When last we left off, it was about 10 AM, or maybe even 11 AM, and the hondacar was high-tailing it out of Vegas into the Arizona desert on I-40. Lawfully. Really. It was stormy that day. And very beautiful. The road stretched on for miles. (Roads tend to do that.)

 
“You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to.”

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

 Planning the trip, we'd opted to take the southern route back for several reasons: the heavily loaded down car would be happier, avoiding the mountains, we wanted new scenery, and I could fill in the southwest completely on my geocaching map. Only after did we really look at the map and realize that the south rim of the Grand Canyon was only a 60 mile detour to the north... and neither of us had ever been there. There was no way we could pass it up – to be so close and NOT go would have been a crime. Plus, the geodad's senior pass saved us from having to pay the admission fee of $25. Go, geodad!

 Due to our late start, it was an hour or two before sunset as we finally got to the Canyon. I'd stopped to nab a few caches along the way as well, of course – new state #4! The weather was still off/on, rain, sun, rain, and we just didn't have enough time! But I suspect that if we'd had the whole day there, we still would not have had enough time. Or even if we had the whole week. And I /really/ wanted to do some hiking down into the canyon, but getting arrested for murder if the geodad had a heart attack... no, thanks. We couldn't tear ourselves away until dusk though. What a SUNSET.

 Words can't do it justice. Actually, neither can the camera. But here are some pictures. 

 Hard to believe ONE river, waaaay down at the bottom, could do all this. And we barely even scratched the surface of what there was to see. Someday, I'll go back, and hike north rim to south rim, or vice versa. Someday...

Caching-wise, I was very surprised. There are a ton of virtuals down in the canyon, and a few traditionals, but no earthcaches, at least on the south rim. Not until you get out of the park proper – there are a lot there - but it was getting dark by then, and I was starting to fade. Which was a Bad Thing ™, since the road from the Grand Canyon down to Flagstaff is my least favorite type of road – curvy, mountainous, and high. Add in the darkness and the tiredness, and it's amazing that we made it to Flagstaff intact. Noooo caching.

Two things happened in Flagstaff – we didn't find a motel that we liked, and the geodad took over the driving. We passed up a chance to see Meteor Crater as well, it was long closed for the night by the time we motored by. Maybe another time. We continued on into the night, as the Sioneva dozed. Winslow, nope. Holbrook? Okay, we'll stay in Holbrook! I have to say, for a trip that was supposed to be mostly camping, we sure did a lot of motel camping!

“See, this is why we're not watching TV”

Signs

 Holbrook, by happy coincidence, was right on the threshold of the next two major stops on our list – the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert, lying on either side of I-40 as it angled northeast. The geodad had seen one, but not the other; I'd never seen either. And our late night drive meant that we could spend half the day there before moving on. We was happy. Part of the road passed what used to be old Route 66, so Dad was able to get his kicks on Rt. 66, as well.

These three pictures were taken in the Petrified Forest. The colors of the minerals replacing the wood only happened here – petrified wood can be found everywhere on earth, but not in THESE colors. They're very careful to make sure no one carts off any of it – but they sell chunks in the gift shop? Okay. :) Anyway... the bottom picture is of the Teepees, a pretty cool formation in itself.

There was an earthcache in this area I was sure I logged – either I forgot, or the log was deleted. But it was still interesting, to say the least – the effects of minerals on “Newspaper Rock”, a rock the Indians used to draw pictures on. Prehistoric graffiti? Who knows!

Afterward, we moved on to the Painted Desert. Supposedly, it never looks the same way twice, but always changes according to the light. It was a hot day. Must have been hotter than I realized, because we saw this little devil out there:

 … and these people. Yes. All sorts of strangeness. I'd never seen a dust devil before. Pity I couldn't get a better picture!

 But all good things must come to an end, and we knew we had to move on as it got to about 1-2 PM. We ended staying that night in a small town near the New Mexico/Texas border. I made an appalling discovery when we got there – no caches loaded in the GPS for New Mexico! However would I get state #5? PAF to the rescue! I called up Twinstars, who patiently read off coordinates and descriptions to me from his computer – not the first time he's come through for me like that.

 Aimed with such useful information, we hurried to find one cache the next morning, before leaving – with the motel room key in my pocket. Yes, a real key, not a credit-cardy thing. I had to mail it back to them when I discovered it, 200 miles later... at least it wasn't a cache container, right?

“You better get out of Dodge before sunset.”

Gunsmoke

 But new state #5 was mine – and it would be the last that trip. We cut across the corner of Texas and Oklahoma, states I already had; we didn't stop. I had no preloaded caches. And into Kansas, where we made three stops – Pawnee Rock (a major landmark on the Santa Fe Trail), Dodge City, and Salina, for supper. We couldn't wait to get the heck out of Dodge, it was very disappointing. Nothing authentic remains of what used to be there, but there's sure a lot of kitschy fakes. Oh well. At least there was a train.

And I snagged an earthcache at Pawnee Rock, but something about Kansas earthcaches makes me forget my hat. Sheesh. Oh, yes. And the land was flat again. Horizon to horizon. Back in the corny states where a bump in the ground is an oddity.

We stopped for dinner in Salina, looking for a good BBQ place – but we couldn't find one. The menu was semi-fast-food Mexican, before we made the final push for home; yes, we drove from New Mexico to Bellevue, NE in one day, cutting through five states. Aside from the New England states, I think that's a record for me. Arrived home just at midnight. Collapsed.

I stink at writing conclusions, so I'll just say ... it was a great trip, would love to do it again! (If gas prices get lower, anyway.)

 Tune in next month for the MOGA Chronicle – until then, cheers from the cool people! 

By Sioneva

 A strangelet is a hypothetical object consisting of a bound state of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks. An equivalent description is that a strangelet is a small fragment of strange matter. The term "strangelet" originates with E. Farhi and R. Jaffe. Strangelets have been suggested as a dark matter candidate.