June 9: Durango, CO, to Flagstaff, AZ
Sleep: Five nights on the road and I’ve slept in the same bed as my wife once, twice each with my 5YO and 7YO. Only one of my bedmates hasn’t kicked me repeatedly during the night and she woke me up to plaster a Breathe Right strip on my nose in hopes of curtailing my snoring. It didn’t work.
The Shared Bathroom: After having my kids wake me up every morning of the vacation so far, I actually wake up before them this morning. However, as I, shall we say, spend some quality reading time in our hotel bathroom, I ponder the possibility that at any moment one of my kids will wake up in dire need of the bathroom. Luckily, catastrophe is averted and I, uh, finish my reading before they wake up.
Travel Gifts: Becky has wisely packed gifts for the kids while on the road. They get a new gift every 250 miles. Levi, however, has found multiple gifts completely unnecessary. He’s devoted most of his car time, and a fair chunk of non-car time, to his Find the Hidden Picture book. He’s worked his way through the 96-page book cover-to-cover at least three times now. Any time we stop we practically have to pry the book out of his hands to get him out of the car.
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Back on the road again.
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| Becky the Vacation Planner Extraordinaire: By the way, not only has Becky done an excellent job of packing kid-friendly gifts, but planning plenty of kid-friendly stops. In fact, she’s done so well putting this trip together that even my whining has been minimal enough that she might just say I haven’t behaved too badly. |
| Remember When Triple-A Mapped Out Your Trip? When I was a kid, vacation routing was left to the experts at AAA and their trustworthy maps scrawled with highlighters. While AAA has been replaced by GPS, we have gone old school, relying on maps and routes from Google Maps to be sure, but still essentially maps in which the route has been highlighted. The little voice that says turn here in 0.3 miles isn’t some Australian guy from your GPS, but me navigating while Becky does the brunt of the driving. This latter comment prompts me to note another area where Becky likes to be in control and I really don’t care. She has done all the highway driving, leaving the piddly in-town stuff to me. It works for us. |
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| Four Corners: We stop at Four Corners, which is where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah all meet. The area is closed for construction, which prompts another traveler who, like us, has stopped to absurdly take pictures of the “closed signs,” to comment that this is like National Lampoon’s Vacation. For those not in the know, this is a reference to the Griswald family’s trek to the Wally World amusement park where, upon their arrival, they find it closed for repairs. Since we were unaware of “Four Corners” until that morning, we resist kidnapping anyone, like Chevy Chase does in Vacation, to gain entry to the site. We do chat with a man who pulls up to the gate and tells us he’s headed inside for a construction meeting. He apologizes that the site is closed, notes that it was mentioned on the website, and says they should be open again in July. |
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This last point is especially amusing. Who would be in the situation of trekking back here a month later just to brag that they stood in four states at once? As it is, we’ll visit four states on our trip – Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. Sure, our time in New Mexico is limited to the few minutes we spent chatting with the construction guy and our fellow picture-taker, but it’s enough to count. |
Immigration: As we pass into Arizona, I’m saddened by recent current events in which AZ has passed harsh immigration laws. An article in USA Today this morning cited how many Hispanics were moving out of the state. It baffles me how a country built on immigrants can be so insensitive to non-Americans who want to come here, hopefully to live better lives. Perhaps the fear is that these immigrants will take over and treat us as poorly as we treated the Native Americans?
Where the Desert Meets the Sea: There’s a comical irony to the seascape pictures Levi is creating and passing up to me in the front seat as we trudge through the desert of Arizona.
The Somewhat Neglected Bag O’ Entertainment: At roughly the halfway point of our trip, I’ve barely dipped into my bag o’ entertainment. I’ve read part of one magazine and none of my books. I’ve listened to one CD and watched one DVD. I haven’t touched my computer files and have only signed on to the Internet twice (compared to my multiple-times-daily habit) to check email and Facebook.
Memories of Arizona – 15 Years Ago: We are roughly an hour outside of Flagstaff, where we’ll spend several days with Becky’s brother Chris. I remember staying in Flagstaff back in ’95 when my brother and I came to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. We took goofy photos mocking road signs as well as the requisite shots of the Canyon, Painted Desert, and Petrified Forest. Mark was recently recounting the series of photographs we’d take to make it look like we were smuggling an impossible-to-lift log out of the Petrified Forest.
Of course, one of the highlights of that trip for me was driving through Winslow, AZ, which, as any good Eagles’ fan knows, is namechecked in the song “Take It Easy”: Standing on the corner of Winslow, Arizona/ Seven women on my mind. Only a rock star would have the experience of thinking about seven women at once.
Biking: Soon after we arrive at Chris’ house, Evan and Levi discover bikes which Chris picked up from a friend as a surprise. Just this spring, Evan graduated to the non-training-wheel world and despite a couple spills and a doozy of a scar on his elbow, hasn’t let his enthusiasm be deterred. Still, his biking excursions had been short and limited to the sidewalk, a parking lot at the end of our street, and the blacktop area at his school, but here Evan tackles the wide, flat neighborhood streets.
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| Chris, Evan, and I set out on a mile-long trek which completely whets Evan’s appetite for more. As we prepare to attack the route again, Evan announces “I’m thinking this time of just me and Uncle Chris going.” By the end of the night, he will have biked six miles.
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