I am a day late posting this. I will do my best to get another out yet today on our last leg to Yuma.

As predicted we received about three or four inches of new snow at our house yesterday morning. So, waiting to leave until 10:30 instead of 9:00 as planned, we had mostly clear but wet roads as we headed south towards Farmington, New Mexico instead of our usual route, which was west to the Four Corners and across the Diné (Navajo) Reservation, due to the fact the terrain was higher and there was more snow plus it was still snowing.

Farmington to Shiprock and south to Gallup, the empty flatness of the land to the east with the Chuska Mountains to the west was, as always, beautiful. This route still took us through the Diné Reservation which is the largest Native American Reservation in the U.S., occupying probably close to one fourth of the state of Arizona and parts of S.E. Utah and western New Mexico.

After Gallup, we headed west on I-40 at eighty mph across even more barren beautiful empty land that seemed to fall away forever to the south and bordered by a low ridge of cliffs to the north. The sky was now partly sunny with broken clouds and a dry highway.

I-40 is now mostly what was once the now famous ‘Route 66’ and goes by the towns of Holbrook and Winslow. Last year we stayed at the renovated La Posada Hotel, once the stopping off place of famous movie stars, each with a room named afteer them, such as Jimmy Stewart, Marilyn Monroe, James Cagney and numerous other famous folks such as Albert Einstein. Jackson Browne, who wrote the Eagles song, ‘Standing on a Corner in Winslow Arizona, also has a room named after him. We did not stop this year.

There were numerous T-shirt and souvenir shops at every exit. I even spied a relic of the old highway, a teepee in motel, now in ruins and deserted by all except for desert critters.

This trip reminded me of when I wrote about Jenny and her grandparents coming across the same route, only from Sedona to Durango, in ‘San Juan Sunrise’: <https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/san-juan-sunrise/id1261287101?mt=11&ign-gact=1&gt;.

We arrived at our hotel in Flagstaff right at 4:00.

I am trying to make myself post something everyday. Some days I’m not inspired . . . like today. I’m busy getting ready for two weeks in Arizona and I always have difficulty in organizing myself. I inevitably overpack and I know I do, but I can’t help myself. I can never really tell what I might need. Of course, with planning to leave tomorrow, there is a winter sorm rolling in tonight. Woopeee.

I am getting the urge to continue with my first novel; ‘San Juan Sunrise’ and continue with Jenny’s life. I have some ideas for the story, maybe including Paris and a search for her mother’s family. If you haven’t read it yet, you should check it out at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BR2MXM5.

Also, please check out my newest book ‘The Awakening of Russell Henderson’ at: http://www.amazon.com/author/edwardlehner

It has been a soft, quiet, cloudy, rainy day out here on the Mesa south of Durango, Colorado where I live. It’s been unusually warm for this time of year and our two feet of snow is gently melting away. But it’s snowing up in the high country, around 100 inches so far. Hopefully we’ll get another hundred before spring. We need it to fill our suffering resevoirs that were not replenished last year because of the terribly dry winter. Ah, such is our life in southwest Colorado.

Russell and Hanna did not make it down here on their road trip. Maybe the next time. That’s what I like about writing, your characters can do anything. You just have to listen closely to what they are telling you. It’s their story after all. Stay tuned . . .