Politics? What politics?

We’re back and our fish are still alive. My husband’s father has been battling ALS the past five years and landed in the hospital a couple of weeks before we were to set out on a long-planned vacation to the Ioway Fall Encampment in Kansas and then down to see my mother in Cottonwood and my father in Phoenix, Arizona. When the doctor said things were not critical, we set out on our first real vacation in I’m not going to tell you how long, but it’s been a very long time since we’ve had a vacation.

And man was it grand.

I checked email once, a week into the trip, and discovered that despite my setting the website not to allow trackbacks or comments by individuals not previously approved, the casinos had managed to find their way in anyhow and I had over 700 comments and trackbacks that I wasn’t going to be able to delete for another week. So tonight I deleted about 1200 trackbacks and comments total…

Now I’ve started transferring pics from the digital cameras to the computer. Am hoping I came up with a few good shots.

We hit (gasp) Ruby Falls! Indeed, the same that has long called for my presence from multiple tin roofs for many years but to which I’d refused to answer until a seven-year-old was in the car and I decided it was time, young son should see Ruby Falls, and though the cavern made me want to run screaming the first few minutes I preserved a brave, cheerful appearance for sake of young son and was soon enchanted by the tour guide who had the most profound southern accent I’ve ever heard. And we saw the Grand Canyon (not very many Americans this time of year, lots of Germans) where–unlike some tourists I saw who climbed out onto a rock ledge and encouraged their little boy to sit with his feet dangling over the chasm for a photo op–I kept yelling at young son, who wanted to throw rocks in it, not to get to close to the edge, and most of the time had a firm grasp on his wrist as the blustery winds made me nervous. We toured the Heard Museum in Phoenix and Frank Lloyd Wright’s western studio at Phoenix. And visited he International Museum of the Painted Desert (the private one).

We watched only enough news to know that returning by I-20 might not be the best idea after Rita and instead took the I-40 route back.

I managed to read a couple of books and start another, none of which had a thing to do with politics, but every so often stopped in front of a newspaper box when buying gas and coffee (do not purchase coffee ever in Oklahoma City because it may be guaranteed as hot and fresh but it ain’t coffee) and this AM Marty dropped in my lap the news that Tom Delay was indicted.

Just to show I was thinking of you, I whipped out the camera when we were buying coffee Wednesday evening and a Halliburton truck pulled up next to us somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the panhandle of Texas.

To prove I’d been on vacation, here’s a pic of me I permitted to be taken at Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo.

That’s my son throwing himself around my waist in a bid to get his face, for a second, out of the wind that was ripping at my sweater. Not that he didn’t enjoy the wind. He did. It felt good after days of 100 degree Arizona temps.

Not the best pic in the world, by far, but it’ll have to do.

I’ve always wanted to see the Cadillac Ranch. I ran around taking lots of photos feeling very happy that I was finally at Cadillac Ranch. We were all alone at the Cadillac Ranch for a good ten minutes before a tour showed up with cans of spray paint. We didn’t spray paint our names. I figured that they would shortly be painted over so why bother.

My mom’s dog ate the top part of my boots so I’ll be needing some new ones and I just missed walking through a proper doorway and gashed the lens of my glasses on a wall where air should have been so I’m going to need some new ones and my son took out my amber bracelet and placed it for “safekeeping” on a shelf in some motel and thus I lost my safely kept amber bracelet, and a pothole meant readjusting tires in Phoenix, but that’s all there was as far as mishaps.

Nothing like the West. I wanted to get out and start walking until I hit the far horizon and then keep on walking. It’s always painful tearing myself away and coming back East. And now that I’ve seen Arizona from one end to the other I’m crazy about it. I think it’s just about the best place in the world. You can forget about reading anything about politics for a while here. I’m going to post some pics from the trip. Hell, I may never post about politics again. I didn’t miss my blog not for one second…

But I have to admit my toes kind of curled tickly and I almost got gigglywhen Marty dropped the Dallas newspaper in my lap with that awful cute picture of Tom Delay puffing at a bevy of microphones.

You think I could get away with a cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a poncho or do you think people would make fun of me?