Beatty | Lillian DarnellLillian Darnell

Hey, everyone! I went to Surprise, AZ for the end of May/beginning of June with my grandparents (also known as The Romano Duo). I would just like to share my adventure with you. By the way, some of the times aren’t accurate. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy!

May 26th, 2018:

I woke up at 7:00 am that day giving me enough time to get ready to go and eat some of my breakfast. After I got almost halfway done with my morning routine, Patty went outside and said she saw donkeys (burros) across the dirt road eating grass at an empty park.

Patty wanted to know if I wanted to see the donkeys and I said sure. And sure enough, I saw the donkeys. Anyway at 10:00 am PDST, Frank of the Romano Duo (my grandfather) and Patty, as well as me, were ready to be on our way to Surprise again.

So we got back in the car, I was mostly quiet but when we passed Las Vegas and Hoover Dam Frank said, “We’ll be passing the Nevada border soon.” I said, “Yes, I know.” as I already been through there twice.

Around 12:15 pm (my preferred lunchtime) to 1:00 pm, we stopped in Kingman, AZ to go to the restroom in Burger In-N-Out and Patty had Frank go get me some french fries. After he was done, Frank drove over to the nearest gas station so Patty could get the rest of the food for me and get gas for Frank and Patty’s car.

After 13 minutes, we were in Arizona desert. Eventually, at 1:27, I asked Patty and Frank for the estimated time we had left and Frank said, “At least 2 hours or 1 and a half hours.” At that point, I mentally started a time check and looked out the window for the first sign of Surprise, AZ.

Around 2:44 pm, I asked again and Frank said, “Less than an hour.” as 3:00 pm was getting closer and I was very excited. At 2:50 pm, there were only 16 minutes left until we arrived. At 2:58 pm, there were 10 minutes left. At 3:00 pm, I was looking out the window at Surprise, AZ.

At 3:10 pm, we arrived in Surprise, AZ. My calmness returned when I stepped into Patty’s and Frank’s house but I needed to go to the restroom so I had Patty show me the master bathroom.

Anyway, when I was just talking to Patty in Patty and Frank’s bedroom, my uncle Robert (who I never met) walked in to say he needed to go to the grocery store. Finally, he noticed and Patty introduced us.

I was kind of shy at first (I usually can be but it doesn’t last long). Fortunately, Patty had to go to Trader Joe’s to find the stuff on the list and I volunteered to go with them. So we all got in the car to Trader Joe’s and Wal-Mart (don’t really care for Wal-Mart).

Surprisingly, we were back at the house in 30 minutes. Anyway, I asked Patty for her laptop so I could easily code and look at Accuweather. Of course at 4:00 pm or more, Patty and Frank started making dinner. We had dinner at 7:00 pm though.

After the dinner, I decided to chill out and rest some while talking to Patty and Frank. After some time had passed, I went ahead and got ready for bed. Of course, I stayed up late (that happened the whole time). Once, I got into bed I read and played games on my phones until 12:30 am when I got up to put my water away.

After I turned out the light and my head hit the pillow, I fell asleep immediately.

I borrowed the photo from Google Images… A burro in Beatty

See part 3 here…

May 25th, 2018:

Once my grandparents and I left Reno, I felt very active and I started talking about stuff like the conference, places, cities, Surprise, AZ and thinking of silly names for cities.

For example, Surprise was Palm Tree Land while Reno was Tree Land. Anyway, we stopped in Hawthorne as a rest stop and get my lunch out (which was prepared by Camilla before we left). After we left Hawthorne, I continued talking and eventually offered my grandmother Patty of the Romano Duo to help me guess what word the 2 pictures were (it was a game I downloaded on to my phone before I left).

After a little while, I got bored so I took a lot of selfies. I also found out that their car had a GPS built into the car and a little cord you could plug up an old GPS with. Anyway, around 4:43 pm PDST we arrived at Beatty, NV. We spent the night at Death Valley Inn & RV Park which was nice.

After dinner, the sun was still up so Patty and I decided to have a walk around the hotel. After the short walk, we decided to see if they had any fruit juice liked at the Family Dollar Store across the dirt road.

Oddly, they had fruit juice among other things too. After we finished there, we went back to the hotel (more like a motel) and started my night time schedule. After Patty went to sleep, I went to sleep around 12:30 am (yes, I know that can be late but it helped me get up at a certain time) that night.