So, my daughter needed to get to Phoenix to do an audition for a job at Walt Disney. Flying was out of the question. So we drove. Leaving Saturday at 7:20 am, we got back on Monday at 7:20 pm, almost exactly 60 hours. We drove 27 hours out of those 60. Across the desert, across the mountains, across the great western outback of the U.S.A. We stopped at Four Corners and got our pictures standing in four states at once.

That may be a record for one of my trips. But probably not by much.

I was very surprised by Flagstaff, Arizona. I had heard that it was completely different from the rest of the state, but I had no idea. It is like a little piece of Colorado buried amid the scorching desert heat. We went from sagebrush and cactus to pine forest in about five minutes. Like turning a page in a book.

On the way back we were in one of the more desolate areas of the trip, just southwest of Four Corners in the heart of the arid wastes of northern Arizona when we hit a snowstorm of all things. It was snowing hard, but just for about a half-mile. Then it just stopped. Weird.

Must be global warming.