Day Two

Jeff is asked at about 2 AM to take Jackie (our 12-year old Scottie) outside because she's wondering around the hotel room. Maybe she needs to do her business. So Jeff gets up, puts on some jeans, shoes and a coat; grabs the leash and heads out into the Flagstaff, AZ night.

The air bites like he hasn't felt it in awhile. Perhaps being in the Bay Area over the past 6+ years had made him forget what anything below 35 degrees feels like. The dog only wants to sniff where others of her kind have been. So both head back to the room. At 6:30 am the ritual is repeated, only this time more successfully. "Man! How different the air feels from anything in the past few years."

Teena and Jeff head east on I-40 toward New Mexico at about 7:15 and turn on the radio. A station giving Arizona current temperatures includes Flagstaff and announces a reading of 2 degrees. It has probably been nearly 10 years since we both felt that.

Today was intended to be a relatively short trip (4 hours) so that we may spend time with Noah and Rachel in Albuquerque. Teena wanted to see the Petrified Forest National Park, so we took an hour-long diversion to see a government protected lot of land that looked like the surface of Mars.

We get to Albuquerque at 1:15, meet Noah and Rachel and have an enjoyable lunch near our hotel.

We wanted to do something for the afternoon, so we agreed to find the "Rattlesnake Museum" listed in the front of the Yellow Pages. It turned out to be in a section called "Old Town" which had many shops and sidewalk vendors. After seeing many versions of American rattlesnakes, we walked the shops and enjoyed a Mexican dinner in a local restaurant.

We concluded the night by watching a couple of movies in their room. We will breakfast together in the morning and head to our separate destinations before the morning is half way gone.

It is great to see them and they look very happy.