Philly to Oakland via the Southwest

Hey guys,



Lori wrote me an email about the trip and I started writing it and the next thing I knew it was incredibly long. I’d been meaning to write up a detailed account of what we did, so we can hang onto it, and this wound up being it. I’d emailed with Dad a bit along the way, but here’s the whole trip, again, incredibly long:



The trip was 100% fantastic. I don’t think I’d change a single thing. I loved it from start to finish. We had our basic outline for where to go, and then we improvised a lot on the way which was my favorite part of it. She wasn’t in any kind of hurry, I wasn’t in any kind of hurry, we only had a few places we really wanted to hit, so we took lots of detours and changed plans a lot in midstream.



Insanely – I still have a few other things to add to it, but this is the trip in broad strokes:



MONDAY



We left at 6am on Monday and we were wanting to make it to St. Louis on our first night, but then a few hours in we realized neither of us had any desire to see St Louis, she checked the map and said she’d like to see Nashville and Memphis so we made a left turn at Columbus OH and drove through Tennessee and spent the night in Memphis.



We weren’t in Memphis enough to get into any real detail. We walked down to a section that was basically like South Street. There was Blues Music blasting out of every open restaurant and bar. We were exhausted though, and we wound up at a diner, I got ribs, she had tamales and something else. The ribs were fantastic. I had three giant glasses of water once I realized I hadn’t had any that day. We paid, and walked home in a bit of a haze out of South Street and past a building that had a four storey American flag draped across it.



TUESDAY



The next day we checked out of our Sleep Inn room (average beds, we both slept terribly) and drove through to Taos on I40, which runs parallel to a lot of Old Rte 66. A friend of ours gave us a Road Trip book, and one of the road trips detailed was driving Route 66. So we read a lot of that along the way, and used it to steer us towards interesting places. We wound up driving through a lot of abandoned towns, which is a little depressing, but weirdly interesting too. Found an amazing BBQ shack on the side of the road, had some great BBQ sandwiches, bought some beef jerky that we’d later realize neither of us knew quite what to do with, talked with a guy doing a similar trip, kept moving, stopped at a strange old gas station that this collapsing town keeps standing with fresh orange paint. We tried to stop in the “Midway Café” which is the exact center point of Rte 66, but it was closed. The detours through 66 were great, it got us into the spirit of the drive a bit more than we had been the day before, I think. The day before, despite the huge detour down to Memphis, was mainly just driving, just “we need to get this done to get it out of the way” and the second day was largely saved from that by Amanda’s reading the Road Trip Book and suggesting different stops.



The last stretch of driving to Taos was one of my favorite moments. We were on a back stretch of 40 at twilight, Amanda was asleep and there wasn’t anyone on the road for miles, flat road to the horizon in both directions and no headlights to be seen. I drove 90mph, the radio was on quietly, and the sky was blue grey ocean from underneath. We made it to Taos around 10 that night, the quaint, desert inn depicted on the website did not match the shabby across-the-street-from-a-Wal-Mart inn that it actually was. We found an ant head in the bed. Just the head. Just an ant head that was big enough for us to see. Think of an ant. Think of its head. Now run that through some sort of nuclear enlargement device and have it remain tenaciously grasped on your bedding long after its body has been removed, hopefully, but not probably, by the hotel washing machine. We left it on the sink and I meant to take a picture of it with a dime in the frame for comparison, but forgot. I went over to the now convenient Wal-Mart to buy some new sheets (we don’t normally shop here, but it was on the heels of 15 hours and on the head of a giant ant). I pick up some earplugs for Amanda because she swears that I snore, but I do not believe her. I pick up some socks and underwear and am so tired that for a minute I lose myself in the Wal-Mart, I am just staring straight ahead at a wall of socks for a minute or so before I snap myself out of it and make it back to the hotel. We watch some “Mission Impossible” on AMC and fall asleep.



