Road Trip to Texas - Day 1

It is exhausting going on vacation...the part before you actually leave. Thanks to friends and family who are taking care of things while we're gone. Self portrait. Near Tehachapi from the truck window. We didn't leave the house until 1:30 and wanted to get some miles behind us the first day. We finally needed to stop and eat. For the first day or two we planned to eat out of the ice chest using up food from our refrigerator. So we had salads and hard boiled eggs at a rest stop near Boron. Trivia: Did you know that the 20-mule train teams that hauled boron out of Death Valley were actually 18 mules and 2 draft horses? Usually we sleep in the back of the truck when we need to stop but this time the truck was packed full with some of the things that Katie has had stored at our house. I had visions of the Conestoga wagons carrying the precious possessions that pioneers wanted to have with them. I loaded my grandmother's secretary desk that I used as a kid, an old trunk that was also from a grandparent, and my grandmother's delicate tile-topped table into the truck. One of the grandmothers was from New York so the desk and the table (and I don't remember about the trunk) came from there to CA, probably by moving van and now were being carried in a pick-up truck back east to TX. Stuffed around and in the furniture are things Katie had packed in boxes--Breyers horses, trophies from her dairy cattle showing days, stuffed animals (lots of stuffed animals),  horse tack, lots of other memorabilia, and two oil paintings that my aunt painted. Dan reminded me, as we had to keep unpacking and repacking the largest painting when we needed something from the back of the truck, that the pioneers ended up leaving things along the trail.

Anyway, we brought a tent because we knew we couldn't sleep in the truck on the trip out to TX.We drove into the Preserve and took a dirt road watching lightening in the distance. We finally found a place where we could park and set up a tent. The moon was spectacular although not a full moon.Here is what it looked like in the morning.