Day 17, Farmington, New Mexico

This day was kind of a maintenance day. I had to have a little bit of work done on the van, and of course the kids wanted food, so we tied on the feed bags while the chariot was being repaired.

We still had a good chunk of daylight left after the repair, so we saddled up and rode out west to see the great Four Corners, which evidently isn’t in the geographically correct location. But can you imagine what a hassle it would be to move all those stores and repave all those streets and rebuild that gargantuan covered parking lot, which keeps your car cool in the sweltering heat?? All those exquisite hotels and fine dining establishments would have to be rebuilt and relocated. I can’t imagine the expense it would incur.

Or not…


Just pour a new or (dare I say it??) maybe improved slab of concrete, build something other than the current pathetic hovels, pave a mile of roadway, put in a restaurant…any kind (with forks, maybe?), maybe hang a shingle outside one of the little shops and call it a visitor’s center, and they could really go hog-wild on the accommodations and build one.


Or just make a decent camp ground. Who on this entire planet would wanna stay in this stinking armpit? Where, exactly, does the tent go? We couldn't camp here for some odd reason.

Anyway, I do realize Farmington is west of Bloomfield, which is the wrong direction, but there is a reason we stayed there. Almost Four Corners is about 3 hours round trip if you take the short road. But what kinda fun is the short road? We made our own trail, which included a detour to the south for about a ton of miles, until we realized we were going the wrong direction. Then we had to go back the other direction another ton of miles and finally made it to Almost Four Corners and barely made it back to Farmington at dark. Not exactly a Navigating Badge moment.

Detour or no detour, we made it to our destination and back with all our brain cells and most of our blood, so a lovely day!!