WEDNESDAY



The next morning I took out our trash and sliced my finger on a screw that was jutting out of the side of the garbage bin. Later Mandy did too. After we had a great breakfast at Michael’s Diner, I had an amazing breakfast burrito, she had something but I couldn’t see it over my breakfast burrito. We did some shopping, spoke to a nice lady who lived in the Bay Area as a kid, I went to a leather shop run by an old cowboy drinking a Tecate on the job, who talked about all the celebrities he’s made leather coats for, and I had that uncomfortable moment of having a nice conversation with a store owner, but spending the entire time in my head “Nice guy, but I’m not buying anything here, I’m not buying an Indian leather coat, how do I leave, how do I leave, how do I leave”. Afterwards, we sort of decided that there wasn’t much to do in Taos and figured out - via Amanda’s facebook page of all things - that Carlsbad Caverns was a day’s drive away. We sat in the parking lot of Giant Bug Inn, in the shade with my laptop and dad’s atlas and penned out the rest of our trip with the sudden change of plans. It all added up, so we excitedly packed the car, got a refund for our second night in Giant Bug Inn and headed south to the Caverns.



We drove through Roswell (which is really wringing the rag on the alien nonsense – the McDonalds has a Spaceship Playground, The Wal-Mart has Spaceships painted all over, etc.) and through a good portion of New Mexico Desert. We got to the desert late, watched the sunset behind us and watched the moon rise in front of us. It was blood red and had gotten much bigger since I’d seen it last. I don’t know if it’s the lack of light pollution, the seeing it on the horizon, or it being in the desert, but it was three times the size I’m used to, it was bright enough to drive by, and was foreign enough to be a little alarming. When it first started, I’d actually thought I’d not been paying attention and that it was the last bits of the sunset. Really pretty. We turned off the radio and drove quietly alone and marveled at it and took bad, non-representative, pictures of it.



We got to a Days Inn in Carlsbad. Slept.



THURSDAY



Woke up, had some continental breakfast and drove the 20 miles south to the Caverns. We got up early because we wanted to see the caverns, and then start our drive back north to Sedona so that we might have a good dinner. We got there by 8am. The Caverns open at 830. We were the first ones in. We walked down to the entrance and joked about being the first people to see it that day, and isn’t that as impressive as being the first people ever to see it? Probably. We were quickly debriefed by a fast talking uncomfortable looking park ranger who mumbled her way through her presentation as though she’d been through it a million times that day, despite our being the very first people she had to speak to. We didn’t have any gum, or any food, or anything that could damage the caves, and went down to the entrance.



Carlsbad Caverns was amazing – go see it. If you go, be the first people there. I imagine it loses some of the magic as it fills up with terrified, screaming little kids. The mouth of the cave is big enough to comfortably cover your house. The walkway zigzags back and forth and just when you think it stops, it keeps going, and suddenly it’s dark and cold and damp. There are a few people behind us, but we’ll lose them in the first few turns. You can hear them walking it’s so quiet. I think me and Amanda walk a little faster through the first part than we normally would, just to get away from them, and it works. We do. And it’s dimly lit and perfect and just staggering. They give you different sizes, they size things in the way that places like national parks do, in football fields and jumbo jets, but neither of those things has a terribly grounding feel to them, so it’s maybe a little wasted, but it is gigantic. It’s just gigantic.



I am a little claustrophobic, and I have a few moments of needing to regain my composure. Amanda is good about this. It takes until we come to a point in the tour called “Iceberg Rock” which is a rock the size of your house, which fell from the ceiling forty feet above and landed on the ground. Both things are made of solid stone and I am able to finally convince myself that this place is not going to come down around my ears. If a mountain can fall inside of this place and this place is still this place, then the squeaking of my sneakers is not going to create a chain reaction that buries me alive. Being crushed is no sweat, it’s the being trapped. Neither of these things happens of course; which I can realize as a rational person, but it takes a bit.



