I was planning on leaving Sunday, June 9thafter work, but a tire on my Sexy Sienna – my Toyota minivan – was flat. So, I had to wait for the tire shop to open on Monday morning, and get a new one.

Had I left on Sunday, I would have driven as close as possible to the California-Arizona border which, of course, is the Colorado River. I was intending to sleep on the side road somewhere in the Mojave Desert, and finish the rest of the way through it in cooler morning hours. However, fate intervened. And this is what irritated me.

However, at 8:23am on the 10th day of June in the year of our Lord 2019, after getting my tire patched, I started heading north to Flagstaff, through Oak Creek Canyon, on the way to Fresno, California.

My anticipated route was from Sedona to Flagstaff, to Barstow, to Bakersfield, to Fresno and then, well, I didn’t know. I wasn’t going to Fresno for Fresno’s sake. It’s not amazing there. It’s that Fresno’s a gateway to Yosemite National Park, and I’d use my beautiful DeLorme Road Atlas of the State of California to figure out the best way from there.

Excitement was tempered for knowing today would be long. However, I also knew monotony would completely dissolve at some point and produce happy emotions I’d remember for the rest of my life. This certainly happened.