After our lengthy ten-hour drive yesterday, we arrived back in Duncan, Arizona, quite late last night. With a heap of gratitude for Deborah and Clayton, we checked right back into the room we had left Saturday morning. With them out for vacation until the 14th, starting just a couple of hours after our departure, they had told us that our room at the Simpson Hotel would be left just the way we had left it and that if we wanted to stay in it again on our way home, we were welcome to it. For free! This would work out perfectly because, from here, we were only about 3.5 hours from home, allowing Caroline to get to work at a respectable hour and turn a PTO day (Personal Time Off) back in for a vacation later this year.

In all the years driving past Mt. Graham, neither of us could remember seeing lenticular clouds over the summit, and as I spotted the standing water in a field of freshly planted cotton, the setting was fixed to be captured. Fifteen minutes later, there were no signs of clouds over the mountains. Those with keen eyes can spot the observatory up there; it’s a small white dot to the right of the highest peak.

As I was about to close out this post, I was thinking about our next journey out of Phoenix, which, according to our itinerary, doesn’t happen until July when we are visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that just doesn’t feel right. So, I brought up a map and gave some thoughts about May and June, and I’m coming up empty-handed. Such is the dilemma of those who prefer to travel away from the summer horde.