I have been to the southwestern states several times over the past 15 years. National parks to see. Friends and cousins to visit. College signs and Presidential libraries/museums to photograph. State capitols to photograph. This trip was one more that covered all but those same things except state capitols (which is done). Four states this time, most of the time spent in California whereas Utah was just barely in the southwest corner. Crossed Nevada along its slanted southwest border and there are still some parts of the state I have yet to visit. Arizona was centrally cut north and south but over the years I have covered most of the state.

ARIZONA: I have been to Arizona almost every year since 2004. Mostly the reason was to visit my good friend Diana, she moved to Phoenix in May 2004. I only knew her for eight months in Kansas City but when we met we both got that feeling that we had known the other our entire lives. That made for an immediate strong friendship. Arizona has many national parks and places worth visiting. This time was no exception for both of those as well as photographing some campus signs. And, I wanted to spend some time getting to know Flagstaff since that town is still on my list of possible places to live during retirement (after a stint in New England). Likely I will return to Arizona in future years at least simply to visit Diana.
CALIFORNIA: Sooo many national parks and dozens and dozens of major universities. After this trip, I will have visited all of the major national parks and national monuments in the state. If I decide to come back to the state in future years, it would be to see my cousin in San Diego and to photograph many of the remaining universities plus some of the many smaller national park facilities. Lastly, I have been visiting the 100 largest U.S. metro areas. Three in California visited with this trip: Fresno, Bakersfield and Riverside.
NEVADA: I mainly needed to visit the three largest cities in the state: Las Vegas, Henderson and Reno. LV and Reno have the two major universities in the state and I wanted to photograph their campus signs. Henderson is considered as one of the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. and I am working on visiting all of them. Less than ten to visit before this trip.
UTAH: I have visited this state several times over the past 14 years. There are still several places I would like to visit and a couple of universities in the north half of the state to photograph their campus sign. And, some friends live in a Salt Lake City suburb. But this trip only took me to the southwest corner of the state for one college to photograph the campus sign. I originally planned to visit the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and ride the ferry across Bullfrog Bay but time was limited since I flew to the southwest area for this trip.

MISSED VISITING:
--Glen Canyon National Park in southern Utah
--Navajo National Monument northeast of Flagstaff
--Lassen Volcanic National Park -- snow closed the park roads, I really debated driving to the park entrance to determine if I could even get to the park entrance sign but there was a light covering of snow on the roads so I headed south
--Casa Grande Ruins National Monument near Phoenix
--Tonto National Monument near Phoenix
--Montezuma Castle National Monument near Phoenix
--Two California universities: UC Santa Barbara and California Polytechnic State
--Wanted to attend an Improvisation on Saturday evening but it was "Sold Out"
--The segway tour of old downtown Scottsdale might have been fun to do

OBSERVATIONS: Some observations made while traveling in this area:

• Two signs we should just put all along our entire coasts and be done with it:
      (1) Deer crossing next 3,000 miles
      (2) Speed enforced by radar
• Californians, seemingly moreso than any other state, depend on their vehicles and their highways. Driving seems to be their life. I was "fortunate" to get to be a part of an evening rush hour traffic jam south of San Francisco.
• For California driving, the use of the turn signal is very important, especially in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Otherwise, many more accidents would occur.
• There are some places in California where no mountains are visible in the distance. One such drive was Fresno to Los Banos.
• Irvine CA names their streets after major universities
• In California, they call (via signage) construction work areas "Cone Zone". Cute name.
• It seems that Californians do what Texans do sometimes on interstates -- we are all driving along at speed limit, then, suddenly 100+ cars come to a stop, bumper-to-bumper it for 2 - 4 minutes, then resume at speed limit. Nothing on the side of the road or in the road to cause it, no construction, no emergency vehicles, no pedistrians or large animals. No apparent reason why everyone came to a stop...???
• Dinky highway 65 from Exeter CA to Oildale CA had an incredible amount of traffic on it.
• California has much beauty from top to bottom but there are way too many vehicles to make it a fun place to live
• Like i have seen in other coastal states, it is amazing how run-down barely-standing old shacks or trailer homes are right on the coast with the great view of the water
• In places all over the country that allow open range for cattle I have seen what are called Cattle Guards or Texas Gates. I wondered how they worked and assumed it was intended to keep cattle from crossing beyond a certain point. But I thought that if cattle have any smarts, they simply walk around them. So I finally Googled it. The point of them is to keep cattle from falling into a ditch or ravine. So a Cattle Guard is only marking off the hole to keep cattle from falling into it.
• A wonderful and welcome three-word phrase (on a sign) to a driver of a curvy two-lane highway is "Passing Lane Ahead"
• I got to see the US Border Patrol in action. When Garmin sent me on the 22-mile each way unpaved road to the Organ Pipe Cactus WIlderness run, I followed one patrol truck for a few miles (with his dust hitting me in the face), passed three others going the other direction, and saw six more stopped at various points along the route. Then as I returned from the park, I had to stop at two different border patrol checkpoints.

