Southwest Driving Trip, Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Morning in Oro Valley was bright and sunny. Tom and Kevin’s home faces east towards the Santa Catalina Mountains, and as the pale blue light begins to outline the mountain peaks, the day holds. Lot of promise. As usual, Kevin laid out a complete breakfast bar with fruit, cereal, bagels, bread and jams, together with coffee and juice. After a long morning visit to catch up on life, we loaded into Kevin’s Lexus to do some shopping for the afternoon.  We landed at a yard covered in pots, Mexican crafts and metal sculptures. Unfortunately, nothing grabbed the eye nor found the way into the vehicle for the long trek to Nebraska.

Next on to the Apple Store for Deb’s 3:45 appointment to sort out the problems she was encountering while trying to text people, especially those who didn’t also have an iPhone device. Turns out that a 3:45 appointment was more of just a suggestion, but eventually one of the Apple Geniuses called her to the Genius Bar and diagnosed the problem. It was straightened out forthwith, although during the wait, she determined that, when the new iPhone 17 is introduced next week, she is going to order one!  Great sales job!!

We then wandered upstairs in the shopping center to have an early dinner at the Encanto Blanco Taco Mexican restaurant, dining on tacos, a chimichanga and some wine. We returned to Oro Valley and sat in the poolside chairs on the patio watching the mountains turn pink from the setting sun and enjoying wine and a Dirty Martini cocktail. After sundown, we chatted and visited until nearly 9:30 PM and then headed to bed. A quiet day that found us in bed by10:00.

Wednesday morning we again enjoyed the breakfast bar that would make Hampton Inn’s blush from its inadequacy. Just after noon, we loaded into Tom’s Lexus SUV and drove the 26 mile trip to the top of Mount Lemmon, the tallest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountain range with an elevation of 9.171 feet. The temperature difference from base to top can be 20-30º F. The mountain is named for botanist Sara Plummer Lemon, who with her husband trekked to the top of the mountain in 1881. Mount Lemmon is also known as Baba Do’ag or Frog Mountain to the indigenous Tohono O’Odham.

At the top of the mountain is the village of Summerhaven, home to many summer residents and a few year-round residents. There are no fuel stations nor auto repair facilities n the village, and only a small village grocery store (closed unfortunately) but it stocks mostly basic staples and camping goods. We lunched on great sandwiches at the Mt. Lemmon Hotel Cafe operated by the Beyond Bread chain. Lovely atmosphere but the high point was the great, clean bathroom!

We left around 4:00 PM and headed back to Oro Valley, arriving back around 5:00.  The “as the crow flies” distanced is only 13 miles, but the road distance is closer to 30 miles.  Well worth the visit; we can recommend it.  After again watching the reflected sunset on the Santa Catalina mountains we ordered in pizza and then binge watched the first three episodes of the reboot of Scrubs on TV. Just as humorous in the new season as in the original.  We were in bed by 10:00, boring, predictable.

Southwest Driving, Monday, March 2, 2026

Sunday is Dell’s actual birthday, together with the date of the State of Nebraska joining the United States. Dell’s anniversary is arguably the more important, at least to those of us gathered in Anthem, AZ. Most of the morning was taken up by text and phone calls to the Birthday Boy from friends and relatives offering congratulations or expressing amazement that he was still hanging in there! We showered, snacked, and eventually loaded into Dell’s new car for a trip towards Cave Creek and some shopping. Deb found a number of items that were candidates for hauling back to Nebraska, including a tall blue porcelain cat, a large outdoor metal collage depicting a thunderbird symbol, and some smaller pots. Alas, nothing found its way into the car.

At 4:30 we headed to the Kiki Rae’s Restaurant to meet our friends Jan and Frank Hrasky for dinner. Dell picked this as he is very partial to the creamy clam chowder. We started with a cocktail and then placed an order for a cup of the chowder all around. Dell had a chef’s salad; Deb ordered a beet and arugula salad, the Hrasky’s split a huge French dip style sandwich, and Mark picked something called a “loco moco” which turned out to be an excellent hamburger patty over a bowl of white rice, then drizzled with a brown gravy and a fried egg on top. We ended the meal with a “birthday” wedge cake of deep chocolate drenched with chocolate sauce and a huge dollop of whipped cream, stabbed with a gigantic sparkler shooting flames out of the top.  A great tribute to a wonderful guy and ending to a wonderful meal.

