As I write this, I’m sitting at a Panera just outside Chicago. Mark is probably waking up just outside Los Angeles. He’s traveling for business, and so am I. Not without play first, of course. Here is his sunset picture at Redondo Beach.

I spent the day exploring the bounty of Chi-town with my mom. We are meeting a contact for a move management meeting. It was a perfect day for exploring Millennium Park. And we happened upon the giant silver bean completely by accident.

Working title. But last Labor Day weekend we decided to drive all the states west of the Great Plains. This ability to stay up for 40 hours may quickly disappear, but we took advantage of it since we are still “so young.”

We flew into Denver from Miami and arrived just shy of midnight. Picked up the rental car and took off for the Four Corners monument: that place where Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico all meet. The only place where you can be in four places at once. Amped on our travel high, we set off to cover the hundreds of miles separating us from our destination.

Mark has a really good way of switching driving responsibilities at like, 2am. He takes a nap and with the blessing of a black sky and a blanket of stars, we pull into the southwest corner of Colorado right as the sun comes up. Beautiful scenery. Everything I dreamed and a lot I didn’t expect.

We arrive at Four Corners right at opening – 8am. Surprising enough, there’s a line of cars we join. We pay the fee and walk to the four corners outlined neatly on the ground. It was too early for vendors, so we and some other early risers had the place while it was quiet.

Maybe I was really that tired, but I felt a little underwhelmed by the experience. Certainly it’s something to cross off but the idea of it may be better than the actual place.

Interesting enough, a fact finding father told us that the monument outlining the boundaries of the states is incorrect according to modern GPS, so I insisted on taking a picture with the right coordinates (according to this guy’s phone in the middle of zero township.)