The Last Day

In the ‘Wizard Of Oz’ Dorothy goes home by clicking her red shoes together and saying “There's no place like home”. It’s a bit longer and more complicated for us. Sybil doesn’t have magic red shoes but we do have a magic red Jeep which should do the job. We get up early and have a fine breakfast at the Strater Hotel, another thing to like about the hotel. We have a long drive back, we have to cover back in one day what took us 6 going out. We climb up the long road from Durango towards Cortez, fortunately although it's cold outside the sky is clear and the roads are dry. We make good time and cruse through Cortez without stopping. If it were lunch time we would be locking up our brakes to eat at Once Upon A Sandwich but not today with ‘miles to go before we eat’. We grab some quick lunch in Kayenta, about half way in our journey. We find ourselves on the road to the geographically true point of the four corners. It is a tourist spot owned by the Navajo, but it is the center point of our trip so we stop for pictures. We step from Colorado into Utah and into New Mexico and when we step into Arizona we gain back the hour we lost earlier in the week.

Despite Sybil & Henry saying we really don’t want to stop in Tuba City Susan spies a hand made sign for Mary's bead shop a mile down the road. In a most nondescript house is a little gem of a bead shop and both Susan and Sybil manage to support the local economy by buying some really interesting jewelry. We press on to Flagstaff, where it is high and cold. We ponder stopping for coffee but Jerome is calling us home. We do stop to gather food for dinner in Sedona but as the sun is setting we climb the hill into Jerome and home.

It has been seven days and over 1,000 miles. But all those miles, places, and smiles are carried back with us. We look at each other and everyone looks tired and happy to be home but also there seems to be a deeper glow that says we were glad to have gone on this road trip. And it looks like Sybil had a really good birthday.