On the return trip we were subjected to awesome sunsets, which, for the passengers, took the edge off the Sunday night traffic. We finished the evening with some television and reading. A quiet night in the end.

Monday Morning, we packed our bags and loaded up the RAV 4 for the trip south to Tucson. We left Casa Sennentz by 10:30 and jumped onto the freeway parking lots that surround Phoenix for the 150 mile trip south to Tucson. Although Dell admonished us to be sure and take a bathroom break before leaving, which we heeded, we still needed to stop at a McDonald’s for a rest. While there, since it was the noon hour, we ordered a snack of a Big Mac, fries and a hot fudge sundae for the road.

We arrived in Oro Valley at Tom & Kevin’s home around 1:00 PM for a warm but pleasant afternoon. After such a “hard” drive some of us rested our eyes in a prone position while others tried to keep their eyes open while sitting up. Although Tom & Kevin are now teetotalers, eschewing alcohol, that didn’t stop the Nebraska contingent from its evening dirty martini and scotch on the rocks. Following cocktails, we took a drive to our evening dinner reservation, Trueland Burgers and Greens. Again, lovely, low-key affair. Mark enjoyed a huge burger topped with bacon and a fried egg (a pattern is developing), Deb a classic Burger, Kevin a Buffalo Chicken sandwich and Tom a salad topped with Ahi tuna.

Again, home early for some relaxation. We had determined earlier to watch the movie Hamilton, as Tom & Kevin had never seen it. This started a hilarious attempt by old people to sign into Disney+ on the television. Multiple attempts and we kept getting thrown out for wrong password or fat fingers on the keypad. Deb finally was able to get it up and running by logging in with her passwords from Omaha. Unfortunately, it timed out before the intermission, but the boys are significantly intrigued to try and finish this show at a later date.

We retired around 10:00; an enjoyable and relaxing day with friends, even though the daytime weather had reached 90ºF.

Southwest Driving Trip, Friday, February 27, 2026

Friday, we awoke to a chilly morning, cool, with frost still on the windshield. The LaQuinta Inn breakfast included scrambled eggs, mystery (sausage?) patties and biscuits & gravy, we loaded up and were on the road around 9:30, onto I-40 headed toward Winslow, Arizona. Just a few miles past the Arizona - New Mexico border we stopped at the Petrified Forest National Park; this seeming as good a reason as any for why we remembered to bring our Lifetime U.S. Parks pass and passbook for adding stamps. 

The Petrified Forest National Park is about 340 square miles in the center of the Painted Desert area which encompasses some 7,500 square miles. The National Park itself covers 340 square miles and straddles the I-40. The historic Route 66 once ran through the park and was a major route bringing visitors. Inside the park there is a 26 mile driving loop with pull-outs offering some of the most stunning scenery in the entire southwest U.S. There are two visitor centers and a High Desert Museum. On our visit, there was very little traffic and few visitors. We drove the loop, browsed the visitors centers, utilized the restrooms, and stopped at a picnic area for a lunch on our stash of sandwiches and chips. The weather was perfect, clear, a comfortable 70º F and sunny. We can enthusiastically recommend taking a few hours, at a minimum, to drive the loop if one is in this neighborhood. The area was originally a huge forested area with water and rivers, likened to the Amazon Basin in size and scope. The petrified logs scattered all over the grounds are stunning; only the threat of arrest and prison time kept us from throwing a few logs into the back of the RAV 4 to take home and plant in our own rock garden. When you first drive through the entry and present your park pass, the Ranger tells you to enjoy your visit, then stares you in the eye and says, “Don’t pick up the rocks!” We are law abiding citizens, although the temptation was great. After leaving the park, one of the first things you see is a huge store and yard selling huge pieces of petrified logs. Evidently, petrified logs are not uncommon.

We continued back onto the Interstate towards our short term destination of Winslow, AZ. The goal was to use this stop as a jumping off point to get on the picturesque drive following the Mogollon Rim area, skipping the heavy semi-truck traffic and enjoying the wonderful scenery. We climbed along this two-lane highway, again with light traffic, up to 6,600 feet in altitude, then down through the Coconino National Forest, eventually arriving at Camp Verde and rejoining the I-17 for our final punch down south towards our goal of Anthem Arizona and our friend Dell.

