Dawn

Hi everyone. Big suprise...we're headed home! We've decided to cut our trip a month short. Due to running short on money and because we're just homesick.

We have had such a wonderful time, but it's time to get back to reality. I think we've both decided that we wouldn't have passed up this opportunity for anything, but we need some structure in our lives after 5 months. I think we know what it's like to be retired now.

Can't wait to see everyone!

Nelson

Greetings from Mexico! Err . . . El Paso, Texas.

In truth, we're about five (or so) miles from the USA-Mexico border. We can see city lights that are probably Juarez, Mexico from our RV tonight. It's pretty cool actually.

Today's five and a half hour drive from Albuquerque may have been one of the longest drives we've ever made. For more than half of the drive, I had a good hard grip (with both hands) on the steering wheel because we were fighting crosswinds that weather.com said ranged from 25-50 mph throughout the day. Ugh. I feel physically exhausted tonight. We agreed that we haven't been so happy to be at the end of our drive since the night we finished that long, windy drive through the mountains of Northern California on our way over to Mendocino in November.

As you probably know, we spent the last two days in New Mexico. We made it to Albuquerque on Tuesday, and it was WINDY. The blowing never let up. For my buddies in RCU, Ellensburg has nothing on the wind in Albuquerque. Anyway, for some reason, we weren't able to connect to the blog updating software while we were in New Mexico . . . which explains the lack of updates. Anyway, on Wednesday, we drove up to Santa Fe on a recommendation that said the town was really cute. It was interesting to see Santa Fe in the sense that they have a city ordinance that doesn't allow anyone to build much of anything outside the pueblo style with adobe finish, and the natural colors of clays (browns and reds). There was an entire development of homes that looked pretty new that really blended into the environment. Anyway, the cute part of town is the downtown area. We hung out there a little, window shopping and had lunch at a little place with a balcony overlooking the town square park. Other than that, Santa Fe didn't really impress us that much.

We spent the evening, including dinner in Old Town Albuquerque (notice a trend in the Southwest here? We've been to Old Town Palm Desert (which actually has a different name), Old Town Scottsdale, Old Town Glendale, Old Town Chandler, Old Town Flagstaff, Old Town Jerome, Old Town Santa Fe and now Old Town Albuquerque . . . Sheesh!). If there are Old Towns in El Paso, Tucson, Yuma and San Diego, we'll probably visit them! :)

After spending two days and two nights in New Mexico, we've pretty much decided we're really glad to have been there, but honestly, there really wasn't much that we were really all that excited about. Even Las Cruces (the other college town in the state, along with Alb..., was pretty boring).

We were both surprised tonight upon arriving in town how big El Paso actually is. Its "in city" population is more than 600,000, but we're both thinking that the metropolitan area population is over 1 million. Then again, in Texas, they claim EVERYTHING is big! Oh yeah . . . and when you enter the state, the sign says "Drive Friendly, it's the Texas Way". Well, the "Texas Way" of friendly driving is apparantly to drive like a maniac from Los Angeles or something. As if we didn't have enough stress from the wind today, we had stress in El Paso from the nutso drivers.

Anyway, we've got FREE high speed wireless internet here, so I think we're going to stay here for three nights, spending tomorrow just kind of hanging out relaxing after several busy days earlier this week. And I'm going to take the day to get a bunch of work done. A week from tonight, I'll be at PenLight in Gig Harbor, Wash., helping prepare the utility's board of directors for crisis communication planning, and I've got to get that presentation finished up.

For my buddies who care about the Washington State Cougars, or college football in general, no . . . I won't be going out of my way to go say hi to former Cougar football coach Mike Price (currently the UTEP coach).

We will, of course, go out to dinner tomorrow night (we made spaghetti at home tonight), and on Saturday we'll go sightseeing in El Paso. And we MIGHT even cross the border to see what's up over there. I've never been to Mexico. Might be fun!

There were so many neat little shops down each and every alley in Old Town Albuquerque. It was neat, actually.

Most of the places in Old Town Albuquerque are art galleries and this little dog (notice his bowl of "food") was on display outside one of the galleries. I couldn't resist.

One view of Old Town Albuquerque.

A gorgeous old Catholic church in Santa Fe. We think we remember seeing it was built in the 1600s.

This is a typical building in Santa Fe. I can't remember what kind of building it is, but it was pretty cool looking.

The flatbed Ford. If you look closely, you can see "Myrtle" in the background. :)

My sweetie and Don Henley "Standing on the Corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see". By the way, the fence is around "Standing on the Corner Park" because the building you can see in the background is gutted by fire, and that wall is shored up. The city is trying to raise funds to rebuild the JC Penney building (the one in the pic), but it's tough going. They have a website at www.standinonthecorner.com if you're interested.

