Oak Den: The Long Road Home

The journey continues...

The truth of the matter is that it is REALLY hard for me to go into the desert-y desert. (I have to say it that way because technically we live in the high-country desert.) So to make our trip into the desert a little more FUN I suggested to Doug that on our way home we travel up the eastern side of Arizona and go through Alpine (for warm, fuzzy memories) and then stop at the Four Corners and then visit our good friends who moved to Monticello. We'd leave after the burial in Thatcher and drive to Gallup, NM. According to google maps it would take us 5.5 hours. We could reserve a room in Gallup and we would be all set. Good plan. Fun plan.

The problem is, we didn't know what the road from Thatcher to Alpine was like.

But before we knew about that we had a few great moments. The first was as we were driving through Safford and Abbie called out: THE LOLLIPOP SHOP!!

This was a favorite place for all the cousins to go while at the Hoopes family reunion in Alpine a few years ago. Someone recently told us that the Lollipop Shop had closed and we were all very sad to hear that.

We're happy to report that the Lollipop Shop has moved to Safford. That doesn't help us much if we're ever in Alpine, and it certainly isn't as cute (old burger drive-in) as the Alpine Shop was. But now we know it does exist.

Well, we continued on our journey into the mountains and it was kind of interesting looking at some of the old towns and wondering about their history (Clifton comes to mind). Then we came upon a mine and it was FASCINATING.

This is in Morenci and it just went on and on. It was huge. We finally came to a turn out so that we could take a better look. Really very fascinating.

It is good that we found that so interesting because it helped us handle what was coming next: the road that didn't stop. I really cannot adequately describe what the next few hours were like, but they involved darkness settling in, hairpin turn after hairpin turn, climbing, isolation and the dismal thought that there wouldn't be time to eat in a Mexican restaurant once we got to New Mexico. So the google map meant 5.5 hours if you were going 65 mph, NOT if you were averaging 25 mph on a mountain road in the dark.

We pulled into our motel at 12:30 AM...

We woke up the next morning to Abbie throwing up...

We hung around in this motel for a few hours wondering if Abbie would be able to travel or if we needed to stay in Gallup for the night, in which case we needed to get a better place to stay...

Thankfully whatever was ailing Abbie (fatigue? post traumatic winding road stress from the night before?) passed away and around 12:30 we hit the road again.

What road? Why, Route 66 of course.

And then NORTH into the bleakness of New Mexico's north western corner. I was driving and Jake was in the front with me reading and reading and reading. He'd look up once in awhile but nothing changed, so he'd go back to his reading.

Abbie and Doug sat in back and watched movies (yes, there was a Redbox in Eager the night before). Doug had re-arranged the seats so they were scooted together and he was able to take care of Abbie should she need it.

We finally made it to the Four Corners in the Navaho Nation, paid our 3 bucks per person and did the tourist thing...

looked at the Indian wares...

physically put ourselves in 4 states at once...

one 'hands across borders' for good measure...

Jake, our desert baby, went on a small walk-about...

and then we finished the final leg of the journey.

Abbie sat in the front with me while Doug and Jake watched a movie together. It was during these hours that Abbie decided she wants to be a photographer when she grows up. She took pictures of her view from the car as we drove along.