We arrived in Anthem around 4:30 to spend a few days in rest. A primary purpose of this trip was to visit Dell, who we missed last fall; at the time, as we were readying ourselves last fall to leave Tucson and hop the Greyhound to Phoenix, Dell phoned us to say that Karen had collapsed and was being rushed to the hospital. We elected to short circuit our visit and reschedule our flight home. Karen died less than a week later - a loss we are still processing.

The current weekend is also Dell’s birthday, so we are here to visit with our friend, reminisce and to celebrate his 79th! As always, the accommodations are wonderful and on our first night Dell ordered in some of the best pizza we have ever devoured. We enjoyed a cocktail, visited for a bit, watched the news, and then retired for the evening. Next morning, we awoke to WAR! The “supreme leader” of the U.S.via a video at 2:30 AM, announced that we bombed Iran and by the end of the morning it was announced that Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader was killed. 

As the purpose of this blog is not politics, we will try to avoid a lot of comment, although most of our readers well know our views.  Enough on this.  We will continue our visit and try to stick our heads under the southwest sand.

Saturday we spent watching the news until Dell finally convinced us to get off our fat asses and do something so we went to a Rock and Gem Show here in Anthem, hoping someone was selling some largish petrified wood but apparently that is not too popular in hot, rocky areas.  We drove around the Anthem area, which is really quite beautiful and diverse, looking at possible smaller homes for Dell as he loves the area but wants to downsize.  When we returned to his current casa, we sat on the patio enjoying the weather with our cocktails.  Dell then outdid himself with grilled steaks, baked potatoes and salad which he managed to conjure up within 30 minutes!  And it was so good.  And the perfect end to a relaxing day.

Southwest Driving Trip - February 24, 2026

We are on the road again, this time driving to the Southwest to see our Arizona friends. We packed up our trusty RAV 4, kissed Poppy the cat goodbye (while begging her forgiveness in advance) and left home around 10:00 AM on Wednesday morning, having packed up chips, boxes of wine, bottles of soda water, apples, tangerines, and eight home-made  sandwiches. On this trip we are heading south in order to avoid any potential bad weather, down Highway 73-75 towards Nebraska City, then south into Kansas and onward towards Topeka, over to Wichita, dropping south to Tulsa and then to Oklahoma City.  

We reached our first stop around 4:00, after fuel and a lunch break in the car; the Oklahoma City National Monument honoring those whose lives were lost in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which occurred in 1995.

The attack killed 167 people, injured 684 and destroyed more than a third of the building. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. It is one of the most moving memorials we have ever seen. The empty chairs covering the ground where the building was located are a silent  tribute; the sculptural adult and child chairs vividly call to mind those who were working and their children in the attached child care center. There is a water feature that runs continuously between the standing sculptures of the 9:01 gate and the 9:03 gate.

The blast was detonated at 9:02 AM. The 9:01 gate signifies our nation’s innocence, the 9:03 gate signifies the start of our rebuilding. We arrived after the museum closed so were unable to tour the displays, but the memorial grounds themselves are a moving testimonial.

We continued westward on Wednesday, experiencing some of the most vivid sunsets, rivaling those of western Nebraska. We stopped at Clinton, Oklahoma and spent the night at a LaQuinta Inn. Thursday morning we arose, showered and enjoyed a “gourmet” breakfast of a waffle, biscuits and gravy, scrambled eggs and mystery meat sausage.  It filled the hole in our abdomen, if not titillating our taste buds. 

We left Clinton around 9:30 driving west through the Oklahoma panhandle into Texas. Our impression of  Northwest Texas is one of barren ground, continuous Christian billboards, enormous wind turbines arrayed across the landscape and a general barrenness. Many groups of the wind turbines were not operating even though the wind was quite brisk.

We tuned in classical music, set the cruise control to a safe 81 mph, and headed west towards our evening goal of Gallup, New Mexico. At the New Mexico border, we crossed into the Mountain Tme Zone, thereby picking up an hour but our bodies weren’t buying it. Driving through Albuquerque was an experience, a city a little larger in population than Omaha, but spread out over 190 square miles.  Once past Albuquerque, the scenery became a bit more vivid, with the mesas and red rocks glowing in the afternoon sun. Just our side of Gallup, we crossed the continental divide at 7,200 feet elevation and began the downhill slide towards the Pacific basin. 

We arrived at our LaQuinta in Gallup around 5:30, secured our room and dined in the room on wine and sandwiches.  We watched the evening news, read for a while and fell into a light slumber around 8:30.  Tomorrow to Phoenix.