Back from my California to Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona trip

[shirohniichan]

May 19 (last day)

9:05-- left Flagstaff
The Ramada had a surprisingly good breakfast (especially considering the low room charge), so we left the refreshing pine-scented air of Flagstaff for home with full bellies.

11:05-- fuel stop in Kingman (143 miles)
This would be our last opportunity to fill up with relatively inexpensive gas ($3.399 per gallon), so fill up we did. It took us only 12 minutes to fill up, wash the windows and use the restrooms before we were headed west.

11:17 (PDT)-- lunch in Needles (67 miles)
Back in California! We gained an hour when crossing the border. Needles doesn't seem to offer much in the way of dining choices, so we stopped at Carl's Jr. As we wanted to get home ASAP we took only 37 minutes to order, finish our meals, and hit the road again.

2:50-- stopped in Barstow (147 miles)
One of our family trip traditions is to stop for soft-serve ice cream at the McDonalds in Barstow near the outlets. This was no exception. With the kids happy despite some trip fatigue, we headed out after less than a half hour break.

4:52-- HOME! (102 miles)

I'll post more photos to the trip photo album soon.

[DonnaR57]

Actually, Arizona and California are on the same time zone -- sort of -- for 6 months of the year. When California "springs forward" to Daylight Savings Time, Arizona stays the same. So California "catches up" to AZ for that period of time. When California "falls back" to Standard Time, Arizona doesn't move, and then we're an hour apart.

It made us lose 2 hours in ONE DAY, on the first day of our trip in both 2012 and this year. We lost an hour in NM, switching to Mountain Daylight Time (from Standard Time in AZ), and then lost another hour about 100 miles into Texas, to Central Daylight Time.


Donna

[glc]

It's even more confusing in AZ - the Navajo reservation observes daylight time.