Dust off the keyboard. Polish the lenses. Wipe the cobwebs out of the brain and energize the old blog. We’re back on the road and it’s time to subject friends and family to another installment of Mike and Tami getting out of the house. We are once again using the excuse of a conference to explore another part of the country. This time it is an area we have already been to, but it was a quarter century ago (that makes 25 years sound like a super long time ago, doesn’t it?) and we have such fond memories that we want to explore it again.

On this trip, we plan to visit pueblos and ancient ruins, hunt down ghost towns, and explore those nebulous new age phenomena, such as the vortexes allegedly swirling about Sedona.

So off we flew to Las Vegas on a very typical October morning in Seattle with intermittent rain and broken clouds. Flying over Puget Sound was clear enough to enjoy the sight of islands in the distance and the coastline from Seattle down to Tacoma, giving us a fine adios to the watery, sodden Northwest.

Our approach to Las Vegas was the antithesis of our Seattle departure as the brown, dry hills extended for miles and those hills were barren of any signs of green. Soon we were walking past banks of slot machines in search of our rental car. Budget makes it oh so much more complicated and stressful than necessary to rent a car (why did the car lady keep clucking at her screen anc disappearing into the back office?), but at last we had keys, or rather some sort of supernatural sensing fob that knew when we were near the car, and off we headed to Kayenta, Brent and Pam’s oasis in the desert.

View from Pam and Brent’s house.

It was a pleasure to meet up with Rita again (see Drying Out the M Tour), discover the recent changes to Brent and Pam’s house, and settle into the leisurely lifestyle of the southwest.

Lovely Rita, a little weathered, but aren’t we all!

The next day, after a morning swim, we made our traditional stop at Irmita’s for the best Mexican fast food in Utah (it’s now official) and then headed out to Snow Canyon for a pleasant hike in beautiful weather. The red cliffs, black basalt, intensely blue skies, and green trees lining a dry creek bed reinforced the knowledge that we were no longer in soggy Washington and yes, we were truly back in the warm Southwest.

Face in the rock – looks like a modern sculpture!

Another face in the rock (is that a sphinx, or just Scooby Doo?)

Back at the house we starting looking for a place to stay tomorrow night. We were hoping to get to Page, AZ, but were disappointed to find that most of the rooms in town were booked, and the few that remained were jacked up to unreasonable prices. Finally we got a tip on a small place, Debbie’s Hideaway, that turned out to have a nice suite at a price we could live with. Tomorrow we hit the road!

Should we let the gnome in?