Day 2, June 19, 2016 Flagstaff AZ to Albuquerque, NM

Up early, enjoying the fresh mountain air of Flagstaff.  The smell of pine forests permeates this town at over 7,000 feet elevation.

As we checked out of the hotel, we had a sobering discussion with the young woman at the desk.  Her boyfriend is a firefighter and he had just finished up a fire and they were in “clean up” mode, so he was sleeping at home at night.  Fires are burning throughout the west, so she was prepared for times when he could be gone fighting fires for several weeks at a time, where she would not know whether he was safe or not. With temperatures blazing above 100 degrees in many places, it is quite a thought to put on fire fighting gear (which we know quite a bit about because Dick’s brother, John, has been selling this gear for something over 30 years, maybe close to 40 years.   Our thoughts are with fire fighters who risk their lives everyday working to keep us all safe.

Driving down the road, Patti is ever on the watch for cool roadside attractions.  We saw a few today.  She could not resist hopping aboard a giant jackrabbit.  Who could resist something like that?

We then drove over 300 miles east to arrive in the Albuquerque area.  Patti’s seminary roommate, Tomi, and her husband, Hank, have lived in this area for a long time.  We try to visit whenever we get in the area.  The temps were over 100 degrees there, so we sought cool air conditioning.  Good friends, good food.  Always nice to get together even though we live 800 miles apart.

Dinner was at one of their favorite restaurants where we got to eat Coffee Chicken….delicious, although Dick swears it doesn’t taste at all like coffee. We ended the evening with Patti and Tomi having a couple of hours to get caught up just the two of them.   

After driving Tomi back to their place, Patti had a moonlight labyrinth walk back at our Air B&B.  Magical! 

We were pleased to spend a quick night’s stay at an Air BnB that we stayed at before.  This one is run by a yoga teacher with a lovely labyrinth in the backyard.  Wish we could have stayed longer, but we must roll one.  Miles and miles more to go on this trip.