Off we go again!

Houston, TX - Tucumcari, NM

This almost doesn't count as a road trip. We've only got a week till the kids are back at school. We nearly didn't come. But, well, the pressure is always on over here, in a way that is new to me. It's not just that there's so much I want to see. The fact that I've never been to Lincoln or Leeds Castle never rankles - I know I'll get there one day. But every Goodnight TX or Truth or Consequence NM issues a constant challenge. If somehow, suddenly, we found ourselves back in Blighty, I would be frustrated (well at least narked) that these gems had somehow escaped our attention.

So, we start with the big fish. Last summer nailed several of them - and we're still faintly astonished that we even attempted the feat, let alone actually enjoyed it. So are a lot of our American friends - the refrain "you've seen more of America than we have" is not unusual and always a cause for pride. It's given us a potentially dangerous sense of security - and the concept of 3000 miles before Monday seems completely manageable and almost normal.

If we're lucky, we'll manage just two days at the Grand Canyon. Two days more than we could afford by any other means of transit, and (who knows?) maybe the only two days the boys will get there till they return under their own steam in thirty years' time, as I am doing now. I have no hesitation.

As it happens, we'll get two hours more than I planned for. For a start, I always fail to plan for the time zones. As I've remarked before, they are little advertised, and my poor human brain always forgets which way is up if I think about it for too long. So, on crossing the border out of Texas (at LAST - we took perhaps the longest possible route, up through Fort Worth and Amarillo), suddenly it was 8.3o again and we looked set for a reasonable arrival time.

More confusingly, we save another hour when we cross into Arizona. No time zone there - nothing so prosaic. No, Arizona tried Daylight Saving once, in 1967, and didn't take to it. "We have quite enough sunshine as it is," seemed to be the reaction, and, claiming an energy-efficiency that pre-dates the year, they enacted a state-wide exemption from the following year which they've never really discussed rescinding.

Now, of course, the amount of sunshine doesn't change with DST, and I've always been told that it's more cost-effective to leave your thermostat on constant than to attempt to cool just when people are in the house (it's not like heating - you need your AC on at night almost more than you do during the day). I prefer the theory which says the change was due to the then State Senate Majority leader. He owned drive-in movie theaters, and rumour has it that he nearly went bust in 1967 as the late light and heat meant he couldn't start his shows until 10pm - far too late for country folk...

To add to the confusion, were we to head to the Navajo Indian reservation (in the NE corner of Arizona), we would find that they DO observe Daylight Saving Time (which, to my mind, lends credence to the stranded-at-the-drive-in theory). Having said that, entirely enclosed within the Navajo reservation is the Hopi reservation - and, you've guessed it, they DON'T. We may give them a miss (though I'd be keen to see whether my iPhone could keep up with it).

People do strange things to time when they're in power. Remember Chavez in 2007? Here's a link, for those of you not temporally obsessed.

Stats for the day:
Started driving: 08.10 (CST)
Finished driving: 21.17 (MST)
Miles: 687
States: 2
License plates: 31 (still no North Dakota)
Breakfast: Denny's, Huntsville, TX
Lunch: Chilis, Fort Worth, TX
Dinner: Cracker Barrel, Amarillo, TX (what a trio of American cuisine)
Favourite sign: "Seymour 51 / Plainview 129"