Occasionally, I’ll Be Quirky December 12, 2008

Route: Flagstaff, AZ to Albuquerque, NM – 324 miles

I’m having problems with pictures and video tonight, so I’ll see if I can edit that back in later.

So the original plan this morning was to make a left at Gallup, NM and go visit some family in Cortez, CO. That didn’t happen. We got to Gallup and realized that we would be driving 300 north across a sparsely populated Indian reservation in the dark. Also it was supposed to snow later. We decided in the interest of time and safety to just go straight through New Mexico and stop in Albuquerque for the night.

We had another 3 hours or so of driving in us, but we decided that getting to a hotel early-ish and being able to just have some downtime was more important. However, now our route for the rest of the trip is thrown off. Tomorrow will be interesting. We’re going to continue east on 40, but Amarillo is too close to stop for the night and Oklahoma City looks to be too far. Andy’s curled up in a chair with the atlas right now trying to work it out.

Highlights from today: We stood on a corner in Winslow Arizona! If you don’t know why that’s exciting, go ask your parents. Winslow is surprisingly lovely. That reminds me, we bought some postcards today and meant to write them out tonight. Maybe tomorrow…

We crossed into New Mexico and there was snow! On the ground! Andy pulled over on the side of the road and pushed me out so I could do a little dance in it. New Mexico is spectacular. The rock formations combined with the desert are amzing. I’m hoping we can at least drive through Old Town Albuquerque in the morning and get some pictures. We’ll see where we end up tomorrow.

Thursday, Part Deux December 11, 2008

Route: Las Vegas to Flagstaff, AZ – 262 miles (Google says this should take about 4 hours, but I think that’s a lie.)

We left Vegas this morning and were struck by the change to the strip right around Circus Circus. It’s really structured and sterile up to that point and then suddenly changes into the Vegas of old. We were quite disappointed that we bought coffee before leaving the hotel and weren’t able to stop at Sexxpresso, where you can get coffee served by the most bodacious baristas in town.

Here’s Andy this morning:

And here I am in the Venetian Grand Canal area:

Kate in fake Venice!

The highlight of the trip so far has absolutely been Hoover Dam.

Big Dam!

It’s amazing and gorgeous and a civil engineering triumph. Our bags were too big to get through the security checkpoint, so we’ll have to take a tour some other time. We did get to walk around a bit and see some of it, and we both agree that we want to make an effort to come back at some point in our lives.

Andy is cute!

We had a run-in with a shady tire salesman in Kingman who tried to convince us that Vince’s tires would blow at any minute if we didn’t get all four of them changed immediately. We didn’t fall for it, but he psyched us out for the rest of the day and we decided to not push on to New Mexico tonight and just drive to Cortez, CO in the morning. Our internet might be spotty at best tomorrow, so I may not get to update. We’ll see!

Kate and Vince.

Flagstaff December 11, 2008

We’re in Flagstaff, AZ for the night. We had some delays today and didn’t make our goal, but we’re happy to be able to watch our favorite shows. More after a late dinner, including pictures and video!