Day 4 - New Mexico & the scary motel

That Saturday morning in Texas we ended up sleeping in a little later and hitting the road about 8am. We figured we could be a little lax because we would be gaining another hour by crossing into Mountain Time Zone. We woke up, got packed, and left. Driving through the middle of nowhere Texas is kind of scary. For miles, you will see nothing but dirt, oil rigs, and the road.

Trevor and I were scared that we would run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, so we filled up our tank at every station we drove by - It seemed like ;)

Timber looked like this most of the trip:

The whole day was basically Texas, and nothing else. I enjoyed the ride because it was so different than Pennsylvania. It was hotter than hell, and dry. We eventually drove through El Paso (we meaning ME, because of course I was always the one driving when we hit those big cities). In El Paso, all you have to do is look across the highway and you can see Mexico. It is right on the border. We are currently only living an hour and a half away from El Paso, so i'm sure it will be a place we will come back to to go shopping and stay a couple days.

Finally, at about 7pm, we made it to Deming. For the past couple days, we had been talking to a man named John who owned a motel and he was going to let us stay there for only $650 a month, utilities and everything included! While we didn't want to really stay in a motel for 3 months, we decided to stay there the first night until we could look for an apartment.

John was really nice and let us stay our first night for free. He gave us the keys to the motel, we walked in, and I immediately wanted to throw up. The room smelled like cat pee and cigarettes. The TV looked like it was from the 1950s. The blinds were broken, the walls had handprints all over them, the sheets had stains on them. The bathroom was so disgusting, Trevor refused to let me shower in there. The toilet seat was missing the back cover to the tank. There was a HUGE hole in the wall that exposed the pipes to the bathroom!

I tried to put on a brave face and not be a little girl about a nasty motel. I took everything off the bed and made it with our own sheets and I was planning on sleeping there, because it was FREE after all, and we were really running low on money.

Trevor went out to get us a pizza and I started talking to mom on the phone. She started telling me, AS I was laying in bed, that I should check the bed for bedbugs. The more she started telling me about bedbugs, the more freaked out I got. I didn't want to check, because what if I saw bugs?!? And I had just been laying in that bed! By the time Trevor got back with the pizza, I had my shoes on and was standing in the middle of the room bawling.

We packed up our bags, put those sheets in a garbage bag to be washed in hot water later, and then went to the Comfort Inn. The rest of the night, I felt like I was feeling things crawling all over me. I took a shower as soon as I could and threw my clothes in another bag to be washed. I was terrified that Timber was carrying the bedbugs in his fur.

We found out later that yes, THE PLACE HAD THEM. I'm not sure if it was the room we were in, but thankfully we didn't get them.... but that whole night I was just sick. I couldn't even eat any of the pizza that night.

The next day, we drove down almost every single street looking for "For Rent" signs. And we found the house we are staying in now, thank gosh. It seemed as if everything fell into place after that horrible night. But hey, we are here in Deming and surviving!