A man and his chi, out on the open road! What could be a better way to spend a weekend? I can't think of one, especially when you get to start amidst the beauty of Albuquerque and you end up back in lovely NorCal with nothing but the scenic Southwest in between. Indeed, day one of our trip back home from the ABQ was excellent as we followed THE all-time American Mother Road - Route 66 - the whole day.

Kicks were had.

Our day began in Albuquerque the way that any such day should - with a visit to Frontier, across from the University of New Mexico. Needing to get on the road, I had to order the goods to go, but I still had the breakfast burrito in all its chile-laden glory, the butter-soaked roll you see above, and I picked up a few pieces of bacon for the chi. It was deluxe. Sublime. I simply can't say enough good things. I only wish I had brought home a bucket of chilis.

I thought it wise to start the day with a doggie park visit, as well as a visit to the pet store since I packed light and needed Chihuahua provisions. We hit the same dog park we grazed the night before and found it more populated with dogs, but as was true the night before, we also found it well-populated by cold and snow. This was not to the chi's liking, nor to mine. The views of the Rio Grande valley were awesome, as was the view of Sandia Mountain, which was (beautifully) socked-in by clouds. I am not sure Booms would like hanging out there in the peak of summer either, but in spring and fall, my guess is Boomie would rank the North Domingo Baca doggie park a top 10 municipal doggie run.

I would have loved to visit Jackalope and all the other funky places in ABQ I dig, but time was against us. With the short daylight of January being what it is, we really needed to get out on the open road. Boom's met Paco (a chi mix) at the pet store by the doggie park and they played and chummed it up a little, so Boomie got a little bit of a workout after all. He hit the sack almost the second we hit Interstate 40 for the ride to Kingman Arizona, where we would spend the night.

Barely an hour or so out of Albuquerque, we ran into a small winter squall of sorts and the road got ugly. Working our way west also meant going up up up and over the Continental Divide at 7000+ feet. We saw a few big rigs flipped over and off the road, which was scary, but to be honest, I was much more impressed with all the hot freights rolling through the snow like it wasn't there on the great Santa Fe main line between Chicago and California. One after another, 4 and 5 (up to 8!) of the big engines were out in front of container and coal trains lined up and highballing. The traffic between ABQ and LA was busy the whole weekend, which made the days go by very quickly. I have seen this route before more than a few times, both by car and on a train, but have never seen it in the snow. Short of seeing Snow On Raton, I can't imagine it being much more awesome to see railroading in the winter mountain west.

The doggie is a great road companion. He has to put up with me singing (or worse, talking) to myself for hours on end, frequently finger-tapping the drum fills on his tum. I know he loves the car, and to be honest, half the reason I thought to use my parents car while they don't need it is so the kid can get out more, like we did last spring and summer. He is just getting used to the layout of our new ride, which isn't all that much work since he pretty much likes to either sleep on me or stand on me to peep out the window. Even so, the old car isn't in the kind of shape that will allow us to put too many hard miles on it. We likely won't be doing much mountain driving, nor too many super-long road trips. This is an American car with 90k miles on it already! I can't see us trying our luck in Death Valley anytime soon, dig? Mostly, we need it to run errands around town, hit the nearby doggie parks when we can, and hopefully, get ready to move come spring (more info on this to come.)

To be honest, this is the shortest long-drive I can recall undertaking. Perhaps because I have never seen the high desert in winter, my brain felt like it was being kept very very busy the whole time - no small feat considering that the car has no CD player, tape deck, or iPlod input. I wasn't sure how far I could make it on the first day, or if I could get far enough to make it home on the second. I originally thought I might bunk in Needles CA or Las Vegas for the night, but I wasn't sure I would be able to make it that far. Ultimately I had to choose between the safe choice of Flagstaff AZ (which I knew was too short), or Kingman, which was basically the same as Needles or Laughlin as a stopping point. In the end, Kingman won out, if only because I wanted to add a new city to my list of one or two-night stands.

Flagstaff sits at the bottom of a big mountain one can see from the east for a long long time before you actually arrive. In this way, it is a lot like ABQ, come to think of it. I have spent a few nights of my life - in a past life - in Flagstaff, and I do very much like it there. When I first saw it, it was a very warm Memorial Day Weekend, and I experienced heat unlike I had ever experienced before (very different than the condition it was in upon my approach this time!) Much in the way I made sure to move to NYC by taking the train, when I moved from the Midwest to California, I had to follow Route 66. I was going to California with an aching in my heart dontcha know. Flagstaff was pretty good to me then. I enjoyed my first skinny dip with a female (voluntary and without compensation) at a low-rent hotel there (this was when we moved away from LA a few months after I moved out to LA to connect with the girlie.) That whole trip was really quite transformative trip for me in ways I had no way of knowing at the time. If nothing else, it convinced me that I wasn't planted anywhere and could pack up and go anywhere I so chose. That proved most helpful to me, and if anything, I wish only that I had done such a thing at 18! All of this went around and around in my melon this weekend as I retraced much of that original journey into the unknown.

Anyway, in prep for my 2010 arrival into Flagstaff, I went online to see if they had any doggie parks in town, and I was excited to find they had two! Barring calamity, I decided we would bunk in Kingman, but stop for doggie pleasure and dinner in Flagstaff if we could get there before dark. We got there before dark, but we got there only a few hours after the area was absolutely BURIED in snow. I couldn't really even see the doggie park under the blanket of snow that remained on the ground. Boomie saw snow over Christmas in Chicago, but he didn't see snow like this! The snow was up to MY waist. The road into the doggie park parking lot hadn't been ploughed at all, and any attempt to get near the park was futile. I couldn't resist putting the chi atop a large snow drift to see what he thought. He thought "You Suck Dad!"

Kingman also has a nice doggie park, and we made it there just as the last of the sun was dying. The park was quiet and the chi had it all to himself. Being a few 1000 feet below Flagstaff, Kingman wasn't really very snowy. It was colder than CA, but no real snow. The cold wasn't so cold as to dissuade the chi from doing a few leg lifts as night arrived at Lewis Kingman park. With an empty doggie bladder and a few saddle sores from a long day on the road, the chi and I called it a day. We decided to try the doggie park again the next morning before the long back stretch of our journey back to Oaktown. This we did; but we did more...MUCH more. Between Arizona and Alameda the kid and I packed in 11 hours of driving, 3 new doggie parks, and Chihuahua naughtiness so profoundly foul, we had to make a special, emergency trip to the dog groomer who had to pull out the special cleaner for the STINKIEST dogs! Details to come - and I promise, no sensory organ will be spared!