How Does Your (Spiritual) Garden Grow?

Journey 4.0: On the Way Home

Those who know me well know that I am easily confused by time zones, especially when Daylight Saving Time comes into play. Which way does the time difference run? And throw in an area that does not observe Daylight Saving Time, and even though I’m generally opposed to the DST concept, I get beyond confused. So for the past several days, knowing that I would be in Tuba City, AZ, on Sunday morning, I looked forward to going to 11:00 Mass in the little St. Jude church there. It was all planned out — we would check out of the hotel around 10, duck into McDonald’s for a quick cup of coffee, and go to church.

Keep in mind that my phone seemed totally confused about what time it was, and kept switching back and forth by one hour the whole time we were in the Tuba City/Grand Canyon area. I kept checking online for the local time in Phoenix. It got really confusing, though, when we went into the McDonald’s, which had switched to the lunch menu at what I thought was 10:25 on a Sunday morning. Looked at my phone: 11:25. So I asked the cashier, who told me it was indeed almost 11:30. So I said, “I thought Arizona did not observe Daylight Saving Time.” She responded, “Oh, yes, we do observe it.” So I mentioned that I had been checking for local time using Phoenix as a location, and she said, “Well, yeah, in Phoenix and Flagstaff it’s an hour earlier.”

????!

I missed Mass. That’s the first time in all my travels of the past few years that I have not made it to Mass wherever I was staying on the weekend. I’m sure God is very forgiving of the miss, since He probably does not observe DST either. I think I am going to start a big campaign to get rid of the whole concept of DST. It’s way too confusing.

So here we are tonight, the evening of Day 12, at a KOA outside Grand Junction, Colorado. Matt called ahead, and we were lucky to get the last tent site they had! It’s a very nice campground. We went up to the game room and played ping pong earlier this evening. Matt beat me 8 games out of 9. I used to be a lot better at the game. I’m not sure whether it’s a problem with depth perception, or a relative lack of coordination. We had some good volleys, and we had a lot of laughs — much more important than winning, in my view. Then we drove back into town looking for a place to eat. Not much around; we finally settled on a small Mexican restaurant. The food was pretty good.

I can’t predict with any certainty where we will be tomorrow night, but one guess might be Kearney, Nebraska. I know of the town only from its place in the movie “Terms of Endearment.” Wonder if Flap Horton still teaches there? 😉

Today has been very, very hot — we saw temperatures as high as 102 degrees as we drove through Utah. Again, we drove through strikingly beautiful mountain scenery, and again, the mountains on this route had their own distinctive appearance. What also struck me was the sense of isolation and, sometimes, desolation. We drove up US-191, and there are very few towns along the way. What few there are seem sad and lonely, almost desperate. There are very few locations with gas or food along the route, and one begins to feel uncomfortable with the absence of human habitation. When we did find a gas station with restrooms, we had to wait in line for the restrooms. Later, when we stopped at a Subway for a sandwich, we realized we were the only English-speaking customers in the place. All of the other customers were European tourists.

The evening has cooled off nicely, and should be fine for sleeping — I should be used to highway noise by this time! I’m going to sign off now, and get into the tent to read for awhile. Despite my liberal use of Deep Woods Off, the bugs are really pesky and annoying. Until tomorrow!