Our plan is to visit our friends in Las Cruces, stay a few days with them and then drive up north to visit Monument Valley and Bryce Canyon as long as there is some snow up there.

We leave San Diego on Friday afternoon, spend a very short night in Benson (because Tucson is fully booked due to a gem show) and arrive in Las Cruces on Saturday morning for breakfast! We spend the weekend taking the kids out kiting at the Rio Grande river bed and to the playground close by – we have a good time all together. We keep watching the weather up north and wait for the clouds to clear up.

But, on Thursday night, Marco starts having heavy fevers, he is shivering and is feeling lousy. The next morning we drive to the pharmacy down the road to get some flu medicine. This is the beginning of the worst flu Marco has had in the 24 year I have known him. He even looses his voice and can hardly talk for almost a week, he stays up coughing all night and we both hardly get any sleep. Finally, we go to see a doctor at Urgent Care. His diagnosis is a heavy bronchitis and he prescribes Marco a cough sirup that costs $150 and antibiotics for the bronchitis (they cost “only” $80) luckily the health insurance is paying for it!
Eventually, I end up in bed as well, with something a little less severe but it still knocks me out for a week.

Finally, after 3 weeks, we feel strong enough to drive back to San Diego with an overnight stay in Gila Bend, AZ. Our trip to Monument Valley and Bryce Canyon? – cancelled!

Even back in San Diego it takes us weeks to fully recover from this persistent flu.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank Elina and David for their lovely care while we were feeling miserable. We are sorry we couldn’t spend more time with the kids and take them to White Sands – maybe next time.