) and still got darned close to it.

3) The one thing G asked for with a vehicle update was a bigger engine. The only way to get the bigger engine in the Seltos was to jump way above our price point, several thousand more than we paid for the Sportage. The engine in what we bought is not quite twice the size of what we had in our little Soul, so G got his wish.