…with a single trip

to Pueblo Toyota where while the rest of those waiting luxuriate in Megyn Kelly’s mean morning

rants we contented ourselves with Magic Little Girls and Fishes until the oil change was done.

L. then enjoyed a dental visitation, we some shopping,

a last stop at Jorge’s and after sausages were bought and smuggled off to Albuquerque,

back to the valley

for a last day’s last look up the creek

dogs,

[packing and loading not shown]

and dusk.

Friday

we were on our way…

with Unexpected Conditions over Monarch,

clear but as predicted QUITE cold through the Gunnison

clearing but not nearly as cold

by Delta.

Grand Junction,

warm on the Trail Through Time and

West

into the Glare

to Salina for a not bad Super8 night despite the cycling heater, plus with El Mexicano back

in the hands of the Mexicans the food much improved.  Come morning, west to Delta’s Rancher,

full of ranchers and, west of Delta, frost on Utah’s Western Desert.

Nevada;

one stop for the dogs at the Osceola turn, another at the Petroglyph Site [not shown] for them

and lunch under dull o-cast skies before Austin’s creepy year-round Christmas Serbians

keeping the faith and Aspiring

to the Greatness of bankrupt New Jersey Casinos.

…outa there…

Burning into Fallon

…and on out of there, too.

La Quinta in Reno elementally convenient though the co-option of our favorite Thai restaurant

by Tesla was less so.  The Thais’ shabbier mid-town location was still open, however, and overflowing.  Food as great as ever, but no not the same…so, next morning over the hill and

across the valley to Benicia well before the Great Emergency wherein the temporary/volunteer

at any rate utterly incompetent/unclear-on-the-concept Police wouldn’t let us exit the alley

due to an ancient hand grenade someone’d abandoned on the Capitol steps.  In lieu of Evacuation we had to sneak out the front and down along the water to get to dinner at the Union.

All’s well that ends Ridiculously!

Nuevo año, no doubt.