It's actually the third day I've been with my daughter and grandsons but only the second day we have been out on the road.  I am slowly realizing that there is a big difference between adult time and toddler time.  So many things I've forgotten since I had little children, or maybe I've purposely blocked them out.  Things like planning to be on the road at 7am and thinking that waking at 6am should be plenty of time to shower, dress, eat, and jump into the car.  Traveling "pit stops" while only taking 10 to 15 minutes for an adult, take about an hour with children.  There's probably a mathematical formula that I overlooked in the planning stages.  Then there's that stage where young children ask a lot of questions from the moment their eyes open until the moment they close.  Oh, and my personal favorite (and apparently my daughters'), when using the bathroom, unassisted, you have fallen off the face of the earth in the eyes of your miniature loved ones, causing noisy fits of grief until you magically reappear (open the door).   This is also known as the "out of sight-you no longer exist" rule.

I also noticed that Hotel/Motels go to great pains to be pet friendly.  They are also really concerned with their guests health by offering smoking and non-smoking rooms.  They really drop the ball when it comes to guests that are traveling with small children.  I thought that maybe it was the lower end chains because the first place we stayed at was a Days Inn but the higher end place let us down also.  We requested and paid a deposit for a crib but at the first place they couldn't give us the crib because one of the legs was broken.  The last place only had one crib and it was already in use.  Now I didn't see the first and last place's crib but the crib that we did get (at our second hotel) was one of the traveling/folding types, so we aren't talking about some poor hotel employee having to drag a thousand dollar, king sized, bed like contraption around the hotel.  Would it kill someone if there was more than one stored in a closet or if it was kept in good working order?  We muddled through by shoving the backs of the chairs against the bed and building a pillow fence.  Hey, I can share a queen sized bed with an infant.  Well, he's a little older than an infant.  He's a squirming toddler that ended up perpendicular to grandma and kicked me to the other edge of the bed.  It's not like I was the only driver who needed sleep.  There was my daughter who only woke three times to a screaming three year old who was in a strange place.

So after a good nights sleep, we were ready for that continental breakfast.  They didn't have a crib so I wasn't really surprised when they didn't have a high chair.  We just took turns passing the baby, filling our bowls, and wearing the food.  It was a challenge and we got through it without totally trashing the dining area.  There was just a six foot swath around our table that would have to be remodeled.

It was 8:30am and we were only running behind a half an hour when we climbed into the car.  The road atlas showed the Petrified Forest was a small loop just off the freeway.  It shouldn't take too long to drive through it.  Just a 15 minute drive down the highway and we were pulling up to the visitor's center.  A quick trip inside to find out what petrifies wood, then a book about dinosaurs for the kiddies and we were ready to look at neat stuff.  Right inside the courtyard they had a real live tree.  If that wasn't amazing enough in the middle of a desert, there were a pair of owls in the tree.  Here is one of them. 

 They also had this really nice specimen of petrified wood.

 Then we paid our admission to the Petrified Forest and a very short drive away was the painted desert.

 The baby has now fallen asleep so we have to take turns getting out at the stops to see and take pictures of neat stuff.  North of the freeway was the Painted Desert, south of the freeway is the Petrified Forest.  We want to see petrified wood and the first stop is called Newspaper Rock.  We walk down a path where I see something skitter off into the brush.  I'm hoping it's not some giant bug or spider.  There are supposed to be giant spiders, scorpions, and rattle snakes.  This turns out to be a little lizard.  My mom later asks if it's a Horny Toad cause she used to play with them when she was little.  I don't know.  It was by itself and well behaved.  It looked like a common lizard.

It turns out Newspaper Rock is a rock with petroglyphs on it.  The lighter brown in the blackish area at the bottom are the drawings.  It looks like a story is being told.  There are little people, animals, trees, suns, etc.   I don't remember how old they said the drawings were but there were many natives living in cliff dwellings and pueblos through the area.  It makes me wonder if the land wasn't quite so arid.   It would have been hard sustaining any kind of living in the conditions of the present day(113 degree desert).

 After we took turns looking at Newspaper Rock we drove down the road and came to some petrified wood.  The first picture is of a log that was unearthed when a rainstorm carved out a gully underneath it.  They had to reinforce the log because petrified wood is brittle.  The second picture are the logs as they become unearthed over time.  The park was really concerned about people taking souvenirs.   There were signs everywhere warning of the fines if you took pieces of the logs.  There were souvenirs to be had at the gift shops and they come from private property owners in the area. 

 Holy smokes!  We look at the clock and it's Noon.  How did that happen?  Toddler time, I suspect.  We rush back to the visitor center, gas up, grab some snacks, go through our strip search (just kidding, they really don't want you to take anything).  Back on the road, we head into New Mexico.  While it's still pretty dry there is a bit more green and some tree's.

According to the original plan we were going to stop in Santa Fe for lunch.  Since we got to Albuquerque later in the afternoon, lunch was out.  The kids were waking up, me and Sheena had to go to the bathroom.  We held out till we passed the busiest part of Albuquerque then we stopped on our way north to Santa Fe where we would stop for dinner.  This is a picture of the mountains that Albuquerque is built under.  There is also an adobe house at the base of one of those plateau thingies.

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 We finally got to Santa Fe between 6:30 and 7pm.  It was also located at the base of a mountain.  It was much greener, had trees, and lots of really cool adobe houses.  We stopped at one of those combination gas station/restaurants, which happened to be a Wendy's.   We wanted to do everything in one stop. Bathroom, gas, dinner.  Sheena ordered us to get it all done because we weren't going to stop again till Colorado Springs.  She pumped the gas, I took Alan to the Bathroom.  He checked out the stalls that were available and just when I thought we settled on one he started freaking out because the trash container was broken and leaning to the side.  So we took the one next to it that was in acceptable condition.  A short half hour later and we were washed up and ready for dinner.  Mmmm, burgers for all.

On the road again, we handed out the burgers and fries.  Everything was so yum until Allen noticed that his burger had mustard on it.  My daughter pointed out that for the last 3 years all his happy meals had mustard on them and he should just eat it and quit the complaining or he wouldn't get dessert.  This prompted a noisy scream-fest until grandma turned around, grabbed the burger, and wiped the mustard off with a napkin.  Unfortunately, toddler eyes are much better than grandma eyes because he saw microscopic traces of yellow.  My daughter explained that it was the best we could do and if he wanted anything else before bed the burger had to be eaten.  Eventually he ate it.

Just as we had finished the burger saga and passed the next exit, Allen informed us that he had to go to the bathroom.  For the BIG ONE.  "What!?!?!?!," my daughter yelled. "You were supposed to go when we stopped!  Why didn't you go then?"  And the little voice from the back seat said, "I didn't want to go there.  I want to poop in my own toilet at my own house."  There was almost an audible snap as my daughters tightly wound rubber band broke.  "WE JUST DROVE TWO DAYS AWAY FROM HOME AND YOU WANT ME TO DRIVE TWO DAYS BACK SO YOU CAN USE THAT BATHROOM!!!!!!!!  NO!  NO!!  NO!!!  We are going to stop at the next exit and you are going to go whether you like the bathroom or not!  GOD, we are never going to get to Aunt Minnie's!"

We do get to Aunt Minnie's.  At 10:30pm.  We had to go through the Raton Pass in New Mexico and take another bathroom break in Trinidad, Colorado but then we toughed it out and drove through the dark and road construction straight to Colorado Springs.  This is one of the mountains around Trinidad.  I was happy to see green and trees again.  We were all over-tired by the time we got to Aunt Minnie's house.  There was an episode where Allen didn't want to get out of the car but we persuaded him to come in by letting him know that we were sleeping inside and he would be sleeping in the car in the dark garage.  He saw things our way.  Aunt Minnie rewarded him with cookies.

We swore to be on the road by 9am the next morning.  We didn't think we could get up any earlier.

I have to stop here it's making me tired just reliving it.  I hope you will stop back for the exciting conclusion to the Great American Adventure.  Oh look, all the dates are wrong on the pictures.  Oops.

tags: travel  arizona  new mexico  colorado  cars  driving  kids  fun  humor  

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