Day 29 Aside - Saturday, June 28, 2008

Bear Random Notes & General Observations:

Tony Hillerman
BTW, we are listening to a Tony Hillerman novel on CD in the car -- the story is great, but the synchronicity is very spooky, because every time he mentions a town we're either in it or just come from it or see a sign pointing to it!

Perfume in the Desert
Also, the archaeologist had brought a bottle of perfume with her. It evaporated early in the trip during the 90+ degree F days. Moral of the story: don't pack perfume when traveling to the desert in the summer.

Gas Prices
I haven't mentioned much about this, but it's s6mething we talk about a lot and discuss in the car: we've been paying around $3.97 per gallon for gas. The lowest we've paid is $3.82 (toward the beginning of the trip) and the highest we've paid is $4.01 (m6re recently). The highest we've seen is $4.17 and that's been in Roswell, NM. (I guess it costs a lot to fuel your flying saucer.)

"Staycations"
I saw an article in a recent McNewspaper (i.e., the USA Today paper that many hotels give away free), noting that, because of the difficult economy and especially because of the high gas prices, many Americans have opted to stay close to home for summer vacations this year. We can certainly confirm this anecdotally because every place we have been to has been noticeable for its LACK of crowds.

This was even true at the Grand Canyon -- the only spot that had any noticable traffic was Mather Point, the first overview when driving into the South Rim. Other than there, we basically had the canyon to ourselves. This was especially true when we took the eastern drive out to Desert's View -- we had entire overlooks to ourselves and very few fellow travelers in the few spots where we did see others.

That has pretty much been the situation for every place we've gone -- very few people are on the roads or at the attractions (at least where we have been).