Take Two! Trip #3 to Oklahoma

Oklahoma trip #3 take 2,

Day One 4/3

After 3 weeks and several thousand dollars later, we were ready to try our third trip to Oklahoma, again. On this trip we were taking out two cats, and a trailer full of personal items we still can’t part with.

Since we have our house on the market, before we left, we cleaned and set up the house in case there would be any showings. At 9:30 AM we hit the road. As we passed the area of the freeway that we got stuck during the previous attempt at Trip #3, we held our breath, silently drove past, hoping we didn’t have a repeat of the last time. Our truck flew by with flying colors and carried us safely for the next 4 hours. Somewhere in the middle of the central valley of California, we stopped for gas, but didn’t stop to eat. I’m not sure why we didn’t eat, we probably thought we could last until the next stop.

When we got to Tehachapi CA, we debated if we should continue on our journey, or stay at a hotel. If we continued we would have to drive another 4 hours to Needles, CA. Stopping in Barstow was out of the question due to previous personal experiences. Because we were pulling a trailer, we thought it would be best to give the truck a rest, instead of pushing it through the warm desert. We decided to stay at Fairfields Inn and Suites in Tehachapi and pulled into their parking lot to check into our room. During checking they asked about our car (truck), and I asked where we could park as we were pulling a utility trailer. The management stated we would have to park the truck out of the hotel parking lot area, like on the busy front street, or disconnect the trailer from the truck, parking the truck separately from the trailer. Our trailer is small, 6 x 10’, and we would need to park across 4 spaces. Since we didn’t want to disconnect the trailer, besides security reasons, it wasn’t feasible to handle parking the trailer into its own spot, and then not be able to block or lock the hitch: It just wasn’t reasonable. Our only choice was to park on the busy street, in front of the hotel, and out of our room’s view.

As we are now senior (citizens), parking on the street presented its own challenges. We, of course, had to unload our luggage and carry it quite a distance to the front of the hotel, through the lobby and up to our room (they didn’t have luggage carts). Since we had two animals with us that were going to stay the night in the trailer, we returned to the truck and trailer to feed, water and clean the animals for the night, before we could shut down for the night.

Please give us your feedback. Do you think the same as “Handicap Drivers”, exceptions should be made for senior citizens to park in safe locations? If there is room, why not let small trailers park in the parking lots of hotels?