Spent the night at Sharla’s dad’s house – no internet, so I couldn’t update the blog last night.
Yesterday was pretty uneventful. We left Gallup, New Mexico at about 9 a.m. and headed east. Arrived in Apache Junction, about 30 east of Phoenix, at about 3 p.m. Uneventful trip, but lots of beautiful scenery. I didn’t realize that the whole center section of Arizona is mountains and forests. As we got lower toward Phoenix, the evergreens transitioned to cactus! Very interesting.
We spent the evening last night showing Floyd and Margaret the pictures from the trip so far. They really enjoyed it. We were all in bed by 9, and up at 6 this morning. Floyd and Margaret took us out to Village in for Breakfast. As we were leaving we noticed a spot of fresh oil under the car! As we were gassing up to leave Oklahoma City a couple of days ago, I tried to check the oil, but when I pulled on the dipstick, the whole top came off in my hand. The oil had been fine a few days before, so we just moved on. But with an oil spot under the car, I wasn’t sure how our oil level was. Over breakfast we discussed the situation, and figured that the best bet would be to take it in to the local Ford dealer to see if they could get the dipstick out.
It took 2 hours, but they finally were able to drill a hole in the top of the dipstick and pull it out. It cost just over $100, but if they had had to replace the whole metal piece it would have been over $400! So we left, praising the Lord, and only and hour and a half behind schedule.
Sharla and I decided to stop by the Grand Canyon for a couple of hours, since our route took us through Flagstaff, which is only about 45 minutes south of the east entrance. We drove through a lot of mountainous high-desert type of terrain, and arrived at the East Entrance at 3:30. We spent time at both the east side and west side, skipping the viewpoints in the middle this time around. We left the park just after dark and headed west. Tonight we are spending the night in Boulder City, just west of Hoover Dam. Tomorrow we are headed to Fallon, Nevada to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins.
Good night and God bless!