Thursday

Thursday, March 25, 2010 – Last night we had a fun dinner with Tim and Shirley at a restaurant called “Sadie’s,” which boasted “New Mexico cuisine.” (Thanks again for dinner, Tim! It was yummy.) Poor Joel and Shirley…between me and Tim running our mouths nonstop, they scarcely got in a word apiece.

Shirley and Tim were sweet to remember that this trip is our 30th wedding anniversary get-away, and they brought us a present – a soft, fleece blanket.
We brought them a present, too: sausage.

Yeah, sausage.

You see, Tim had offered to treat us to dinner on the condition that I’d make him some sausage gravy and biscuits when he comes to visit us. It seems he had sausage gravy in Tennessee once, and he thinks that our pigs and our sage must have special flavors that cannot be duplicated outside the state. Since heaven only knows when he will get to Tennessee, and since a body can go only so long without sausage gravy, we decided to help him through this awful, gravy-less phase. So, Tuesday morning before we left, we stopped by the grocery store and bought eight pounds of sausage - four for Tim, and four for Shirley. When we presented the packages to them after dinner, they looked at us like, “You brought us sausage?”

Heh. :)

I would’ve liked to have visited a little longer, but our early wake-up call, coupled with the two margaritas at dinner, made my eyelids awfully heavy. We said our ‘goodnights” about 9 p.m.

With my body still on Central Daylight Savings Time, I woke up at what the New Mexicans thought was 5:15 a.m. Joel slept a while longer. We dressed, ate breakfast at the hotel, and finally got on the road about 8:45. In six hours, if all goes well, we should arrive at the Grand Canyon. We’re taking I-40 from Albuquerque to Williams, Arizona. From there, it’s a straight shot north to the Canyon.

Just outside the Albuquerque city limits, one tops a hill, and, suddenly…Welcome to Mars! The landscape changes, and everything is brown and red. It’s kind of surreal and spooky, if you want to know the truth!




And these mesa things…boy, are they strange. It’s like the earth just sank all around them, leaving them high and dry on the landscape. And then there are the little humps/lumps – they probably don’t call the little ones “mesas” - set right out in the middle of nothing. I told Joel there’s probably an ancient king or chief buried under every one of them.

And there aren’t any trees out here. None. They have scrubby little cedars, but those don’t count as trees. I’m threatening to mail Tim some sweet gum balls and some acorns, to see if he can get some trees started out here, but I’m doubtful that they’d take root, as there is no dirt, only powdered rocks, and evidently no water. I don’t even see how the cedars are making it. Now we know why Native Americans lived in teepees and people built adobe houses out here: they didn’t have any wood! ;)

12:00 noon (somewhere): We crossed the Arizona state line at noon, according to Joel’s watch and the car clock. Joel asked, “Did we change time zones?” Like I knew. I flipped open his telephone, which always seems to know what time it is, regardless of where we are, and it said 10:01. Wooo-hooooo, two extra hours to get where we’re going! Now we can stop and do tourist things, if we want to, without screwing up our original schedule.

The landscape has changed again. No more of that red mesa business, and no more snowy mountains in the distance. There are hills, but they are not sharp and jagged like they were in New Mexico, and they are more brown than red. And they have trees. Not a lot of trees, mind you, but I am seeing deciduous things with trunks and limbs.

On second thought (re. not seeing any mountains /mesas in the distance), I remember seeing a few miles back a sign that said “Elevation 6000 ft.” Maybe we are just on TOP of the world, and there’s nothing taller to be seen.

And I take back that thing I said about trees. There aren’t even any cedars up here!





There are a few cows up here at the top of the world. If you’ve never noticed, when they’re not lying down to rest, cows spend most of their time with their heads bent down, eating. Not these cows. They’re just standing around, looking off in the distance. They’re watching for somebody to come with some hay, I reckon, because there’s sure not much else for them to eat up here.




We stopped at Geronimo to have a stretch and a look around. All that was there was a souvenir shop. As we left the parking lot and merged onto the interstate, we both gasped as a tumbleweed came out of nowhere and crashed into our car.
Our stomachs were growling as we neared Winslow, Arizona. “Do you want to stop at Winslow to eat?” Joel asked. I said it sounded like a good idea. We drove on. About two minutes later, we said, simultaneously, “Isn’t there a song with Winslow, Arizona in it?” The song was on the tips of our tongues, but neither of us could bring it to mind. When we stopped at the Country Market restaurant/buffet, I asked the waitress, “It’s driving us crazy…what’s the song with Winslow, Arizona in it?”
It was “Take It Easy,” by the Eagles. Yeah, we knew that!

As we left the restaurant, we found a piece of tumbleweed stuck in the grille of the Tahoe. :)

67 degrees
150 miles from here to the Canyon.

3:12 (Tahoe time) – we crossed the “Arizona Divide.” We’re not sure what it divides. We think it might be the “tree side” vs. the “no trees side,” as there are now billions of tall pine trees around us. There is also snow on the ground. 51 degrees.

3:00 (Arizona time) – We finally made it!






All the way through the park, the trees kept obstructing our view of the Canyon. When we got inside the lodge, we found we could not check in for another hour, and I asked the lady where we could go to see the Canyon. She said, “Step right outside the back door.” We did.

Wow.

WOW.




No other words do it justice.

We immediately did a tiny little hike. The view is … WOW.

Tomorrow, we’re doing some bus tours. Joel’s mule ride is Saturday morning. We’re taking a helicopter ride on Sunday. After that, the schedule is kind of up in the air.

Check you later!