How often have you heard people say travel is broadening? That may well be true if you travel by car. With scant opportunities to exercise any part of your body (except your mouth), snacking is one way to pass the time.

I usually chat with Hubby, read several books and sleep. However, on our Arches, Canyons and Meteor Crater Vacation (New Mexico, Arizona and Utah) I did not take naps nor read the books I packed. Most of my time was spent gaping in awe and saying "Wow!"

Travel also exposes us to the joys and frustrations of eating and sleeping in unfamiliar places. To paraphrase Blanche Dubois from A Streetcar Named Desire, travel subjects us to the kindness and the rudeness of strangers.

The rudeness is most evident in hotels. Guests slam doors, use their outdoor voices and stomp around. (Judging by the noises in the room above ours, Bigfoot must have checked in.) Anonymity allows folks to be rude rather than mindful of those who are trying to sleep.

Refueling the body in new or even familiar places can be a treat or a fiasco. Case in point, my sudden yen for A&W Root Beer led us to a Long John Silver's in Amarillo, Texas. Our out-of-body experience began with the ambiance of the food-all-over-the-floor dcor and continued with the counter help's success in ignoring the customers. However, the grimy and odiferous street person in line behind us obliterated the last vestige of my desire for root beer or food. Exit stage right.

The next restaurant we entered reminded us that nearly every fiefdom (despotic city) has banned smoking in restaurants. However, the host or hostess could offer newer and more creative seating choices to diners: laptop or no laptop; cell phone or no cell phone; and couples with children or adults only. Although restaurants may prefer to, but refrain from, offering rude or well mannered seating areas, the foregoing is one solution to what boils down to the inconsiderate behavior of strangers toward one another.

Friends who have traveled the route before us recommended we try Navajo Tacos. We did so both in Cameron and Goulding, Arizona (the latter is located in Monument Valley). They were delicious and practical. Served with a superabundance of beans, the after effect could double as an alternative fuel source for cars.

In Goulding, we also encountered a couple of foreign counterparts to the often scorned "ugly American" travelers. A tour bus loaded with tourists from either Poland or Russia (based on the languages we identified) swarmed the restaurant. One fellow asked a Navajo waitress if he could take her picture. She declined.

The determined guy pretended to take a picture of friends at a nearby table and just happened to include the waitress in the photo. Then he boasted about his cleverness, which prompted another doofus to film several Navajo employees. Cultural ignorance was not an excuse for the tourists' rudeness.

The drive on I40 east from Albuquerque is boring. I do not recall anything about that same stretch of road going west the week before. I tried to sleep my way out of that portion of New Mexico without much luck.

When I mentioned that the drive through Taos and mountains would have been a more interesting route, Hubby countered with "Just look at that interesting pastureland."

As usual, Hubby pointed out every cow he saw.

"No more bovine talk," I growled. You will pay a dollar for every cow you mention."

But the respite from "look at the cows" was short lived. Hubby got around my restriction.

"Look at the grass-eaters."

Travel is broadening, but some things never change.

Learn more about this author, Elizabeth Cowan.
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