new year's day - amarillo TX to williams AZ

640 miles, but first...

mmm... incredible breakfast 2 days in a row! - fun to have a break from our traditional la quinta breakfast. here, we have eggs, sausage, potatoes, biscuits & gravy, and today - cinnamon rolls - yum!

after breakfast, the 3 oldest shores kids came to swim one last time before we leave.

an unplanned encounter with the texas highway patrol. scott got to sit in the patrolman's car while he issued his warning - lucky him! our kids were all jealous.

originally, we'd planned to do a couple museums in albuquerque, but because it's new year's day, everything is closed. :( so sad. (and they have a nuclear science museum i'm sure the kids were going to be really excited about.) anyhow. after the 4 hour drive to albuquerque, we stopped to... get gas... then we kept on driving. gas was also challenging today as in both amarillo and albuquerque, we'd planned to get gas at sam's club and costco - neither of which are open on new year's day. but our good friend gasbuddy.com found us alternate cheap gas and we were on our way.

we drove on through new mexico and into arizona. watching the thermometer in our car drop below zero degrees farenheit. (we'd already seen it go below 0 celcius and even had a chat about degrees kelvin - that's kevin with an "l").

denny's offered kids eat free again and on saturdays and in the middle of (nowhere) gallup NM, it's slim pickins - but we enjoy denny's, so we stopped there for dinner. afterwards, the kids played in the snow and slid on the ice in the parking lot. then we jumped back in the car and pushed on. we were planning to drive until we got tired. unfortunately we got tired in williams AZ - a little pricey for hoteling. but we found comfortable lodgings for a deal - as i had grabbed a travel magazine at a random gas station in NM. (thanks for the idea mom).

and that's amarillo to williams. - almost home!