Crises, family land, sunsets and safe arrival in New Mexico

UPDATED: Photos now after the jump...

So I had all of these ideas for blog entries I wanted to write as we made the trek through Arizona to New Mexico. But it's 10:30 at night, we've been driving for about 13 hours and I'm pretty beat. So I'll give you the highlights.

The highlight: A gorgeous sunset near the Arizona-New Mexico border turned the red rock cliffs orange and purple.  Very, very pretty.

The crises three:
1) Our portable GPS broke. Luckily, I have a GPS-enabled phone and recently put navigation software on it as a backup for this trip. It's actually been great. 
2) Our cigarette lighter splitter broke, which temporarily disabled our iPod.  We were using an FM transmitter to listen to the iPod, but it ran on a cigarette-lighter power cord.  When the splitter broke, we gave priority to the phone charger, since the phone is now doubling as our GPS. The gas station at our next stop was out of AAA batteries, so we had to drive about half the day without any good music.
3) We almost ran out of gas. Seriously.  It was a scary moment.  We were driving north on narrow, two-lane highways, cutting from the 10 to the 40. When we got off the 10, we had about a quarter of a tank. We never imagined that the next gas station would be 110 miles away.  It was. And when we were 105 miles and on fumes, we didn't know there would be a gas station coming up. We were near panic, then like an oasis rising from the desert, we see a gas station. Yes, we overpaid. But we were glad to do it.





Family land: Years ago, my sister-in-law, Rachel, bought land in Joseph City, Arizona on ebay. Seriously. I believe we were the first people in the family - Rachel included - to lay eyes on Joseph City.  It's bigger than I expected - it actually has two exits off I-40 in eastern Arizona.  There's a big power plant. And lots of trailer parks. And not much else. 

Finally, we arrived in Grants, New Mexico, where we'll sleep for about seven hours then head out for Oklahoma City.

I'll add photos soon, if my crappy laptop decides to actually load them in the next few minutes. Otherwise, it's sleep, and we'll add photos tomorrow....







Lots of photos:

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