Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Today's trip was relatively short, only a bit over 200 miles, and with good weather it only took around four hours even with side trips and a stop in Flagstaff to get some coffee/hot chocolate/sandwiches at Starbucks. This is mostly a deliberate plan on our part, as our experience of our road trips is that in the later stages, we have to make the segments shorter.

( Westward Ho )

When we reached I-17, we completed the first of the two "retraces" of this trip, where we return by the same route as we set out. For the most part, this is a "circular" trip where we're taking a different route outbound than for our return.

( Williams, Seligman, and Kingman )

We reached Kingman before sunset, and my Spire status got us a mini-suite upgrade. Not as big as the separate-bedroom combo we had in Rancho Mirage, but comfortable.

( Room 323 )

Although there is a new Black Bear Diner here in Kingman, so we could have collected a new stamp in our Passport, we were both tired enough that we wanted to just take food back to the hotel and eat dinner there and get some rest. We refuled at the Flying J, picked up some milk and snacks at Basha's grocery store, and returned to the hotel. I then ordered a pizza and while Lisa did some in-room washing out of clothes, I ran down to Pizza Hut to collect the food.

Tomorrow's trip is also relatively short by the shortest route, but we'll probably lengthen it, and we have some planned errands in Las Vegas that will probably make it even longer before we get to the hotel. But I know from sitting at the work space here in Kingman that the chair won't attack my back the way the seat did in Winslow.

Thanks to finding a loose bell cart hanging around in the Hyatt's parking garage, we were able to get moved out of our hotel room in only three trips instead of the anticipated six. We bade farewell to our friends who were hanging around the lobby waiting to go to the airport, checked out of the hotel, and just after noon set out for the first leg of our trip home.

( But First, Breakfast )

Suitably fed, we turned our faces west for home.

( Land of the Endless Mesas )

Just before sundown, we entered Arizona and stopped at one of the many Indian Trading Posts trying to separate tourists like us from our money.

( A Time-Honored Tradition )

Despite some trying minutes fighting the light as she drove straight toward the setting sun, Lisa got us to Winslow without incident.

( Welcome to Las Posada )

Our room has wonderful decor, and Lisa was able to take advantage of the jacuzzi-style bathtub while I worked on stuff from Day Jobbe that I had put off to this evening. The desk chair, however, is definitely not meant for spending extended periods at work, and I'm already feeling it. Fortunately, I only have to work four hours tomorrow morning before we set out again.

After checking in to La Posada, we initially tried out the Turquoise Room Restaurant, but found the menu overly sophisticated for us. (We'll have another look for breakfast tomorrow.) We opted to go to Denny's instead. This is not a knock on the restaurant. Lisa said, "It's just way over my head." Some of the dishes look great, but they also look too spicy for Lisa, who can eat oatmeal plain and like it.

( Even a Train to Watch )

Tomorrow's trip is only 200 miles, so I hope we will have time after breakfast to explore this lovely property in daylight.

We booked two nights at the Super 8 in Cottonwood, Arizona so that we did not have to pack out of the room today. After I logged out of work, we drove the short distance up to Clarkdale for our scheduled ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad.

( To the Trains! )

Between Lisa and me, we took a whole lot more photos than what are in this entry. See the Verde Canyon Railroad Album I created on Flickr if you want to see the whole lot. It's a really nice trip, and I think it was money and time well spent. I wish we'd had more time to go through the museum and read all of the information signs, but we did buy a copy of the route guide that should have additional historical information to be absorbed at greater leisure.

It's only about 15 minutes drive back down to Cottonwood on Arizona 89A. (We drove up to the railroad on historic route US-89A and back on the more modern state route, for variety.) We'd intended to immediately head out to the Black Bear Diner for dinner, but it took me more than an hour to get the photos from both our cameras uploaded, and as you'll see, I didn't try to label or geotag them precisely, as it would have taken even longer. As it happens, it's a good thing we were in the hotel room for some extra time, as I'll explain in my next entry.

Today's route of travel was a mere 361 miles according to Google Maps, and we got away from Williams an hour earlier than planned, despite the passenger door continuing to balk at unlocking in the cold.

( Following Historic Route 66 )

Before leaving Williams, though, we made a brief stop at the Grand Canyon Railway.

( A few shots of the GCR )

After taking the train pictures, we got onto I-40 and headed east, with our usual stops at least once an hour or two. I drove us to Winslow, where we sought out the Standin' on the Corner Park based on the song "Take it Easy."

