Back in early April, on our way to witness the total eclipse in Texas, we stopped for an overnight at the Simpson Hotel in Duncan, Arizona. Looking out on the travel horizon that night, I requested our next dates to stay at the Simpson Hotel. I felt that sandwiching a weekend stay between our visit to Santa Fe and our trip to the East Coast and Canada would be a great idea. Well, here we are on that 222-mile (358-kilometer) drive toward the New Mexican state line for another couple of days with Deborah and Clayton, the proprietors of the Simpson.

Prior to leaving Phoenix, we felt a hint of reluctance to travel again so soon due to the intensity of our June and July adventures that brought us to Nevada, California, Oregon, and New Mexico. Now, with the impending long haul of our next major vacation, maybe we are squeezing too much into the small space between our journies, but having made the reservation, we were going to honor it. Plus, we wouldn’t be able to visit again before October after I’m done blogging about our September trip to the East Coast and Canada. Not only that, the draw of monsoons being more active to the east and the prospect of cooler nights and mornings were tugging at our curiosity.

With heavy clouds ahead, I stopped for a photo of the drama developing in the sky, and good thing I stopped where I did. Not five minutes later, we were in a heavy deluge that was pouring so hard, with visibility reduced to less than 125 feet, that I felt it necessary to pull over a couple of times, allowing those with no regard for the intense conditions to speed by. Fifteen minutes later, we were on the other side of the storm and pulling up to Taylor Freeze for a chocolate malted. For those who don’t know, a malted is a milkshake prepared with malt powder, typically made with malted barley and evaporated whole milk powder; it adds another element of yummy. About an hour later, the incredibly familiar town of Duncan welcomed us back with a parade and the kind of fanfare previously only shown during those heady days when Prince Charles and his wife, Princess Diana, visited. I don’t really need to tell you that this last bit was a flight of fancy, do I?