A Change of Plans

Well, I saw snow and pine trees today, but it wasn’t Minnesota, it was Arizona. The Whim and Weather took over…

First the weather: I watched the forecast for MN and saw that the coming weekend was going to dip down in the low 20s again. As the MUTT isn’t winterized, I didn’t want to drive into that, so I decided to stay south for another week. As I said, the park by Canyon Lake, TX was really nice, but the weather was pretty nasty the last two days and the forecast for the next 3-4 days was for more of the same. The weather map on TV was really pretty with all the red, orange, and yellow colors swirled all over TX, but not very inviting.

The Whim part took over… I talked to my friends Barb and Lisa, who live in San Diego, and they were looking for a weekend getaway, so we decided to meet in Laughlin, NV for a long weekend. So I headed west towards El Paso. The first two hours after leaving Canyon Lake, I drove through thunder storms and heavy rain. Once I got through that, though, the skies turned blue and it was a great drive. Western Texas looks like every cowboy movie I’ve seen: Very hilly with gray-brown soil polka-dotted with sagebrush and mesquite. In my mind I could almost see wagon trains crossing and Indians riding and hunting.

New Mexico was a change of scenery and a pleasant surprise…it’s a very pretty state! The prevailing color changed from gray-brown to red, and the hills changed to mesas and buttes. I intended to head straight across I-10 into Arizona, then head north to Laughlin, but I saw the weather forecast calling for record-breaking high temps, so decided to take the northern route, through Albuquerque and Flagstaff. Again, a lot of really beautiful scenery.

I stayed in eastern AZ, then started off in the morning before sunrise. As I drove west, I saw a fantastic sunrise in my rear-view mirror, and the mountains rising from the plains ahead of me. The mountains were snow-capped, and the sunrise turned the snow pink…I started humming “Big Rock Candy Mountain.” Along the way I took a detour leading to the big crater in Arizona, but after driving there, decided $15 was too much money to spend to see a big hole in the ground. If you’re ever traveling I-40 through AZ, I highly recommend the rest area just west of Flagstaff, between mile posts 182 and 183. It’s in the largest Ponderosa Pine forest in America. There’s a path circling from the rest area through the trees, complete with plaques along the way educating the reader about the forest.

Well, weather-wise, I’ve traded the icebox for the frying pan, to badly muddle a metaphor. True, the northern route through AZ was much cooler than the southern would have been, but here in Laughlin, they are setting record highs. My thermometer today hit 101! I’m afraid I won’t be doing much gambling in the casinos during the day, because I can’t take a chance on the air conditioner quitting in the RV with the dogs in there. Since AZ doesn’t observe daylight savings time, it’s dark by 6:30, so I’ll get a chance to lose some money after dark. I'm here until Monday, then it's homeward bound regardless of the weather!