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About face! Heading east!

  • Regina Smeltzer
  • May 9, 2018
  • 3 min read

Day 23, 250 miles driven. We are on the road somewhere between Holbrook, Arizona, heading to Albuquerque. This is the beginning of our trek back home.

We pulled out of the campground at 9:30 a.m. and headed east on U.S. 40, where we will remain for days! This is my view for the day, more or less. It is a bittersweet day. We will be losing Kim tomorrow, and then the days will be less interesting since we have “seen it all.”

I confess that I miss my home, my family, green grass, humidity and Spanish moss. But living in the mobile home has been good. It has everything we need. It is making me question the need for our huge house.

So for this day: they say 60 trains pass daily on the track that parallels Rt 40, and I think I have seen 20 today. The trains are long. I counted six engines on one! It is common to see a long train stopped on the track, mostly waiting for another train to pass or switch tracks. Many of the cars are stacked two-high. I find that interesting.

Now that we are educated on the difference between mountain forms, we spent some time trying to decide if the peaks were plateaus, mesas or buttes. We guessed this to be a mesa, but we are no experts. Mesas are flat topped peaks large enough to graze cattle. But then, they also must have steep perpendicular sides, so I’m not sure how you are going to get the cows up there.

Here is the story for the day. Because we were passing right by the Petrified Forest National Park gift store, and because Paul really wanted the polished piece of petrified wood he saw there, Kim and I were to stop in the car and he would keep going in the camper. We would catch up since he drives slower in the camper than Kim in the car. So, I pick out the piece he wants, added a stand to display it on, and Kim said she would buy it for him for Father’s Day. Done.

I decided I wanted a couple more post cards and we had to go next door to get them. Post cards are 3/$1. Neither of us have any cash since this stop was not planned until after we were on the road. So we picked out a deck of cards with park scenes so we could put it on the credit card. I guess we can’t charge $1. Hunting in my little credit card pouch – no credit card. For some reason the sales lady is hesitant to take my JCPenny card.

So poor Kim had to pay for this, too. I lucked out. I really didn’t do it on purpose. I remembered after the fact that I had dropped my credit card into my purse last time I used it rather than putting it in the pouch where it goes. So if you go shopping with your daughter, either forget your money or double check you have some, depending on you!

We are almost to our campsite in New Mexico. I am in love with the New Mexico license plates. You have the turquoise with yellow letters, or the yellow with red letters, or my favorite, black with a green and red chili pepper on the left side followed by the license plate letters in striking yellow. I will try to get a picture!

We had supper with John, a friend of Kim’s from when she lived in Fayetteville, N.C. He said the older license plates were yellow, then the turquoise came out. The chili pepper ones are new.

Observation: Family Dollar stores are as plentiful here as in Darlington.

Goodnight for now - Regina

 
 
 

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