The Bests:

1. Some non-interstate highways that I expected to be two-lane are four-lane in Arizona and Nevada. And southwestern Utah had a number of passing-lanes going up the mountains
2. Seeing a variety of warm weather and snow on the ground but did not see any spring bloom colors in Arizona and Utah and Nevada
3. The curvy road leading to Pinnacles National Park, and, the road inside the park, I pretty much had all to myself. This was after seeing on the NPS website to expect huge crowds in March, April and May at the park. All I saw were a few vehicles along the way and the campers already in the park.
4. Anytime there is light traffic on a highway, thus, I can sort-of-relax and enjoy the scenery and the day
5. Heard Museum in Phoenix, it is very well laid out and quite interesting
6. Solitary sunrise viewing at Joshua Tree National Park
7. Beautiful weather days for which southern California is famed
8. As long as no one is in front of me, I LOVE driving on the curvy highways with numerous switchbacks. I have learned how to drive them quickly with minimal braking so it feels somewhat like a ride at an amusement park. This trip gave me plenty of opportunity to drive those type of roads.

The Worsts:

1. Flagstaff traffic. This ended my consideration of that town as a place to live in retirement.
2. Two-star hotels. With these recent trips that are mainly driving all day and a hotel is just a place to sleep for the night, I have been staying at cheaper two-star hotels. Some are nice but most are less than good.
3. People who drive RV's (single unit or pulled trailer) on two lane roads at 45 MPH when the speed limit is 65 MPH or 70 MPH and a line of vehicles are stuck behind them for miles
4. Southern California traffic, especially the 50 miles on northbound I-15 that took over two hours (2:36 pm to 4:47 pm) bumper-to-bumper, thus, slightly under 25 MPH
5. Garmin sending me on a 45-mile round trip to JOshua Tree Wilderness instead of Joshua Tree National Monument
6. Families who check into hotels with kids and act as if they are the only guests in the hotel -- can you say NOISY AND DISRUPTIVE
7. Budget Car Rental -- failure to explain all charges for a car, my final bill was twice what I expected it to be
8. American Airlines -- late departures-arrivals and treatment of customers

The Totals:

• Miles Driven: 3305
• Driving: 49 hours in 7 days
• States: 4 -- Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah
• Major Universities: 27 -- by state:
  Arizona(4): Arizona State, Grand Canyon, Phoenix, Northern Arizona
  California(20):
  California-Berkeley, California-Davis, Fresno State, California State-Fullerton,
  California-Irvine, California State-Long Beach, California-Los Angeles (UCLA),
  Southern California (USC), California State-Northridge, Pepperdine, Stanford,
  California-Riverside, Sacramento State, California-San Diego, San Diego State,
  San Francisco, San Jose State, Santa Clara, California-Santa Cruz, University of the Pacific
  Nevada(2): UNLV and Nevada-Reno
  Utah(1): Southern Utah
• Pictures Taken: 1155 (and deleted 133 of them)
• National Parks: 8 new ones (to make 156 visited): Walnut Canyon, Sunset Crater Volcanic, Wupatki, Pinnacles, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Death Valley, Joshua Tree, Organ Pipe Cactus. The planned visit to Lassen Volcanic cancelled due to their snow.