Leaving Vegas

Friday the fourth was our last day in Vegas. We said goodbye to my sister and her boyfriend early in the morning, as they took off to California to visit his family. The rest of the group was planning on flying out at about 4pm.

Jonathan and I had already mapped out our return trip to Tulsa. We wanted to install a new fridge while before we went traveling again. Hopefully this will help with the food issue. Anyway, since we didn’t want to spend the night anywhere that was below freezing, we were planning on driving a long distance on Saturday. Therefore, we were going to get a couple of hours down the road that day to lessen the load on the next day. That meant we needed to leave by 2pm or earlier, since sunset came early and we crossed a time zone.

However, we still had a few hours that morning. I wanted to visit the M&M store, to see if they had white chocolate and peanut butter M&Ms. I thought it would be a good chance to spend some time with my mom, so I invited her along. Sadly, the M&M store didn’t have any of the kind that I wanted, but my mom got Jonathan a bag of whatever he wanted. There was also a display model of the M&M racecar. After that, my mom decided she still needed a few souvenirs for folks, so we escorted her shopping a bit more.

By then, it was time for lunch. We went to the Cafe at the Monte Carlo, where my Dad joined us. One last small meal to get some family time in before we all departed. Afterwards, we all said goodbye and Jonathan and I hit the road.

We stayed at a BLM ground in Arizona, where it was still above freezing at night and near I-40. That next morning, as we started down the road again, we were pulled over by the local police. Confused, as Jonathan wasn’t speeding, we waited for the cop and Jonathan reminded me to pull out our insurance and registration. While I was still hunting for the registration, the cop came up my side, so I hurried to roll down the window. As soon as he came up, he asked about whether we were required to have trailers tagged in Oklahoma. Having researched this before, we were certain that we did not and took our word for it. Then he wanted to see our registration as the tag had the previous year’s sticker on it. Jonathan then explained that he hadn’t been paying attention when he put this year’s  sticker on and had put it on the wrong side. The cop just needed to look at the other side, which he later saw. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find the current year’s registration, which infuriated me, as I remember making a point to remember to put them in the van as soon as we received them. Fortunately, he was able to look us up through insurance or the previous year’s registration or something and we were fine. Apparently, the real reason he stopped us, though, was that we had come from the BLM ground. He explained that since there was someone’s private mine there as well, overnighters weren’t encouraged and we should avoid staying there in the future. Advice heeded, we were allowed to leave without a ticket or anything, hallelujah! When we got back to Tulsa and got our mail, we found the registration hadn’t arrived before we left for Baja. Made me feel a lot better.

Later as we travelled and I looked up the weather for our destination that night, we discovered that the location would be below freezing there as well. So Jonathan decided that we would try to drive all the way on Saturday. We arrived at about 3am and slept in the driveway of Jonathan’s brother’s house after setting up the space heater that they left out for us. We were tired enough that we actually slept all morning and didn’t even rouse when the inhabitants left for their churches.