Memorial Day 1996, I took my watch off my wrist and placed it in a kitchen drawer. Linda and I were taking a fifteen day vacation to Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. We planned to stay in rustic cabins and our two-person L.L. Bean tent. I did not want to be constrained with time. The thinking was get up when we woke up, eat when we got hungry and go to bed when we got sleepy. This was the first light of total freedom that we now experience in our daily life traveling in a motorhome fulltime. In Estes Park, Colorado we stayed in a log cabin on the Big Thompson River that rumbled along fed with snow melt from the mountains. Our neighbors were elk that grazed on our lawn. Day trips included a hike in snow around Big Bear Lake, a drive up Trail Ridge Road to above tree line and shopping and dining in town. During our stay in Rocky Mountain National Park we never wondered what time it was - we just enjoyed the beauty of the area with no timetable.

Our next cabin faced Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs in Woodlawn Park. Trips included Royal Gorge where we walked the bridge high above the Arkansas River, a drive on Gold Road (a ten feet wide road chiseled into the side of a mountain), a train ride to the top of Pikes Peak and the beautiful Garden of the Gods. In nearby Cripple Creek we descended into a gold mine, then gambled and ate the night away in the casinos winning more than we lost. Never did we wonder what time it was - it was time to enjoy life.

We crossed the Continental Divide at Wolf Creek Pass and camped in Cortez, Colorado while visiting Mesa Verde National Park. The Indians who built the cliff dwellings did not have watches to tell them time and neither did we. We took all the time we needed visiting the beautiful park and crawled in our tent when we got sleepy. At Four Corners, we stood in four states (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona) at the same time. This is the only place in the USA where four states have a common point.

Monument Valley, Utah took us back in time to the old John Wayne movies. It was easy to visualize Conestoga wagons circled by Indians on horses with bullets and arrows filling the air. The beauty of the rock formations makes for a relaxing time studying the light effects and shadows as the day draws to a close. Traveling further south we stopped at the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Nature took millions of years to erode the canyon into what it is today and it is hard to imagine the time it took in human years.

The night temperature was 95 degrees so we decided it was time to spend the night in a motel with air conditioning. We continued eastward stopping to visit the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. This area is now desert, but millions of years ago was tropical forest. The trees fell and turned into rock and still cover the landscape. We tented our way eastward to Palo Duro Canyon, Texas where we camped on the canyon floor and spent time watching the stars that covered the sky.

When we returned home I decided to leave my watch in the kitchen cabinet because I had learned time is not important. Three years later when we sold the house I found my watch. I looked at it for a minute thinking about the time when I was concerned about time, then I dropped it in the garbage. Last Summer we drove west to east across four Canadian provinces and wondered if we had crossed a time zone. Looking at the map we discovered we crossed from Mountain Time to Central Time about eight hundred miles ago. Linda has even learned time is not important. For three months every time she looked at her watch it showed 2:30, then she realized the battery had gone dead - three months ago.