Guest Blogger: DH's point of view

The DH is guest blogging his POV. If that ain’t a mouthful, I don’t know what is!

Well, the first thing I can say about a long road trip is that the driving takes about 15% longer than you think it will. If it weren’t for an unexpected shift into Pacific Time Zone, we would have been late to our event in Phoenix! (Er…later than we were. You know what I mean.)

No kidding. The 15% thing holds so true that I’m going to plan in a 15% “Reality Tax” on all future estimations of how long trips will take – I’m going to include my trips from upstairs down to the basement just to prove it works!

As for the trip…the sights along the way were just incredible. I kept looking out the window and saying “Wow! Look at that that!” and then the kids would go “wow…” without actually looking because they knew I couldn’t turn around backward to see them. You know, I never had a GameBoy, or a DVD player in the car when I was a kid on long, forced road trips. I’m not complaining about my kids, I’m bemoaning how
many cool things hadn’t been invented yet for me!

After we survived a blizzard in New Mexico, made the trip to beautiful Phoenix and back to Flagstaff, we realized that were about 2 hours from the Grand Canyon and would be fools not to go. (I could retire to Flagstaff, actually. It’s a mountain paradise in the middle of the desert.)

The kids went crazy when they saw the Grand Canyon. It was certainly the most amazing thing they had ever seen. I could show you pictures and talk about it, but I knew even as I snapped photos that they just wouldn’t turn out right. This is why people keep going there I think. Otherwise, you’d just go “Yeah, I saw pictures. I’m good.”

(And here I have to say it: HOW DO YOU CHARGE 25 BUCKS A CAR TO SEE SOMETHING YOU DIDN’T MAKE???? It’s madness! I know, I know – there are roads and potties and fences, but don’t we pay taxes? OK, I won’t rant anymore.)

I found that I loved the desert. It’s like I had always dreamed of going there, but somehow I never really thought I would…like it was “someday” I would. We saw rolling grasslands and mesas heading south on I-25, but after we left the Grand Canyon we decided not to go back that way, but to turn to the north instead. And THAT was some real desert. I have never felt so relaxed and connected with the outdoors.

This amazing land is breathtaking in its stark beauty and its sheer size. It’s like being on the ocean, but it’s all grass and sand and stone. The only thing I regret about it is that we hit Monument Valley at night and it was more terrifying than beautiful! All you can see at night is strange dark shapes outlined by the starlight.
The last leg of the trip was back over the Rockies. If you haven’t been up in the mountains, just get ready to have your mind blown! It’s always fun to drive friends up from Denver and they want to stop and take photos. You have to keep telling them to save batteries and wait. As you go higher and higher the view becomes more incredible than before!

Last up, let me give a shout-out to Idaho Springs. Great little mountain town and you can go to BeaJo’s and TommyKnocker’s restaurants which are just down the street from one another. If you want a great big pizza or a buffalo hamburger, be sure to stop at one or the other.