Our next stop was unplanned, but great. Meteor Crater is kind of a tourist trap, but it's an honest-to-God meteor crater, the first proven one in fact.
Closest I'll ever get to space...some would dispute that.
The surrounding territory, Arizona proper.
If you've heard of NoSeeUms, yeah, we got attacked. We didn't stay too long at MC for this reason.
The next thing of interest was cruising by what I generally called "MESAS", although I'm sure a more correct geological name could be found for all these darn hills.
MESAS.
No, I'll call that a hill.
Them's some MESAS over tha.
Oh! Albequerque! Here's the center of Old Town.
Do I see a 12:34?(Feel free to ask me about my neurosis [plural]).
Here's some weather happening.
Spot a rainbow??? Just like home.
That says TEXAS.
For all you Texans, here's a Whataburger.
So after sleeping the night in Amarillo, and our hotel getting robbed while we were in it (the desk lady knew the guy...), we headed on towards OK and St. Louis, Missouri. This would be the longest day of driving we would have to do.
That's a big cross, the biggest in the northern hemisphere in fact, or eastern, I always forget.
After a lot of driving through really boring countryside that just looked like Pennsylvania, a state I've driven through longways countless times, we got to St. Louis, and GUESS WHAT, we stayed in a hotel right across from the Arch.
Inscribed.
That's the Mississippi, I think. Isn't that horrible? I don't really know. Oops.
So then the next day (there are less and less photos until we get to Michigan, as you can see) we drove on, and were going to go see our Aunt and Uncle and cousins in Kalamazoo, but as both of us have fondness for Lake Michigan, we stopped at a local beach kind of along the way.
I love Lake Michigan.
LOVE it.
But we tore ourselves away because we had forgotten about the time change and were actually late to see our family. But we got there eventually and then we all went out to a really nice dinner.
Erica and Carl, my cousin.
My amazing Aunt and Uncle.
Then the next day we had to drive to the other side of Michigan, and we stopped at Kalamazoo College on our way.
After that we arrived at my other Aunt and Uncle's house, on my Mom's side. That's her in the orange.
They have such a pretty peice of property, and I love going to their house. It's so comfortable.
Grandma hung out with us during the bonfire.
That's a damn good s'more fire...
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++