Along the Road

It's a family thing with road trips.  Go to a market in the morning and load up on munchies for the road.  With continental breakfast at motels and the munchies, we stop at a restaurant for only the evening meal.

Yesterday before leaving one of the three Glendales we've visited, I walked into Sprouts and picked up two different kinds of kettle corn, cheeses and some tasty pastry sticks with just 30 calories each.

After learning that Sprouts started in the Phoenix area about ten years ago and that it continues to sprout stores across the Southwest, I suggested they consider America's Most Beautiful Small town in their future plans.

Its Trader Joe-style offerings make the spit-shined, classy market a fun place to shop.

With our bag of goodies, we headed on down the road stopping at Wickenburg, one of my favorite Arizona towns. 

I asked Bill to pull into the giant arena we'd seen on our first trip through town.  We met Dave, a PRCA roper from Minnesota who was feeding his horses.

Dave told us that the Granthams, owners of the fence company and "polite folks," run the facility, which is busy all the time with calf roping and barrel racing.

Lots of horse people like Dave spend as much as a month at a time in the winter at the facility, camping in their 5th wheel trailers, and boarding their horses for $100 monthly/clean-your-own open-air paddocks.

Bill went off to get some gas while I strolled around, took pictures and talked to roping calves and working horses.  

Wickenburg is a horse paradise, especially for horse people from the northern states who like to keep up with their sports of roping, barrel racing and sorting.   

I wouldn't mind spending a little more time there---in the winter, of course.

Our route yesterday took us to Hoover Dam, a beautiful, huge and impressive engineering masterpiece built in the early 1930s and named for President Herbert Hoover.

It was fun walking through two time zones as we joined the "turist" throng making their way across the top of the dam.  No pets allowed, by the way.

The dam visit was followed by a brief stop at a casino outside Las Vegas.  My slot broke down in mid-loss of about $8. 

Bill, my holier-than-thou husband who does NOT gamble, found a room at the casino with a film about the history of Hoover Dam.

So, I found another slot, put in some money, lost some money and then regained most of what I'd lost.  I took my voucher, reclaimed my money, found Bill and off we went for a quick trip down The Strip in Las Vegas.  

It was a first for Bill.  Annie and I had visited The Strip this same week last year during a stay at Excalibur.  

We made it down the Las Vegas Blvd with no shootings but lots of cop cars with flashing lights. 

With plans to spend the night in St. George, Utah, we wasted no time getting on down the road.

Sirius Radio made the trip fly by, especially as we listened to the Indiana-Minnesota game, which resulted in a moment of destiny for our ZAGS.  

With No. 1 Indiana's loss, No. 2 Gonzaga now faces a significant moment of destiny:  No. 1 ranking in the nation remains theirs to take or theirs to lose.

Bill and I are more excited than ever about attending tomorrow night's BYU-ZAGS game in Provo.   I'm sure we're like most other diehard ZAGS fans:  downright giddy but guarded in hopes of a continued dream-come-true story line. 

 After the Hoosiers-Gophers game ended and as we approached St. George in the dark, Bill kept saying, "I bet this place is beautiful in the daylight."

Well, daylight is almost here, so I'm gonna shut up and go check it out.  We've already had a great eating experience at Cafe Rio where you truly do get "the whole enchilada" with your tin full of freshly prepared and more than ample Mexican favorites.  Yum! Yum!

Off to check out St. George and more of Utah's beauty.

Happy Wednesday!