Well, last time I was in Tucson, it was 115 degrees, 90 at night, and my Saturn would overheat on level ground trying to run the AC in the heat. This time, it’s mid-70s at night, and our Escort’s temperature gauge hasn’t crept up a single time on the entire trip, AC not withstanding.

We’re staying on the West end of town, after a long 15-hour day of driving. Getting two time changes in the space of six hours helped a lot with keeping things going, and the drive felt fairly quick and was thoroughly uneventful. Later this week, hopefully Mollie can give you her perspective on that. 🙂

Well, today has been a flurry of activity, starting with a quick breakfast at IHOP with my mom and Danny, followed by a few hours of intense packing and cleaning. Many thanks to my dad, his dad, and Mr. and Mrs. Scholl for helping us out with that! We left Longview around 2:30, after filling our 12 foot U-Haul trailer completely (though there is much room to spare in the borrowed pickup truck and the Escort is nearly empty) and grabbing lunch at Tele’s. We rolled into Abilene, TX around 8 PM CDT, and are staying the night at a brand-new Holiday Inn Express on the east side of town.

Welcome to the first pass at a Toad family blog. Since I actually set it all up on the road from Longview to Camarillo, we haven’t found ourselves a new theme yet, nor populated the categories or named it right or what-have-you. At any rate, this is where we hope to keep our friends far and wide appraised of our goings-on, so you can check back here for status on jobs, cars, fun trips to places, kids (whenever that happens), and so forth. Hope you enjoy it!