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February is almost done. The cold still grips us, there is still snow on the ground. There’s been snow on the ground a long time, unusual for us except in the worst winters.

March marks so many things. The month we get the most daylight back. The vernal equinox. My birthday. And ( Read more... )

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I went back to my travel journal, to see what I wrote about driving from the middle bit of Oklahoma over to Memphis, Tennessee. The answer is: not much.

On that drive, I got very caught up in the audiobook. I was on the fourth book of the Dark Tower series and it was all very ( Read more... )

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Something I neglected to mention about the National 9 Inn in Roswell, New Mexico is that it marked my final motel-stay of the trip. I had started out the trip by visiting with friends, then I’d hit the big solo swing. That swing ended with my stay in New Mexico, and as I drove off ( Read more... )

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It was Friday, September 13. I woke up at 3 a.m. in the National 9 Inn in Roswell, New Mexico, suddenly overcome by a hunger so profound it would under no circumstances allow me to go back to sleep until I had a handful of trail mix. Fortunately, after that I did manage to fall ( Read more... )

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On this trip, I had a plan, and I didn’t deviate from it very much. The stop at Arches wasn’t originally in there, but I was always going to be driving right past it, so it wasn’t a big change.

The day I visited the Grand Canyon was a long one, but a good one. As I left the park, I ( Read more... )

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When I started planning the trip, I knew I wanted to go right after Labor Day. I didn’t want summer-vacation crowds but I didn’t want to push any later into the year because of the possibility of snow in the mountains. It wasn’t my intention, when I started mapping it out, to spend ( Read more... )

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Day nine was Wednesday, September 11, and it was the day I finally went to the Grand Canyon. My hotel in Flagstaff was about 70 miles from the Desert View park entrance. I had heard of the marvels of sunrises and sunsets at the canyon, so I checked the sunrise time: it was around 6 ( Read more... )

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Tonight is our last book club meeting of the year, or at least the last one where we actually discuss a book. We’ll have our holiday party, where we’ll just enjoy each other’s company without the pretense of talking about a book. Though one of the best things about our book club is ( Read more... )

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On my way out of Arches National Park, I did stop in the gift shop for some postcards and fridge magnets and that sort of thing. Then, time to head out!

I gassed up in Moab. Utah gas is tricky. They do octane levels differently. You see a reasonable price on the regular gas, but ( Read more... )

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My cunning plan worked, and I was the first one in the Legacy Inn lobby for continental breakfast the next morning. I think I woke the dude and his dog up, frankly. But he shuffled around and turned on more lights and the TV, so I could hear about some of the flood warnings. It ( Read more... )