Day Four- Tulsa to Albuquerque- not as boring as I thought

Alright. Here we are at the completion of Day Four. The initerary: Leave Tulsa, OK and arrive in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Google Maps says 9.5 hours. GPS says 11.5. Not exactly the news you want to receive first thing in the morning.

So, we left Tulsa with a coffee and granola bars in hand. First stop: Pet Smart. We finally decided to get Mavi a sedative. The poor boy has been re-named Shaky McShakerton. He pants and shakes anytime the speedometer rises above 75 mph. Now, if any of you have traveled in OK or NM, the speed limit looks more like 75 mph. As far as I'm concerned, my translation is that the avg. speed should be between 85 and 95 mph. Legit, right?

We got him these little treats and a pheromone charm to put on his collar. Good news: he stopped shaking. Bad news: He still panted so much that it sounded like a helicopter was landing on my head. Funny news: my puppy was stoned. It's not often that you see Mav stumbling around the car with his eyes almost shut, asking people to pet him. Hillluuuurrrious.

Making the way to Albuquerque was

exhausting: one straight, long road after another. And every hour or so, we'd hit some nasty construction that would take us down to one lane in the middle of the desert-- no bueno.

Speaking of "no bueno," I don't know a lick of Spanish. And, the farther West I go, the more Espanol I see, read and hear. I think I need to buckle down and purchase Rosetta Stone. Yup, I was THAT girl that took French in High School. Dumb decision on my part. My goal is to learn something more than "¿Dónde está el baño?" (yes, I stole the spelling from the Internet translator) in the next month. Notice, I'm not setting a high standard.

But I digress...so we arrive in Albuquerque. This time we successfully smuggled Mav in to a ballin' suite. The view of downtown was gorgeous and overlooked the stadium where the Isotopes play...Manny anyone? Mavi was a sleepy guy, so we left him in pursuit of a Mex-o-can place to get some grub. It's only appropriate we do so. But, what we found was astounding. Without even trying, we found the coolest downtown/midtown section that was SUPER fantastic.

It was so eclectic. I've never seen so many hookah shops, tattoo parlors, cool eateries and comic book stores (aweeesshhhooommmeee!)! If I had the time, I could definitely spend a couple of days here and love it. Every person walking up and down the street looks different, unlike a lot of VB. So, maybe refreshing is the way to describe it.

Tomorrow is going to be a great day. Destination: The Grand Canyon! Perfect place for me to celebrate my 30th year of life. Most of you guys know that I don't like celebrating my birthday b/c I get embarassed about it. I used to do the same thing every year-- go to a Tides game with my family, eat at Hits in the Park, exchange gifts with my Mom (her bday is the 1st-- wish her a belated one if you see her) and pretend like the fireworks on the 3rd of July are really for MY birthday, not Independence Day. Needless to say, visiting the Grand Canyon is a perfect idea for my birthday, except I wish my very closest friends and family were here, too.

Hopefully, I'll have some better pics tomorrow. Today was a road trip day, so....well...these are about as good as it gets.

Love you guys--

~Em