Warning! Travel whining!
It’s been a rough Thanksgiving! We spent the holiday in Scottsdale, which was pleasant and sunny, but other aspects of the holiday went awry.
For Thanksgiving dinner, I was overconfident and ate some mousse. I was punished prodigiously for my dairy hubris; it was a rough night. We call it “Karen poisoning.” As you might expect, I am a delight on half a night’s sleep and a forcefully empty tummy. We drove to Sedona, which is beautiful, but has one crowded road in. The next day, we visited the spectacular Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.
The drive back to Albuquerque includes some crazy (by my midwestern reckoning) elevation changes; Scottsdale is at 1200 ft and the pass near Payson (climbing the Mogollon Rim) reaches 7700 ft. The Petrified Forest is at 5000 ft, followed by the continental divide at 7200 ft, and Albuquerque is at 5000 ft. In contrast, my home of Missouri ranges from 230 to 1700 feet of elevation.
We hit snow on the pass by Payson. We climbed through white mist as the snow started to stick to the road surrounded by nervous Arizona drivers. After the pass, the sun came out and illuminated a field of windmills. At Petrified Forest, we hit snow again, this time after dark. So, with knowledge that the continental divide would be worse than what we had seen, we stopped in Gallup, New Mexico. In the morning, we made the last, uneventful leg of the trip. It was all over.
Yesterday, my husband about exploded with food poisoning. Thankfully, I seem unaffected, since I’m still recovering from my dairy-itis. However, one is only so unaffected in a 900 sqft house. It’s too distracting for writing the blog and the day job, so I decided to bump my post to next week in favor of a little cathartic whining.
Next week post: my review of this book about the Haymarket Affair, a terrorist attack on the Chicago police inspired by labor and class tensions.
Vironevaeh 