Petrified for New Year's Eve

Day dawned bright and beautiful in Albuquerque, NM this morning. An inch or two of snow had fallen overnight, and after breakfast we were dazzled by the crystal blue sky and snowy mountains as we headed out.

A photo from the car window at a traffic light will have to suffice as evidence for the beauty. We managed to leave my pillow at the hotel in Amarillo, so the sun and view did wonders to repair my bad humor after sleeping (or trying to sleep) the previous night with a hotel pillow. (I despise plump, fluffy hotel pillows; I've never found one that doesn't leave me headachy, tired, and with pain down my neck. I know, I'm a weird old grump.)

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Our first stop of the day was just 10 minutes away: the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Much of the museum was given over to dinosaur exhibits, seeing as NM historically has been the site of many great paleontological finds. All four of us enjoyed it a lot, and since our Science Factory family pass from back home in Lancaster got us in for free (consortium exchange), Jesse and I didn't feel too bad about only having ~2 hours to spend there.

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We hit the road again around noon, eating our typical "lunch" of snacks and such in the car. (We've been trying to calorie-load every morning at the hotels' included hot breakfasts, then munch our way through bits and pieces in the car during the day—to save time and expense—and pay for a meal at some interesting spot at our destination city in the evening.)

A few hundred miles later we arrived at Petrified Forest National Park. Unfortunately, due to icy conditions on the road in, entrance was closed. We were disappointed, but we still managed to spend over an hour at the visitors' center, looking through the gift shop, watching the informational video, and seeing a few specimen in the courtyard. Very, very neat stuff. I bought myself some little polished petrified wood earrings, comprised of wood apparently 130,000,000 years old! The boys are totally impressed imagining that a dinosaur may have eaten leaves from the tree my earrings are made of.   :)

(We're sitting on petrified logs here. We were almost petrified with the cold!)

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We piled into the car once more and were on our way. The scenery is so unlike what we know at home.






Late afternoon, we saw a police car parked on a bridge above the highway, and Jesse and I noted that it took off as we were going underneath. Jesse was driving right at the speed limit, so we were dismayed when a few minutes later we were being pulled over. The boys were agog with curiosity and enthusiasm for this new experience...Jesse and I less so. Turns out one of our headlights had burnt out in the past 24 hours (we hadn't even detected it yet since we had just turned our lights on and it was still light out). We were given a "fix it" ticket and told to have it repaired ASAP lest the threatened fine be levied upon us.

We'd traversed endless miles of nothingness, but the cop said the next town up, just a mile or so along, had an auto parts store and advised we stop there. So we did. Bad idea. Shane and Mike, the two guys working there, were really great and helpful, but unfortunately our Toyota brand car needs special Toyota brand tools just to get into the stinkin' headlamp housing. An hour and a half later we left—the headlight still out, scratches to the paint under the hood, money out of pocket, and with two very tired, hungry, cranky, cold parents (the boys were probably in better shape than us!). We drove the final 100 miles to Williams, AZ where we are now, me plying the boys with our remaining granola bars and water because we felt it was just too late to stop for dinner at that point. They needed bed, we wanted to get off the roads (getting icy + New Year's Eve drivers), and we have a big day on tap.

(The boys ran around the auto parts store for a good 45 minutes of our stop. I was rather out of my element explaining how to use the various car supplies and tools.)

So here we are now, in Williams, Arizona. (William is pleased, by the way!)  The boys are sleeping, thankfully, and Jesse is out looking for a grocery store to get a few supplies for our breakfast since this is our one stop with nothing included in the morning. We have a great day planned for tomorrow so hopefully the kiddos sleep well and we've gotten our minor hassles out of the way. Since it is already past midnight back on the East coast, I think we're going to call it a night...and a year!