ROADTRIP DAY 10: Tonopah, AZ to home!

DAY 10: Tonopah, AZ to Los Angeles, CA

1/5/11

We parked overnight on the "far" side of Phoenix so we wouldn't have to drive through rush hour traffic in the morning.  The RV park was huge and the staff very friendly, including helping Opa back up so we wouldn't wreck the Prius against the hookups.  The kids and I never even left the RV, but our site had a tall cactus that Opa took a picture of.  We knew that we were only ~340 miles from LA and would be home that night, but we thought it would be fun to keep it a secret from the kids.  We drove through the desert of AZ, the desert of CA and though the Palm Springs area.  I pointed out to Oma & Opa and the kids where we stayed last Christmas break, but couldn't think of a kid-friendly, large-RV-friendly stop to make there so we kept driving.  We did stop at Hadley's Fruit Orchard store in Cabazon where we got some dried fruit/nut/candy and the grownups sipped their famous date shakes.  By then we were less than two hours from home and with the latest time zone adjustments we were actually driving through downtown Los Angeles ahead of schedule (avoiding most of the nasty traffic and sunset glare).  I couldn't believe how gracefully Opa navigated that bus through the traffic!

It was cute - Riley had read several signs for Los Angeles, so we were sure the kids had caught on by now that we'd be home that night.  When we were <15 minutes away Riley asked where I thought we'd be stopping for dinner, and I said I was thinking pizza (at home ;)  Then when we came up on our exit Riley recognized some signs, and despite Oma's teasing that they had those signs everywhere, soon all three kids were bouncing with excitement.  After we parked the RV (across the entire sidewalk in front of our house!) and let them out Elliot was squealing "we're home, we're home, we're home!"  Daddy got home from work as soon as he could, and the kids greeted him with just as much enthusiasm, excitedly showing him their journals, toys, and telling him tales of our adventures :)

It was quite a trip - seemed relatively short looking back on it, but each day seemed plenty full.  Opa & Oma are off to the RV repair place in the Valley today and will hopefully by tonight will have picked an RV park to be their home for the next few months.  I've got lots of picture sorting, journal scanning, etc to do still, but at least I'm caught up now on my blog :)  Hope you enjoyed reading along!

-Deirdre