A Year Ago Today...December 31st

After a nights sleep Carl and I awoke to a glistening white Albuquerque, NM. Thankfully, we had our handy dandy car ice scrapper in the backseat and cleaned the car off in a matter of minutes. The lobby was packed for the free continental breakfast and everyone was talking about I-40. One of the employee's reported that I-40 had been shut down due to a large accident that took place overnight and he reported that it would take 3-4 hours to get through it.  Most other patrons took  him at his word and started looking into alternate routes. Carl and I did not want to drive 150+ miles off our original path...it would take us 3-4 hours to either detour around it or drive through it in traffic, so  what was the difference? After a quick breakfast at the neighboring McDonald we hit the road. (We went to McDonald's because when we went to fix coffee in the hotel lobby the cream curdled in coffee and grossed us out)

As you can see below, the roads were clear. If there had been an accident it had been cleared long before we hit the road that day.

The strange thing is that there were patches of road that still had snow remaining...like when we passed the New Mexico/ Arizona border. Blame it on the altitude changes. 

We had to stop for gas at one snow covered rest stop and it was a little nerve racking trying  to maneuver on ice covered parking lots. But the strangest thing happened at the rest stop...Carl and I both got a little electric shock when trying to open the door to the store. I first went to go grab the handle and my hand got a little shock and spasmed. Carl didn't know what happened and I said, "It shocked me". Of course I tried the door handle again and the same thing happened but the spasm was worse and Carl saw my hand contort in an odd manner. So then he  tried it and also got shocked. We finally used our jacket to pull open the door so we could tinkle. Bizarre. 

About 20 miles outside of Winslow, Arizona Carl and I headed off the main road for a stop at the Meteor Crater. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and then I'll throw my 2 cents in.  

It is really hard to explain how enormous this Meteor Crater really is. Even standing on the edge it can be hard to tell. But to give a little perspective, I've highlighted the next photo. At the center of this crater is a metal chain link fence (highlighted in red). There is a cardboard cut out of a 6' tall man leaning on the fence (highlighted in yellow). You can not see either the fence or the man when standing at the top of the craters edge...you have to look through one of those telescope/ viewfinder things to see it. Also down in the bottom of the crater are various car parts, a cannon, ladders, and a hole in which they dug into the crater to explore, and a bunch of other debris. 

We had a good time stretching our legs and taking in the sights from atop the crater. It was really windy and chilly up there but well worth the views. After an  hour we hit the  road again. 

Carl drove for a little bit on Day 4 which means I got a little camera happy in the passengers seat...particularly when the sun started to set. 

We celebrated the end of Day 4 and New Year's Eve by staying in Kingman, Arizona at a historic Route 66 Hotel. All the rooms had names of famous people that had once stayed there. We stayed in the room where Clarence Harvey use to stay. We had a great dinner and watched the NY City ball drop on TV several times that night. The time changes started to get confusing and we kind of forgot what time zone we were currently in. 

We had made such great time driving the first 4 days that we had only a couple hundred miles left to go. Join me tomorrow as I share the final day of our cross country journey!