duright

We left Las Vegas on September 13th. I think both Wayde and I wanted to package Cozette up and throw in the car and take her with us. Of course, we couldn't so we had to say good-bye. We were amazed to see the construction of a new bridge across Hoover Dam. It was quite a sight. I was glad Wayde wasn't the surveyor on that job. We had some intense rain showers between Kingman and Flagstaff, but it was otherwise an uneventful day. We stayed in Flagstaff, Arizona that night. I had always heard it was a beautiful spot and everyone was right. It is so different from what I had seen before of Arizona. Our friend Sam McMurray recommended we eat at a Cracker Barrel when we found one. We saw our first one in Flagstaff and ate breakfast there the next morning. We loved it and knew we would eat breakfast there whenever we could. We left Flagstaff and, of course, had to stop in Winslow, Arizona. Wayde kept singing ". . . standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona . . ." We couldn't figure out why anyone would stay in Winslow long enough to stand on a corner, or even go through Winslow. It was certainly not our idea of Heaven. We saw lots of petrified wood between Winslow and Gallup. There were also lots of fantastic rock formations around Gallup. They looked like something out of a movie and we kept expecting to see a war party of Indians looking down on John Wayne in the valley below. We had lunch in Grants Pass, New Mexico. We remembered when Wayde worked for Anaconda Copper and could have moved there when they closed the Victoria Mine in Elko County down. Sure glad we never made it! We went through Lincoln, New Mexico, specifically Lincoln County. It was clear why ranchers would fight a war over this country. As Wayde said, "There is grass up to a cow's belly." The buildings around there were really old and we saw a sign that said "Site of Billy the Kid's Last Escape." We then went to Roswell, New Mexico. Wayde really had high hopes for Rosewell but have to say we didn't see any aliens, unless you count the one they had in the McDonald's play area. We did find a postcard from the museum there which we had to send to our son-in-law, West. We spent the night but were ready to leave early in the morning.