Just the life of any other Rachel

Monday, July 8, 2013

Road-tripping (with Dogs)

Aaron is up in Sonora running the boy scout camp, all Summer.  It's about 120 miles away, or 3 hours, with no traffic or stops.

We (the dogs and I) have traveled up to see him twice now.

I made a lot of mistakes the first time we went.

  • We left at rush hour on a Friday.
  • I didn't take the girls for a walk first.
  • My Adderall wore off part way through.
We left right after I got home from work, and hit the road at 4:10.  We hit major traffic in Fremont.  Then, while we were stuck (the traffic was crawling a long), Zelda announced that she needed to go to the bathroom.  She started whining and didn't stop until I was able to pull off about 20 minutes later.  And then it took her a long time to find the perfect spot.  The whole excursion took up 20 minutes.  Then it took a long time to get back on the road.  By the time we'd been on the road for 2 hours, we'd only traveled 40 miles.  It was a long day.  We were stuck on 680 a long time, then on 580 for a long time too.  

We stopped in Manteca for another potty break.  There wasn't any traffic after that, but I still had to stop a few more times for Zelda to pee more.  That was pretty annoying.  We didn't get to camp til after 10, so I 3 hour trip became a 5+ hour trip.  

The first trip home was more or less the same.  Lots of stops, lots of whining.  It's all Zelda.  Fiona is a great travel dog.  She's quiet, and she stays in my lap the whole time.  Zelda whines, lays down, gets up (has jelly legs) whines, lays down and repeat (ad infinitum).  It's frustrating.  Anyway, the trip back took about 4 hours.

Last week we went up again, this time on July 3rd.  Still a bad travel day.  But this time, we didn't leave until 6:30, in hopes of missing most of the traffic.  Also, I got a sedative for Zelda.  We still got stuck in traffic, but not nearly as badly as the previous week.  The trip still took 4 hours.  But the sedative seemed to help some.

Today's trip home was much better.  Zelda slept most of the time, and we made the trip in 3.5 hours.  

Zelda at a happier moment.

Fiona's standard riding pose.

Zelda sat in the from seat for about a minute while we were stopped.

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