BHRT--day 9

Saturday, 8/31/13

7:07 a.m.  Leaving cabin.  

8:00 a.m.  gas in Poncha Springs, CO.  $3.56/gal.  $43ish.  Sarah is being very territorial about the goldfish crackers.  Now she’s unhappy with the lack of variety of juice options.

Mike and I are discussing the effect altitude has on boogers.  They dry up and get stuck above the tree line.

9:00 a.m.  saw deer drinking from Rio Grande River at Del Norte, CO.

9:23 a.m  Near South Fork, CO, just stopped at what the kids call “the best rest stop EVER!”  Free lemonade, cookies, brownies.  A little old Mexican lady running it.  I got conchitas, which she said were Mexican cookies.  They tasted a little like licorice.  I had to use the men’s room to wash my hands, because the women’s room was out of soap.  Every little town we pass seems to have a liquor store and a church. 

9:45 a.m.  driving through Rio Grande National Forest.  Beautiful.  Tried to hold our breath through a tunnel.  Couldn’t make it. 

10:00 a.m.  Sarah is rambling about “when I get my bird for my tenth birthday” out of nowhere. She’s never even mentioned it before, and now she’s talking about it like it’s fact. 

10:05  a.m.  Driving through San Juan National Forest..  Didn’t know we had so many national forests. Thought I saw a buffalo or a moose, but it was just a cow by a tree.

10:30 a.m.  gas at Pagosa Springs, CO.  Nice town.  $3.69/gal x 4.6 gal = $17.14.  Mike is getting gas often, afraid of running out in the desert.  I explained disposable toilet seat covers to Sarah, who said, “That’s dumb.  Why would I care if my butt gets dirty?”

11:00 a.m.  Saw a roadside trailer offering free jerky samples.  We tried buffalo, turkey, beef, elk.  Bought a small bag of buffalo for $5.

11:16 a.m.  Making kids watch a Grand Canyon DVD so they know what they’re going to see and how it was formed.

11:30 a.m. I’m handing out the lunches I made yesterday at the cabin.  Just passed Durango Pet Resort.

1:05 p.m.  Mike  is laughing  at me because I had a bimockulars injury.  I had them up to my eyes, and he hit a dip in the road, and I gave myself a couple black eyes.

Mike dubbed this "Middle Finger Mountain."  

1:45 p.m.  Four Corners.  UT, CO, AZ, NM.  HOT.  AZ state line bags had audio books (Magic Treehouse) and AZ trivia (Kerri Strug is from Tuscon.  AZ became the 48^th state in 1912.)  Turned on the AC for about 5 minutes.  Darn hot here in the desert.  Bought some stuff from the Native Americans at Four Corners.  

 Touching four states at the same time.

2:30 p.m.  gas at a horrible little dump called Red Mesa Trading Post in the middle of the desert.  $3.55 /gal.  $16.98.  Waited in line for a long time to pay.  I took a map from a display of maps that sure looked free to me and went to the van.  Mike came out a long time later and said the clerk charged him $4 for the map.  I wanted to return it, but didn’t want to wait in that line again and just wanted to get out of there.  So now we own a $4 map of the Grand Canyon, which anyone can get for free at the Grand Canyon.

3:20 p.m.  Raining.  Temp suddenly dropped to 66 degrees!

3:30 p.m.  stopped raining and is back up to 78 degrees.  Crazy desert weather.  Last night at the cabin, we were looking at the weather forecast and thinking about going home instead of to the canyon, because they were forecasting monsoon rains and nothing but clouds all weekend.  But we decided to declare good weather, step out in faith, and stop focusing on the forecast.

4:15 p.m. Raining again. Some fast little animal just scurried across the road.  Looked like a pale armadillo.

4:40 p.m.  just realized that Sally is not on Mountain Time, so instead of arriving in 10 minutes, it’s going to be an hour and 10 minutes. 

5:00 p.m. gas at the corner of 64 and 89. $3.59/gal.  $23ish.  Kids watching Jungle Book.

5:30 p.m. entering Grand Canyon National Park.   60 degrees and raining.   Just a light rain, not a monsoon.  Praise God!   $25 to get in the park. Stopping at Desert View Watchtower for our first glimpse of the canyon.  Breathtaking! We even got to see the sunset.  Feeling very blessed. 

  Saw several elk on our way to our room.

7:00 p.m.  checking in to Maswik Lodge room #6756, a great room.  $94. Went to the lodge, ordered a pizza. While waiting for it, I went to the desk to ask if there were any rooms available for tomorrow night, because less than 24 hours isn’t going to be enough.  The guy said everything was booked, as I expected.  People book these rooms a year in advance. About 5 minutes later, I went back to the desk to ask if we could have a later checkout time.  Before I could even ask, the lady who checked us in said, “I can get you a room for tomorrow night.”  I don’t know how she did it, but I think it must have been God working through her, because she got us the same room at the same price. 

9:30 p.m.  I’m heading for the free shuttle to take me to the rim to see the stars over the canyon.

10:30 p.m.  I rode the shuttle all the way around and ended up just getting off back at Maswik, because by the time I got to the rim, I was afraid I would miss the last bus back and have to walk in the pitch dark with elk roaming around.

Sarah sleeping diagonally, hogging the bed