We talk to a park ranger who comes around the corner like the ghost of a park ranger and spooks the both of us. She tells us about iceberg rock, about the guy who discovered the caverns who was 16 (!) when he found it, who spent the rest of his life there, as the first park ranger, in the caves answering questions. She shows us the smoke marks from the guys who discovered it – little bits of underground graffiti – the explorers would hold their lanterns up to the stone walls, and the smoke would stain, and they’d write their names and the date they were there. She points out a few other interesting tidbits, but it was more fun without her, so we move on and decide that the cave was made by a monster called “Big Carl”. We finally get to the bottom, and it’s not as fun as the walk down. It’s just as quiet, just as breathtaking, but it’s an hour in, and we’re on little sleep, and we’re hungry. We do the rest of the tour and agree that the hour walk down into the cave is far more impressive than the walk around the caverns. Still amazing, we just liked the first part best. Again, we try to take pictures, but they don’t do it justice.



We leave there, we stop in a very good Mexican restaurant that is just opening its doors and has a line forming at the door. It’s very good; Amanda accidentally soaks herself at the sink in the bathroom.



The drive to Sedona is a series of storms. Driving from Carlsbad to Sedona, we hit a windstorm that kicks up Dust Devils and punches our car all over the road. We stop for gas and the power is out. There’s a cop in the gas station, I politely ask “is it always this windy?” and the guy behind the counter, laughs at me, the rube, and says “NO!” in an incredulous “No you dumbass!” voice. We move on without gas as an angry guy in the station complains loudly to no one “The whole goddamned block is out” There is only one block, so I assume that all the gas stations are without power.



We drive a bit; we take a dogleg west to seventy on a smaller road. It, like most of the roads so far, is four lanes of black top through farm land and dust. We lose some time because if we drive any faster we will flip over. We pass an 18 wheeler that in fact did flip over, and we’re passing shortly after it happens, but the trucker is out of the car, there are people talking to him. I slow down to suggest that I’ll stop if they need anything, and he shakes his head and waves me on. I don’t know what I’d have done if I stopped. I don’t know CPR or how to overturn a truck.



Shortly after we stop for a bathroom break, and we are stunned to discover it’s freezing, bitter cold. We jump out of the car to head into a Denny’s and it’s bracing. We both inhale curse words and run as fast as we can into a Denny’s. I can’t imagine another situation in which anyone would ever run into a Denny’s.



After that, we drive headlong into a hail storm that pops up out of nowhere. We can see the storm, but we don’t expect hail. It peppers us for a bit, but it’s done in a few miles worth of driving.



Then we hit the snow. The snow is falling so fast and so thick that I can’t see two car lengths in front of me. It also springs up out of nowhere, and we pass through it like a curtain and suddenly I can’t see anything but fat flakes and brake lights. We drive slowly, other cars whip past us as though it’s not happening, and I double check with Amanda “You can see this too, right?” She confirms. We drive slowly. It’s only about 45 minutes worth of snow, but it’s a lot, and then it’s gone. And the ground is just a little wet, but no real accumulation, and then, fifteen minutes later, we’re back in the desert and you’d never know it happened.



We get to Sedona late, and I have been driving a lot, and I am a little punchy and tired and want to be done driving. The road winds down into Taos and we assume we are driving past amazing views, but it is dark, and we can’t see anything. We listen to Al Green so I can sing along and not lose my mind.



Our hotel is very nice, and despite being tired, we both want a beer and something to eat. We wind up at a not-so-great place “Olde Sedona Bar and Grille”. They have good beer on tap, but there are eleven people in the place and there’s a band playing as loud as it possibly can. The lead guitar eventually leaves the stage and is writhing on the ground, playing the guitar at the ceiling, and nine of the people in the bar really appreciated it.



FRIDAY



The next morning we wake up and take advantage of the hiking trail behind the hotel. It’s pretty low impact and we walk to the base of “Snoopy Rock”, we take an hour or so walking around and it’s amazing how well Sedona blends into the surroundings. You don’t see too much of the city if you don’t want to, we walked for about an hour and you could forget that it was there. We go off the trail, we wind up on a bit of a plateau and Amanda takes pictures of things and I walk ahead. We are excellent hikers and neither of us falls down. That’s what I assume being an excellent hiker is all about. It’s a great morning, one of my favorites, and after a while we decide that we should hike towards breakfast. I lose Amanda for a while behind another breakfast burrito. We have a good cup of coffee and I am as relaxed as I’ve ever been.



We spend the rest of the day taking a break from the car. We walk through downtown Sedona, we stop in a store that is a lot like a store Amanda used to work in, she chats with the owner while I sit out front. We stop for beers and watch a bit of a ballgame; the cubs smack back to back home runs. We hit the Cowboy Club for another beer. She picks up a gift for her dad, and we talk to another old cowboy shop-owner. The walk through Sedona is nice, it’s just a beautiful town. A little on the touristy side, but it’s easy to evade, there’s so much to look at around you. We make a pit stop at the hotel to relax a bit before heading to the airport for the sunset.



The sunset is nice, but there are a lot of people there, and we wind up goofing around and people-watching too much. We were kind of giddy and distractible. It’d been so nice already that the sunset doesn’t hit me as much as it would if I’d not spent the day hiking, and staring at the mountains. It’s certainly beautiful, but we were in a goofy mood, a big muppet-y dog was lumbering around and we just cracked jokes the whole time and enjoyed it that way. Someone to our right was having a far too serious conversation in a crowd of people, apparently he wants to take something slow, and see where something goes, he’s not looking to get bogged down in a relationship with whoever is on the other end of the phone. There is a teenage girl that is absolutely miserable about being there, she’s wearing every agitation on her sourpuss face. There’s an old guy so excited he’s shuffling his feet and kicking stones around. We tried to stand on the same rock. It was difficult because “I am unwieldy” and I was almost constantly off balance and knocking us both off, but again, we are excellent hikers. It was fun and it was beautiful.



We spend the rest of the night in the hotel room, we get some food and booze from the Safeway, we have drinks and play Gin. In talking about the Carlsbad Caverns we realized we don’t really know how it was formed so we go online and I read about it out loud. This leads to more reading about more caves. She winds up on a webpage about “The World’s Most Haunted Cavern” in Kentucky. And we spend about an hour reading about various caves, shake hands and promise to go to Kentucky someday. I beat her in Gin. That’s not something that happens often so she pretends that she’s tired and goes to sleep. I watch The Legend of Bagger Vance on TV because Amanda cannot believe that it’s a movie about golf.



SATURDAY



The next morning is our planned trip to go see either the Grand Canyon, after we’d decided yesterday to not drive to the Petrified Forest because we needed a break. We decide, after a while, that the best course of action is to stay an extra day in Sedona. We make the arrangements and drive to the Grand Canyon. We are kind of unimpressed. Here’s my email to Dad about the day, which I think wraps it up nicely:



“We drove down to the Grand Canyon today, and decided to spend another night in Sedona. We really, really like Sedona.



We weren't at the Grand Canyon very long, I feel like we did it wrong. It's beautiful, it's massive, it's impressive, but we were really far more taken by Carlsbad Caverns. We set aside an afternoon for the Grand Canyon - when we really should set aside a week, go camping, go hiking, etc. So we just went, looked at it, and came back. It was nice, but we didn't feel the same sort of interaction with it that we did everything else so far.



While we were there, an older lady, in her sixties I'd guess, came walking up a trail from down below. She was ecstatic. Apparently she and a few of her friends were hiking up from the bottom over the course of a few days. She's in her sixties, I'm in my twenties, she walked from the bottom of the canyon to the top, my house is slightly uphill and I dread walking home. Insane. Seeing that really solidified the "this isn't a place to see, this is a place to experience". So I think we need to plan a hiking trip or a camping trip.



We're up and out the door tomorrow around six to make the trek home. The bike I rode on the back of as a baby, will complete a cross country trip on the back of my car. “



We get back from the Grand Canyon much earlier than we expect. We switch hotel rooms, same hotel, different room. This one has a better porch and view. We have drinks before dinner on the porch. The restaurant is semi-formal and I forgot to bring a collared shirt. Amanda has a very nice dress. I feel like a goon in a black t-shirt and jeans. We decide the best course of action is to drop off Amanda at the restaurant to have a drink while I go and pick up a bottle of champagne for after. This way, Amanda is already a paying customer and it would be hard to deny her service should the dress code be so strict. I drop her off, go to the market, and while I’m in line I search on my super phone for a men’s clothing store which was not part of the plan, but it’ll make for a neat surprise. I get the champagne and I find a thrift store in the area, I call the store and they’re open for another hour. The guy who answers the phone runs around the store a few times and finds me a blue collared shirt in my size. “Do you have dress shirts” “Yes” “What size, what color, etc.” He runs to check after every question. I swing by, he has it by the counter it costs 96 cents and it’s still in the package. I give the guy a ten for running around the store when he could have just said “Yeah we got ‘em” and hung up the phone. I show up at the restaurant in a blue collared shirt. I try not to call attention to the giant square creases it’s got from just being removed from the packaging. But she laughs and it’s worth it.



Our food is ok. It’s a nice dinner, but not a great meal. I have a really good steak, hers isn’t so great. My Manhattan is a little weak. Her wine is gross. Our waitress is bubbly and nice, and seems to have a good feel for how annoying being bubbly can be and pops by only occasionally. We skip desert and head back to the hotel to sleep. Amanda is a little tipsy and is asleep before the door closes. I stay up for a while doing a lot of nothing online.



SUNDAY



The next day we sleep in later than we’d planned. It’s hard to be done with the vacation. But we eventually get moving, get out the door and on the road. She forgets her camera and we have to turn around to go get it. I think about how great it would be if something else forced us to stay, but it doesn’t, the camera is recovered and we make way for Oakland. The drive feels as long as it is, which it hadn’t yet. We stop at a gas station that’s designed to look like the oasis it really is in the middle of the Mojave Desert. They overcharge for gas and everything else and it irritates me. There are weirdly shaped, skinny and frail looking desert birds who pick at the trash cans and are far less afraid of you as you are of them. They hang out in the bins until you are nearly on top of them and then they fly off. I wonder what these people do out here in the middle of nowhere, if they live there, but then I go back to being angry at them raising the prices and hope they never leave.



We get slowly more excited about being home, about seeing the cats and getting out of the car. We arrive safe and sound at 9:15pm on Sunday night and park our car in our parking spot under our apartment.





How we Passed our Time in the Long Car Rides



Amanda’s pal Amber made us some mix CD’s that occupied a lot of the trip. We became a little obsessed about a few of the songs, and they were replayed quite a bit. Ween’s “Your Party” was the big favorite. It’s hysterical. We eventually burn out the CDs and can no longer listen to the band “The Broken Bells”.



I bought “Don Quixote” on audio book before the trip and I was excited to listen to it, but the guy who reads the book is from Spain, and we have no idea what he’s saying. He’s reading in English with an impenetrable Spanish accent. We listen quietly for about five minutes or so until I turn to Amanda and say “I’m having a hard time with this.” And she responds “I haven’t understood a word of it.” I was probably more agitated about this than I should be, and questioned the logic of hiring that guy for about ten miles.



We have two other audio books. A series of Hemmingway short stories, which is read perfectly, and understandably by Stacey Keach. And then we have something by Toni Morrison which puts me right to sleep.



We take turns reading “Pale Fire” out loud. I worry about how poorly I read out loud, and Amanda accurately describes the situation as my being able to read fine, until I think about stumbling over my words, at which point I stumble over my words.



There was a lot of napping. We were up early and the car gets surprisingly comfortable if you kick the seat back and throw a pillow against the window.



I answer maybe five percent of a crossword puzzle. Maybe.



We look over at the atlas, Amanda reads through the road trip book. When applicable, we read it out loud to see if there’s anything either of us would be interested in.



We stare out the windows and try not to think about how we have to go to work on Monday.
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