( It's a Bear, my Lord, on a Bright Red Ford )

Click through any of the photos above for more shots of the park. We did indeed spend some money traveling through Winslow, so the park did have some of its intended purpose. Lisa drove from Winslow to Gallup, allowing me to take a few pictures of interesting scenery as we passed through Northern Arizona.

( I-40 and Geology... and Dill Pickles... and Drill Bits )

Around 4:30 PM, as the light was fading but before the sun actually set, we arrived at the Hyatt Place Hotel Albuquerque Airport. We'll be here for two nights, cashing in points that I earned mostly from Westercon 58, clear back in 2005 in Calgary, from hotel stays during the planning of the event and during the convention itself. [ETA: Per comments below, apparently not. Now I don't know where those points were earned.] I don't recall ever using Hyatt points on any hotel at all before, except for a planned stay on the way home from Nippon 2007 that we canceled (and recovered the points), and I'm sort of lucky to even have the points recovered and usable at a time and place that's valuable for me.

( Our Mini-Suite )

After we got our luggage moved in for our two-night stay here, we headed over to the Waffle House for dinner. Low tastes, I know, but we like Waffle House. We then did a small drive around parts of Albuquerque that Lisa knew well from her college days here.

Tomorrow, I work remotely from here while Lisa goes and visits friends.

We got out of Tempe right on our projected schedule at 10 AM, but kept making more stops than I originally expected, and this turned into a very long day.

( The Scenic Route )

Tomorrow we don't have to be up early, and I'm not going to turn on my alarm. We have errands to do, and unfortunately I have Day Jobbe stuff that must be done. I'd do it tonight, but I'm wiped out.

Most e-mail and LJ messages are getting no action. I have insufficient time and energy to post photos of the train museum and of Kingman that I took and of this huge hotel room that Lisa took. The big comfy bed is calling me.

When we were packing the van back in Fernley, I saw Lisa put one of our umbrellas in the back. "Why are you packing that?" I asked.

"Because we might need it," she said. I laughed. This would come back to haunt me later.

I should have taken heed to the warning of this morning's weather at Williams, as it was raining as we packed the van to set off east. At times the rain was so heavy that the wipers wouldn't clear the window even at high. And while it let off later, it was cloudy through most of our drive across Arizona and New Mexico.

We got away early, which was good because the scheduler doesn't realize that Arizona is effectively in a different time zone. And we did keep making lots of stops, both because our respective metabolisms require it and because there were things we wanted to look at.

( Here It Is! )

( On to New Mexico )

As we were still at least two hours ahead of our revised projections to Albuquerque, Lisa asked if we could stop in Grants (where we were originally scheduled to stop tonight) and have a look at the New Mexico Mining Museum. Unfortunately, it's closed on Sundays, so we had to content ourselves with walking around the grounds. My diabetes blood sugar after lunch indicated that a walk was a good idea anyway.

( Watch Out For That Drill, Kuma! )

Around 5 PM, still comfortably ahead of our schedule (we still ended up losing 15 minutes against projections even with all the padding), 370 miles and 9 hours after we started today, (and 1,020 miles from Fernley) we pulled in to the Holiday Inn Express. Here my Platinum status actually worked and they upgraded us to a mini-suite. Furthermore, this must be a "first generation" HIX, as it had wired as well as wireless internet; therefore, It only took a few minutes to upload the photos and video I took today, as opposed to the wi-fi at Wiliams where the photos took more than an hour to struggle through the hotel network.

After getting the photos into my computer and the upload started, we took the camera back to the van and stowed it, then walked a couple of blocks to dinner. A light rain started to fall. By the time we were finished eating, it was a moderate to heavy rain. Lisa looked at me significantly. Despite having been warned multiple times and despite having been at the van before we walked to dinner, I hadn't brought the umbrella with me. Fortunately, it wasn't too far, and we didn't get too awful wet. Lisa improvised a rain hat for travelswithkuma, who does not like getting wet.

( Boom Tonight )

Tomorrow morning, we'll be meeting an old friend of Lisa's for breakfast at a restaurant over by the train station before detouring north to Santa Fe to take care of some business with her late father's estate. While this does take us about 50 miles out of our way, we will then be able to take the shortcut (US-285) to Cline's Corners on our way to Roswell, our target for Monday night. Because we pushed harder the previous two days, we have less distance to travel tomorrow, and therefore I get an extra hour of sleep tonight. And I need it.