The Four Corners

New Mexico: very beautiful, very dusty.

Carin had work stuff again today, and Alfie had a few meetings of his own. So this afternoon, Leigh, Mia and I explored the area by ourselves. The two main things we wanted to see was the Four Corners Monument and Shiprock, a neat rock that juts out of the desert.

First: Four Corners. Leigh and I loved the drive out there becaus we finally had the chance to see the New Mexican landscape. Our drive into Farmington was overnight, so we enjoyed seeing everything on the way out.


I just want to say now that I absolutely love all the photos from the Four Corners. They completely describe our family in every way. Cracks. Me. Up.

Becuase we had a bit of a drive, Mia slept. Halfway there, we realized that she had dumped all of her milk onto her clothes. Did we think to bring extra clothes along on such a short day trip? Of course not. We scrounged up her long johns from somewhere deep inside the car, so that's what she wore the rest of the day. She fell back asleep - this time from the exhaustion of a wardrobe change - and she wasn't too excited that we woke her up when we finally arrived.


Nevertheless, we pressed on and took some family pictures. Some fellow tourists took our pictures standing on the monument. Notice only 1/3 of the family is actually looking.


So Leigh snapped this picture, which captures the moment without actually requiring everyone to look in the same direction at once.


We decided to take a photo of each of us on the four corners. Where's Mia's photo? You try to get a 1 1/2-year-old to stand still on a spot the size of a saucer.


After that, we stopped to take a picture in front of the monument sign. I'm pretty sure this took longer than our actual visit to the monument. At first I tried to put the camera on top of the car and use the timer. I didn't get a good group photo, but I snapped this hilarious shot by accident. Notice Mia running away. No supervision. We are terrible parents.


I moved the camera down to a rock to make it easier to focus the lens and easier to grab our escaping child. Ah-ha! Got you that time, Speedy McGee!


After we left, we made our way back toward the town of Shiprock, which is named after Shiprock, which is a giant rock that looks like a ship. All very creative. Apparently there isn't a main road to the rock and no area maps show how to get there. So Leigh and I decide to turn off the highway and onto a dirt road. We figured we'd just drive until we got there or the road ran out. Thanks to this little Navajo town that let us drive around, looking for a way to the rock.

Leigh snapped this picture along our drive.

It turns out that everything in New Mexico is actually really, really far apart. It looks like it's all there together but it isn't. Tricksters. We drove several miles into the reservation on dirt road before calling it a day.

At least we got pretty close. We had the chance to snap one last picture of ourselves, including the family member wearing long johns.