Pat Bean's blog

Road Trip: Day 1

My plan, come hell or high water, was to drive to Ogden, Utah, to help my long-time friend Kim celebrate her birthday. Her plan was to fly to Tucson, and we do a roundtrip road adventure to Ogden and back to Tucson. Her excuse was that she wanted to collect national park and monument stamps for her Passport America Book.

Kim, although much younger than me, is a dear friend. And while I did know she wanted to collect the stamps, I also suspected it was a way to keep this 86-year-old-broad, who had suffered a heart attack the previous year, from making the 800-mile trip alone. Whatever, I jumped at her offer, especially since she suggested we take our time and have several hotel sleepovers along the way.

Road trips are one of my passions.

Kim got airline tickets that flew her into Tucson on Sept. 19 and flew her out on Sept. 28, then, after mentioning she wanted stops at Petrified National Forest and Four Corners, she left the rest of the planning to me.

I started our adventures off right in Tucson, where after she arrived, we made quick trips to Sabino Canyon National Recreation Area and Saguaro National Park for her to pick up stamps.

The plan for the next day was to hit Petrified Forest National Park and Painted Desert National Park. But we didn’t quite make it.

First off, in Globe, Arizona, we got off track and went 50 miles – Yes, 50 miles – on the right road in the wrong direction. About the same time, we discovered the error, my oldest son, whom I had sent our agenda and who was following us on an app called Life360, called and wanted to know why we were headed toward Phoenix.

On backtracking we realized that we had missed the turnoff because our hurried pee stop was on the wrong side of the junction where we were supposed to turn east. The silver lining – which everyone knows I am always looking for – was   that Kim bought lottery tickets at the gas station where we stopped and won $50 – and that there was a lot of laughter in the car while we backtracked.

Winning the lottery was Kim’s good luck. But as navigator I have to take the blame for the lost two hours and 100 miles it took us to get back to get back on track – but not the next fiasco that happened later the same day.

To be continued …

Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion Scamp. She is an avid reader whose mind is always asking questions (many of which are unanswerable), an enthusiastic birder, staff writer for Story Circle Network’s Journal, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), and is always searching for life’s silver lining.