Today I decided I wanted to get home. Driving across the United States with a deadline can get really tiring and now everyone is getting on everyone’s nerves. I decided to see if I could make it to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we did.
As soon as we hit the Texas border gas prices went up instead of down, but I also think it’s because there is a lot of nothing between service stations. I noticed that in Texas we were no longer in Indian country, but as soon as we hit New Mexico, we were back, except this time it was the Navajo Nation I believe, and several others. And, there were not as many signs as in Oklahoma. It seemed like in Oklahoma the Cherokee Nation was doing a lot to advertise their presence to travelers, but in New Mexico things were much more quiet and we drove for long stretches of nothing but landscape, that was now changing from farmland into more rocky desert. But the rocks were beautiful, and the drive was straight and fast.
Today the kids were getting jumpy, and in New Mexico I saw a sign for a dinosaur museum and thought I’d stop for a diversion. The museum was pretty much deserted – but it was very clean and educational. However, the kids went straight to the kids area, which is a sand dinosaur dig play area, took off their shoes, and soon were running around the museum like maniacs. Lesson learned: when you stop to give the kids a diversion – stop at a place where they can run and play. Also, one dinosaur museum is enough on a trip, unless you have a kid who is passionate about dinosaurs.
In New Mexico, we began to see signs for historic route 66. I told the kids about route 66 and asked them if they remembered it from the Disney movie “Cars”. I was almost tempted to take it for awhile, but put that on the agenda for another trip – because I have no patience for slowness at this point.
Our hotel in Albuquerque was really nice, but the kids got a little nervous swimming in the pool as the wind kicked up. At the Boston science museum they had a lesson on lightening, and I think it made a big impact. At the first sign of thunder they want OUT of the water. Even though I assured them that the sky was clear and this is just a normal gusty desert wind, they got spooked.
We were all tired, but when I looked at the map in the hotel I felt better. With the time change and an extra hour of driving each day, we’ve made enough progress so that it is now possible to get home a day early, on Saturday instead of Sunday, and that sounded good to all of us. Justin has a soccer meeting with his new team Saturday night and liked the idea of making it. We even discussed skipping the Grand Canyon and getting home Friday night – but we’re still 12 hours away from home.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment