Vacation 2010 - April 4, Driving...

OK, I'm a little out of order. Bear with me. April 4, Easter Sunday, was a day of driving. I was actually able to get out of bed and get out for a 3.4 mile run in the crisp Denver morning (41 degrees but sunny). Running in Denver is nice and not so nice. Nice because they have so many running trails and there are so many cute girls that are generally out exercising as well (even when it is cold). Not so nice because it is the "Mile High City" and that seems to play tricks on either my mind or my lungs or both. The first 10 minutes of this run was brutal! After that, though, I settled into a nice, slow trod and was able to complete the run. A couple of "interesting" things I saw on the run - there were a bunch of old men out walking their equally old looking toy dogs, there was a guy that lived in the city that had outfitted his little postage sized lot of land into looking like a farm, complete with 3 classic tractors that he appeared to enjoy working on, and there was this one spot on the trail where somebody had spread out a bunch of bird seed, no doubt meant for birds, but was being hoarded by a group of wayward squirrels that were afraid of nothing!

We managed to get out of town at 10:00 AM and met little traffic immediately. The travel south of Denver was quite nice through Pueblo. We made a quick stop in Pueblo to let Ethan go to the bathroom. I had initially intended to stop there, but we were a bit early and Quin was sleeping, so we called an audible and decided to move on.

We finally stopped for our Easter lunch in Weisenburg, CO, which looked like the next largish town on our way. We saw a sign for Subway and decided to get subs and have a picnic in a town park. Not much went right with that plan. When we got to Subway, it was closed for Easter, so we settled for roller dogs and chips from the Loaf 'n Jug. We still attempted a picnic, but after about 10 minutes had to leave because the wind was blowing so hard! So much for Easter lunch!

The remaining travel south to New Mexico went without incident. We hit one major milestone, the car passed 100,000 miles!

Another 5 hours of driving and we made it to Albuquerque, NM, our intended supper destination. The plan this time was to get something decent to make up for the roller dogs. However, a bid to hit a Best Buy to get Ethan a new DS game took us WAY off course - there was no Best Buy, and we ended up settling for KFC and a much nicer park than lunch for supper.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful. We finished the trip at 10:30 local time, 12.5 hours after we left. Mileage was close to 800 miles, but I don't remember for sure. A couple of brief observations:

- Driving through New Mexico is like watching Cars. I kept wondering when I would see Radiator Springs.

- I wonder why they would build Route 66 right along the I40 interstate. I mean, why take that meandering route if you could go straight through!

- I saw a sign that said "Indian Tacos" on the way through western New Mexico. I wonder if that is code for a reservation bound brothel...

I'm a day late on today's post now, but am tired and need sleep. I will hopefully be able to post two tomorrow, but will likely get lazy and just do two lame posts or one longer posts that cover our two days in the Grand Canyon area. Time will tell.