A travel story, oh boy, I have quite a few of these, though not as much as I'd like or am willing to stop at! I think one of my favorites was the first or second time I visited Larry in Arizona. You see, before I visited him the first time, we talked a lot about if we got married and I had to move down there to be with him and how I'd be able to do that and how we'd make it work. I loved those conversations but at the same time it was hard to seriously think about it because I'd never been there and I was thinking how I'd stop work and school and leave my family and the biggest thing was how the heck I would get the cats down there without them freaking out. I don't think cats could stand a 16 hour drive without trying to get out of the car somehow.
So one of the times we were talking about this we kinda off hand mentioned me going to visit and I thought, why not? I have vacation time, I really wanted to see him, and a lot of his buddy's wives would go and get to visit everyone, I was the only one who never had, so spur of the moment I decided a time that would work and just drive down, no biggie! Just drive down, how hard could that be? Well after mentioning to my mom and step dad they thought it might be a good idea if my mom went with me because I'd never really driven that far by myself and it was quite a drive to do all alone and they were just kind of worried about me. I thought it might be weird, no way was I okay with us sharing rooms, I didn't want to have to worry about entertaining my mom. After her agreeing she'd get a separate room, obviously, we put the planning into action.
After looking around for a while, I thought I found the perfect motel, it said it was close to the base, it was pretty cheap, and the pictures and reviews weren't half bad. So I booked it for 2 nights, I only got to visit for a weekend because that's all the time he got off. So my mom and I set off, it was a VERY long drive, I didn't realize 16 hour is such a long time time in a car! We had to stop in Cedar City to sleep on the first night out and got up at like 5 the next morning to start driving again, my mom is used to getting up early, me, yeah, not so much!
After driving, and driving, and seeing some pretty scenery, and more driving, we FINALLY arrived in the city, and we happened to get to a light where we noticed on the right was the entrance to the base, on the left was the hotel, seriously within spitting distance, you could walk to the base from the hotel. Only problem is the base was HUGE so you couldn't really walk too far into the base and not get heatstroke. The motel, well lets say at first site it's a DUMP! the "non smoking" rooms smelled like a combination of smoke and lemon cleaning agent, thanks! The walls were pretty thin, the toilet in my mom's room wouldn't stop randomly running, the locks were half broken (there was also a sign next to the locks saying to lock the door because management doesn't hold responsibility if anyone were to walk into your room...great!). I was really nervous, but honestly didn't care, I got to see Larry after 9 months of just phone calls, it was awesome! We went to go get Larry because he promised us he'd take us to their food hall thing for dinner. Once I saw him I gave him the BIGGEST hug, there is NO greater feeling than seeing someone you love so much after such a long absence! We ended up being turned away from the food building at first because I was showing my shoulders, which apparently is against the rules there and Larry never noticed :/ so we had to go back to the car to get a shirt of Larry's so I could cover my shoulders. The rest of the time we had no problems, but that's because we stayed as far away from the base as we could :)
The whole time we were there we would watch Burn Notice marathons (never heard of it? Go see it now! it's an awesome show!) we'd order pizza, stay in our air conditioned room, eat, nap, tickle each other, and just talk. Oh my gosh it was amazing! We did nothing but hang out and had absolutely not a single care in the world. I didn't care about work, school, anything back in Utah. Everyone deserves a vacation like this! Even though the motel was a little icky, it was an awesome place to stay, it was so simple and nice for us at the time I loved it! We also took off a night to go out with a couple of his military buddies, it was so awesome seeing Larry with some guy friends, he's such a homebody and content with that lifestyle I never really see him around buddies, but this was a whole new Larry. They were really funny and he's never been sexier, just seeing that personality come out of him like that! Like I said, it was the best trip. I probably wouldn't have come home had it not been for the kitties.
The second time I visited him I decided to fly and rent a car, of course this was before I figured out it was still over an hour long drive from the airport to the motel, and of course I stayed in the same one. This time it was just for his graduation so we didn't get to spend too much time in the room, we had to venture out in the heat. But it was awesome to see his graduation and all the awards he won and feel how proud of him I was. We did the same thing with napping, eating, watching TV, eating, and just hanging out in the room. I loved it, I would never take those times back or change to a nicer motel or anything. I know I've said it a lot, but I just feel I can't express how amazing this time way. You REALLY appreciate each other when you are forced to spend some time apart.
So yeah, up till now that's the best time I've had traveling somewhere and it was for the best reason. Now we're planning on our trips together and I'm very excited to start traveling a lot more :)
So until Day 24...
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