If you don't remember, or know, the relevance of Winslow, Arizona and Don Henley, the Eagles (who Henley fronted) had a hit song called "Take it Easy", which has a verse that says "Standing on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see. It's a girl my Lord in a flatbed Ford slowing down to take a look at me." Since we're both Eagles' fans, this was pretty cool. Oh . . . Don Henley donated the first $2500 to help the town build this park.

By the way, this was just one of our many stops along Route 66 (including several in Flagstaff, one stop in Williams, Ariz., on our way to the Grand Canyon, lunch in Holbrook, Ariz., and a couple of stops along the "Mother Road" in Albuquerque). It's easy to see when you're on the historic highway, why it's so popular. Maybe that's the best way to understand the fascination with Route 66, too.

Nelson

In just more than an hour, we're going to be leaving Flagstaff on our way to New Mexico. It's a six and a half hour drive from here by car . . . so it might be as many as 8 hours with the motor home, depending on whether the road is flat or not. But we're also planning to get off the freeway a couple of times and follow historic Route 66 through places like Winslow, Arizona. If you're a fan of the Eagles, you'll recognize the name Winslow. It's mentioned in their hit song "Take it Easy". Should be fun. I guess there's a sign on a lamppost someplace in town that says, "Standin' on a corner in Winslow, Arizona", the lyric from "Take it Easy".

The Grand Canyon was amazing. The only way to describe it is to use the new word my honey made up yesterday, "unwordable." There just aren't words to describe it. If you've never been, it's definitely something that you should do, and take the family. It's absolutely true that pictures of the canyon just don't do it justice. They don't . . . but once you've been there and seen it for yourself, the pictures sure help you remember how awesome it is.

Sedona and Jerome on Sunday were really fun. We stopped in to a little tavern in Jerome for an afternoon beer and the place was really cool. It was just like it was back in the 1800s when Jerome was a bustling copper mining town. The ceiling of the tavern was even lined by a punched copper sheet. There was some sort of big gathering of Harley Davidson riders in town that day, so there were bands in the taverns. The one we picked had a jazz band playing that was pretty good, actually. We enjoyed ourselves.

And, as Dawn has said, we've found Flagstaff to be a fantastic town. We love it here. Mountains, trees, GREEN, and the town is really cozy and cute. It's an old town with a bit of a new feel, thanks to the college atmosphere and the dozens of coffee stops in town. But we really, really like it here.

More when we get to New Mexico!

Yesterday was Judie's birthday (Nelson's mom) . Judie is getting a Yorkie at the end of April. For her birthday we got her a little box of puppy things for "Gus". This raincoat was one of the things that we got for her/him. We just couldn't resist trying it on Molly before we sent it. So cute! Happy birthday Judie!

We had no idea that we would fall in love with Flagstaff. A lot of the downtown area is on the old Route 66. So cool. It's in the mountains. It's a ski town and a college town. Very quaint. We are using Flagstaff as our base camp for the RV, and then taking road trips in the car each day.

Yesterday we had a great day. We drove to Sedona which was very cute. It was definitely a "tourist" town. Cute little shops, very trendy. After that we drove to Jerome (above). This place was very cool. It was an old mining town that was built on the side of the hills. All of the buildings were built like in the 1800's. None of them were really refurbished, they were all just still old looking. It was very charming. And very authentic feeling. I wish I would have gotten better pictures than this. It was really neat.

The main purpose of this little 2 week detour was to get to see "The Grand Canyon." We had heard that no words or pictures could adequately describe what you see or feel. That is true. "Awesome" is used for too many minor things. "Unbelievable" is good, but still not enough. We made up our own word..."un-wordable". We now know why it is among the 7 wonders of the world. We kept wishing that there was somewhere that we could go with no one else around and just sit there all by ourself and look out at the view. We both agreed that it was almost religious.

My "little boy" husband had to stop to play in the snow. He said "honey, let's go play in the snow" I looked over and saw several little boys also playing in the snow. Enough said. (Honestly, I thought it was pretty cute)

The Grand Canyon.

Look at these naturally formed rock formations at the GrandCanyon.

Another picture of the Grand Canyon.

Another "un-wordable" view.

Right before you get to the Grand Canyon there is this little "Bedrock" town that someone made. It really was very cute. It was kind of sad though because it was sort of run down. It looked like "in it's day" it was probably a really neat place. We really enjoyed it anyway. This is the outside of Fred and Wilma's house.

This was the living room of Barney & Betty's house. It was adorable. All of these things were molded out of cement type stuff.

I think Fred...err...Nelson was most excited about going to work at "Slate Rock & Gravel" the famous Bedrock rock quarry.

Nelson, hard at work.

Yes, I married a little boy.

Dawn and I at the Grand Canyon. It was "unwordable"...a word Dawn made up because we agreed there weren't words good enough to describe how awe-inspiring the Grand Canyon is.

Nelson insisted on posing with Bam-Bam.