May 28th

Crossed another item off our bucket list as we were in two places at , or actually 4. We took a little detour and went to the 4 corners monument. The kids really got a kick out of standing in the different states, hoping back and forth saying – I’m in Colorado, now I’m in Arizona, now New Mexico. Then Dallin figured out they weren’t only hoping from one state to another they were time traveling too – that really did it for them. They had a great time going back in time and then back to the future as the hoped between states with day light savings time and those without. Then they all had to pee in different states and then we were back on the road.

Taylor gave us a great report on New Mexico, we learned about the VLA, Roswell, Lincoln national Forest and the Carlsbad Caverens. Who knew New Mexico cold have so much – aliens, Smokey the Bear, Billy the Kid, amazing caves and telephone to ET all in the same state. Amazing.

Taylor’s report was so captivating that I guess we didn’t pay enough attention to the map. Unfortunately the southern and northern view from Shiprock look pretty much the same. We were happily driving along when we saw a sign to Cortez. Didn’t we sleep there last night Rick said. A quick check on Rick’s gps and a u turn later we were once again on our way south.

All went well till we hit the turn off to Pie Town so we could meet Mark. The road was gravel. I don’t think Rv’s are meant to travel on gravel. So we turned around and briefly got stuck. We had to take the longer but much smoother road. We finally found Mark, he had been waiting for us for about 1 hour and we all headed off to the VLA.

The VLA, or very large array is pretty cool. It is out in a huge open area with nothing around. There are 27 massive disks all lined up in a Y formation. Each disks is like 25 m wide and as big as a baseball diamond. They move them around on railroad tracks. We learned that 2 small disks set in the right formation can pick up the same thing as 1 big disks. So that is why the have 27 disks all put together. The thing is these 27 disks aren’t small – at least I didn’t think they were. The wind was really blowing and the kids had fun chasing the rabbits and playing with each other while Rick took a bunch of pictures. We watched a movie in the visitors center and we load up and headed out. Willy and Peter rode with us in the Rv. Ryan was thrilled to have a friend to play with and the girls loved Peter.

When we got back to mark’s house we had some delicious spaghetti made with Buffalo and visited a bit. The kids ran out to see the bunnies and play with Maury, the wiener dog. We slept in our RV which worked out great. Mark’s driveway is a lot flatter than the Walmart parking lot.