Happy New Year, and welcome to 2024. I took up my place in the first sunlight of the day while Clayton was busy in the kitchen making coffee and presenting us with a parfait breakfast starter.  Caroline is on the phone with her mom in Germany, and I try basking in the warm sunshine while writing, but enjoying the ambiance of the Simpson Hotel is a powerful distraction.

A newly married young couple who arrived last night joined us for our morning meal: Lakshmi and Karthik, who also live in the Phoenix area. They’ve been out wandering around the area for the past week, trying to get more of the Southwest into their senses before Karthik takes off for India to deal with some of the beaurocracy involving working on an H1B visa. While he’s gone, Lakshmi will be dealing with their move up to the Portland area. When they told us about their travels from the Petrified Forest to Gallup, over to Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico, and various points between before finally landing in Duncan, Arizona, it was nice to see a mirror image of Caroline’s and my enthusiasm for sharing time together exploring our world. In the popular vernacular of the day, they are vibing. Over breakfast, sumptuous as always, we discussed the drive home, in which all four of us were traveling in the same direction but talked of a detour through Virden, New Mexico, to try catching sight of some sandhill cranes.

These large birds were in short supply, and the ones we did spot were quite distant from where we could observe them. We’d brought binoculars, but even so, nobody got a great view of the cranes. No matter, we’d seen wildlife and were able to share some enthusiasm with Lakshmi and Karthik about how incredible these opportunities are.

With nothing left to do, and instead of trying to wedge something else into the last minutes of our getaway, we accepted that our long weekend was coming to a close and that by focusing on the drive west, we’d be able to go further into In Search of Lost Time.

On a final note, Clayton left us with a quote from historian Charles A. Beard to ponder: “The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.”