My uncle begged off, having hurt his leg and not feeling up to the visit. We did spend the night in Santa Fe, but Jodie had just gotten out of the hospital and could only visit with us for a short time, so we stayed in a fun hotel (El Rey Inn) instead of her fun house.
These pictures cover the route from Zion National Park to Farmington NM. We stopped in Farmington for the night. I hope the link shows the route okay. It's scenery like this that make me love the west.
As you can probably guess, these are all taken from the passenger side of the Highlander.
This is going over the Colorado River near Glen Canyon Dam.
We called this the "talk to the hand" rock.
We thought the part of this formation on the right looked like a cat.
This is getting close to Farmington, but maybe not quite as close as you might think. Those are the Sangre de Cristo mountains north of Santa Fe.
For you Hillerman fans, this is Shiprock.
Now we skip to a few days later. This is heading back home to Tucson along I10. The poppies were in full bloom.
In between, we visited my long time friend, Anna Lynn, and her husband, Tom, at their place in Ruidoso. Many Texans escape the Texas heat there or in Cloudcroft. 
Theirs is one of those romantic stories. They dated in college, went their separate ways, found themselves single much later in life and got back together. She kept her 1st husband's name, too.
I just realized in posting these pictures that Anna has Mickey Mouse ears from the painting behind her. I don't remember if she was a member of the Mickey Mouse Club when we were kids or not. This is the view from their back porch. It's a ski mountain when there's snow.
Anna and I haven't done the greatest job of keeping up with each other over all these years, but we have known each other since 1st grade. We were both mid-termers. That means we started school in the spring term instead of the fall one. She was a little behind because her family had been living in Venezuela. I was a little ahead because my folks enrolled me as soon they legally could with my birthday in January.We went to Hot Wells Elementary. Here we are in the 2nd half of the 1st grade in the fall of 1952. I am the one in the back row on the far left with the silly bow in my hair. I'm 6 and Anna is 7. If you click on the picture, you may be able to see through the rungs of the chair in front of me that I have on cowboy boots. Anna is the one in the back row on the far right with the suspender skirt on.
Below is the fall 1953 class picture for the 2nd half of the 2nd grade. This time I'm in the back row on the far right with the headband, glasses and earrings. You can never have too many accessories, even if you are only 7. It is Texas, the girl next to me does have on cowboy boots. For this picture Anna is 4th from the left on the back row.
Special note to the Roberts family -- especially the Hathaways: Does the boy with the suspenders sitting on a chair 3rd from the left in the 1st picture and standing just right of the middle with the Space Ranger T-shirt remind you of anyone? He was quite the character, and a kid after Trout's own heart. He especially loved to kiss the girls and did so any chance he got.We really enjoyed our visit with Tom and Anna. We hope to do that again before too much longer. They haven't totally retired from their cotton farming (him) or cattle raising (her) operations near Abilene, so they aren't as free to travel as you might think, but they did do a great Rhine River cruise all the way from Amsterdam to Basel this summer.
Comparing notes, it turned out that Anna and I have done many of the same things -- especially when we were single. She was much braver than I was though. She finished college and took off for Europe with $200 in her pocket and only a chance of a teaching job in Germany. I waited until I was 30 to do something similar. You remember the infamous "sold all my stuff to generate $2000 so I could go to Europe" story. And I didn't actually move to Europe until I was 36 and knew for sure I had a job in Germany. What a wimp I was by comparison!
