There's been wasted hours and there's wasted days, I'm gonna waste a few more if I get my way

I hope you all had a good holiday season. I did. I went to Arizona and spent a little over a week with my kids. It's been a year since I was able to get that much time with them. It's not enough, but it'll have to do.

I decided when I left that I'd take a little detour and check out Monument Valley. I've been wanting to check it out ever since my cousin posted some pictures on Facebook, and my friend from Switzerland included it in her trip to the U.S. last summer. Plus I wanted to make my brother jealous that I was going to take some amazing pictures and he wasn't.

I definitely got some good shots, and he was definitely jealous:

You can get closer to the "full experience" if you listen to Blitzen Trapper's album American Goldwing while looking at those, btw. It was the perfect soundtrack.

I was pretty bummed about that last one. I wanted a good photo of the highway leading to the valley, but I approached from the south instead of the north, so I didn't get this until I'd been through the valley already, and the sun was too low. (And by the way, how bad does it suck that 3:30 p.m. is too late in the day to avoid a "sunset" shot?). Whatever. It's still kind of a cool picture, but maybe that will give me the incentive to make it back down there. I didn't see Forrest Gump anywhere. Or Wile E. Coyote. I figured I'd run into at least one of them.

After I left Monument Valley, I was apparently supposed to make a left turn somewhere in or around a town called Mexican Hat, but somehow I missed that and didn't realize it for about 30 miles. Rather than turn around, I just went ahead to Moab. It was the alternate route on my maps app, it only tacked on an extra hour or so, and it's not like I have anything terribly exciting to come home to anyway. I got some good BBQ in Moab, and my waitress was really hot, so it was definitely worth it. (I even left her a note - no, I won't hear from her.)

All in all, it was not a bad way to start off 2012.

Also, I bought a postcard to send my kids, and on the back wrote "Hey Assholes, see what you missed?" I'm a great father.