Once in a lifetime...

I have to say how thankful I am that we're doing this trip. This is truly a once in a lifetime journey and I need to enjoy every minute of it. I don't know that I ever thought it would happen, so that makes it even more special.

I am tired. R is already asleep and its only 11:16 PM here. Did you know that the state of Arizona does not recognize daylight savings time so they are on Pacific time from April through October every year? This time zone thing is really messing with me. We've been in at least 2 time zones every day...its nuts.

So today we took the long road to Socorro, just to see where R went to school. We left at 5:30 AM and had breakfast there about 9, then rode around for a bit and headed to Four Corners. Have you seen this wikitravel site before? I hadn't...found it on the phone today...it was very helpful in getting us directly to the park.

I wasn't sure we would make it...all the GPS instruments we have ... about 4 in total - that's a story for another time ... gave us different arrival times. One said 6:30, one said 5:30, one said 4:00... we decided to go with that one, even though routes were similar. When we were about 75 miles out, we stopped at a convenient store and I ended up buying a map - yes, Virginia, a real map! - because it actually had the monument location marked on the map.

There is no address for the monument, so if you ever go...know this...get to Framington, AZ, then stay on US-64 West until you get to Teec Nos Pos (teak nose pose) and make a right on the road after you see the city sign...there's a gas station on the corner, go almost 6 miles and you're there. Its a $3 per person entry fee and it is not what I expected. I think I thought there'd be a huge visitor center, but not yet. There are small vendor boths on 3 of the 4 sides - Utah is still working on theirs - and there are vendors of shirts, jewelry, etc. in most of them. I did notice there were only 2 vendors on the Arizona side. It seems this might be a pretty new development.

There were also 2 Navajo frybread vendors there...we had to try it. It comes with up to 3 toppings... powdered sugar, cinnamon and honey... we got cinnamon and honey. The vendor told me she doesn't charge extra for more than one topping, but while R was waiting for our food, the next set of folks that came up got all 3 toppings and she charged them fifty cents more. I told him we got the BG discount...now whether that's the "big girl" or "brown girl" discount, I'm not sure!

After we left there, we headed to Williams, AZ and the Grand Canyon Train Hotel. The drive wasn't bad while it was daylight and you could see all the amazing rock formations around you. The minute it got dark, I got sleepy and tired. Needless to say, I'm glad to be here and settled.

R is playing a game called "parallel kingdom" on his phone. Its where you can inhabit areas, claim them for your own and its based on actual maps, not fictional ones. So guess what happens every time we stop somewhere for longer than 5 minutes? He's chopping down trees and planting flags. He forgot to try to claim Four Corners though...he was bummed.

By the way...today we saw snow in the hills of northern New Mexico...honestly, probably more snow than I've seen this year in KY.

We're holding down the west coast...please take care of the East!