Daddio: Grand Caytion- Day 1.6

[NOTE: Due to the utter lack of cell-coverage in the middle of New Mexico, I've been unable to connect to the blog and regularly update for the last few hours.  So this is a long post that covers what we did.]

After Roswell it was time for an Instant Challenge!  Instant Challenges are random games that the kids only learn the rules to right before we start the challenge.  Today's Instant Challenge was Penny Balancing:

We were on a decent highway, but it still had some subtle bumps that made the balancing difficult.  Gabe took the challenge very seriously and went into a zen-like zone as he focused on keeping the pennies on the tip of his finger:

 

Nana showed her dominance in the game also.  She won a couple of rounds and Gabe, Marney and Ava each won a round:

Here's Ava just before her victory:

Everyone had a great time.  Shortly after the challenge ended, we needed to make another unexpected stop.  Surprisingly, some of the kids needed to pee again.  So we stopped at the Mesa Rest Area:

Even though he's wearing a pull up today, Max has insisted on not using it and using the potty instead:

The bathrooms were nice and clean, but there were two huge problems.  The first was that the place smelled atrocious.  It was like a rotten egg was shoved up your nose.  Second, we wanted to refill our water bottles, but that wasn't possible:

So even though they looked nice, the Mesa Rest Area gets the big thumbs down:

About an hour later, Marney and Kiki had to use the bathroom again, so we stopped in Vaughn, New Mexico:

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Vaughn was really small and, for reasons we can't figure out, only seemed to have a diner and a bunch of crappy looking hotels.  Anyhow, we stopped at the Conoco:

Even though Vaughn looked like a run down armpit of a town, the bathrooms in the Conoco were AWESOME!  Everything was tiled and sparkling clean.  All the sinks, toilets and paper towel dispensers worked on motion sensors.  It was amazing.  Truly a benchmark in bathroom supremecy.  Thumbs up:

Finally we reached Interstate 40.  At mile marker 207, about an hour from our hotel, we stopped at another rest area which appeared identical to the previous one, but had potable water and didn't stink:

Thus, we gave that one the thumbs up: