It's the last day of driving. Em and I have made it to California whole and in good spirits. We still remain several hours outside of the Bay Area, but the intervening miles will afford us the opportunity to eat at In-N-Out Burger, which has been a more firm item on our itinerary than most other things along the way.
One can only get In-N-Out in a few states. California is the first of those that we've graced with our presence this time around. But we've been in quite a few states.
It's a bit after-the-fact, but it seems appropriate to fill in the blanks of that itinerary.
Day 3: Oklahoma City to Albuquerque, NM. 543 miles.
We had originally planned to race across the plains to the far edge of New Mexico, but following a harrowing night of trying to find a hotel in Oklahoma City and the tip that Albuquerque is quite a sight to see, we decided to truncate day three and make room for relaxing. Oklahoma melted away, and I would describe the landscape but I really can't remember it. Texas, on the other hand, was stunning. The Texas Panhandle looks like an oil painting of itself; every color on the landscape and in the sky is somehow thicker than colors in other places. Color is nearly a tangible property in Texas.
We stopped only twice in Texas--once for gas, and once outside of Amarillo to hit up Cadillac Ranch, where in the center of acres and acres of cow pasture (the cattle had been rotated to another pasture so we were surrounded by arid sepia soil) there stand 10 old cadillacs half-buried in the earth. They were planted there in the 70's by an art collective, and ever since have been a favorite place for travelers to leave bold--and extraordinarily temporary--marks. We overheard a woman recount a story of the last time she had been to the ranch, several decades ago: She was there for a wedding, and the happy couple spray painted all of the cars bright white, save the one on which they painted their names and the date, and they were married right there. That white layer was probably at least an eighth of an inch beneath the hodge-podge we witnessed.
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| insert traffic joke here. Or, better yet, "check out the suspension on them things." |
From Texas, we ventured onward to the "Land of Enchantment." New Mexico treated us well, and we rolled in to Albuquerque right around 6pm, checked into our hotel, and were sent to the bar to have four free drinks on the hotel's dime. I'd like to say that we did crazy, exciting things in the New Mexico night, but we really just went out to find New Mexican cuisine then fell asleep with the door to the balcony open.
Day 4: Albuquerque to Scottsdale, AZ. 407 miles.
Day four was a day of profound excitement and frequent disappointment. We set out first thing to find the Rio Grande. We found it, and some fancy wildlife to boot (have you ever seen a real roadrunner? We have), but all of the trails to any section of river more substantial then an estuary were blocked off.
The next stop was the Petroglyph National Monument, where Em and I discovered, quite promptly, that were we ever to be stranded in a desert for more than a half an hour, we'd both be goners. We bravely tried to climb the rocky steppes, looking for the traces of ancient civilizations, but were too weak to go much more than a quarter mile from the parking lot. To make Em feel better, I recounted the ending of Frank Norris' McTeague, wherein the hero finds himself hopelessly staring at the horizon in the middle of Death Valley, dead body and caged canary by his side.
I like to bring the mood up in situations of physical discomfort.
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| we would have died out here, had we not been 5 minutes from the car. |
Though we didn't make it far into the Monument Park, we were feeling fairly confident about our sightseeing abilities (if not our survival skills), and trekked on towards Arizona. We made it to the boundaries of the Petrified Forest before finding out that there is a rather exorbitant fee for our purposes--since our plan was to drive in, poke some fossilized trees, and drive out. Instead, we drove to the visitor's center, went to the bathroom, and drove on.
We drove on to yet another locale, and this time skirted the entrance so that we could view the cliff dwellings known, inexplicably, as Montezuma's Castle. As we stood at the base of the cliff, looking up 20 stories at the facade of the dwellings, several ravens started circling above us, making the kind of noises that indicated that they were quite perturbed that we hadn't just died already.
Our final stop in Arizona was Em's aunt's house in Scottsdale, where bank robberies are so common, any Johnny-on-the-street can earn cold hard cash rewards for turning in bank robbers. Via a service called banditrackers. We arrived (without having robbed or capturing robbers), were plied with blended cocktails, and then taken to the saltwater pool before we went to bed.
Day 5: Scottsdale to Los Angeles. 352 miles.
The drive from Sccotsdale to Los Angeles is part alien landscape, part California outdoor mall. There isn't much else about that to announce. What is notable, however, is that as soon as we turned on the radio in LA, "Tequila" came on. I can't say this is the first time this has happened to me, and I like that. I really, really do.
We rolled in to LA around 2pm, and spent the rest of the day with old friends (and their awesome, slobbery dogs). Old anecdotes were dug out. We went to the movies. If it hadn't been so very obvious that we were in southern California, it could easily have been an evening years ago in southeast Portland.
Day 6: Now. (1:55pm)
It may be that our more relaxed pace has kept things from dipping into absurdity, but today's drive is uneventful. We'll be in San Francisco for dinner with my BFF Az by 7 or so, and we'll have all tomorrow to completely unwind.
Now all we really have to do is find that In-N-Out Burger.
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