Road Trip 2022: Hotel Cats and Dinosaurs

 

Ernest Hogan has posted his account of our road trip through eight Western states on Mondo Ernesto, and that has prodded me into linking my blog with his and telling my own version of the tale. Road-tripping is America’s favorite pastime, especially post-COVID, but it’s an odd landscape we’re all driving though these days, with high gas prices and wildfires throwing obstacles in our paths. We solved half that problem by picking up my brother Michael’s hybrid Prius in Flagstaff (it gets 50 mpg), but we quickly discovered that our plan to take AZ 89a north to hook up with the 160, which would then take us to the 191, was not gonna fly. Monster fires on either side of 89a forced ADOT to close that highway to everything but emergency vehicles. In honor of that semi-apocalypse, it seems only fitting that I post a photo of the ponderosa outside Michael’s house in Flagstaff, which survived a fire about 20 years ago.

 

Michael had been expressing wonder for weeks that gas prices in Phoenix were so much higher than he had seen them anywhere else (except for California). The Shell station on the corner near our house had the price of unleaded at $5.99 per gallon at one point, but it had settled down to $5.69 by the time Ernie and I started our trip (as of this writing it’s at $4.59, and I’m harboring fond hopes that it will drop below $4 by the end of the summer). Our spirits were high, but we could tell there were some political tensions brewing over the world in general and the U.S. in particular, what with the hearing about Jan 6 being held in D.C., the war in Ukraine, and the Supreme Court getting ready to hand down a decision that looks like it might change the usual course of elections in the midterms. I was happy to be taking a step back from all that, though I couldn’t escape the wildfires up north. We decided to drive east on I-40, then take 191 north all the way up through AZ and Utah. It turned out to be a wonderful (if somewhat confusing) route. We needed to consult our Arizona Road Atlas when 191 fragmented near the northern border of AZ, seeming to go left when we needed to go right. We sorted it out and headed for Blanding, Utah, where we thought we would get the best Navajo Tacos in the world for late lunch/early supper.

 

Alas, we were thwarted in that ambition. Twin Rocks Café was closed for the day, due to staffing issues. The lady there recommended the Cottonwood Steak House, where this Jackalope resides. 

 

Our ambition was to get to Grand Junction, Colorado, by 9:00 p.m., and we made it just about on the nose. Michael had already checked into the room – our intrepid driver was on board, and we were ready to take the road by storm, lattes and fast-food chicken sandwiches in hand. It was odd to have so much sunlight left in the sky at 9:00 p.m., but it turned out to be handy on this trip. We often did so much shopping, driving, and sight-seeing, we needed that extra light as we motored into each stop at the end of our day.

 

On the morning of our second day, we met a hotel cat. We snagged some Einstein Bros Bagels and coffee, and drove north to Dinosaur, Colorado, named after Dinosaur National Monument, which is technically in both Colorado and Utah. The part that people visit is in Utah. 

Considering how hot it is this summer in so many parts of the world, this ice-cream-eating dino must be a popular guy.

 

The formations out of which the dino bones have been excavated were sand bars that formed after a mega-flood, sweeping up the poor, giant creatures and burying them in a mass, prehistoric grave. I’m assuming that eventually the bones in the topmost section began to stick out when the sandstone around them eroded away, and people recognized what they were seeing. 

It was the jackpot, because several intact skeletons were in there. The visitor’s center features some bronze reproductions of some of the dinosaurs that were removed.

 

There’s a hike not far from the old dig site (which has its own museum), and of course we had to trek that way, snapping pictures as we went. 

Michael had his ideas about what we should photograph (he’s a director, not a cinematographer), and once we were done with the dig site, we also had to find the petroglyphs and hike up to them, as well. They were worth the effort. 

We captured ancient spirits in our infernal phones.

 

When we drove to nearby Vernal, there were plenty of things in town that also needed to be documented.

We stayed at the Dinosaur Inn (this was de rigueur) and ate supper at what the clerk assured us was the best Mexican restaurant in town, Raza Mexican. It was kind of a huge meal, and we should have probably split a plate, but it was good.

 

We would be off to Idaho and the City of Rocks the next day. Things were just getting started . . .

 

I admire the hanging baskets you can see on city streets in Northern Utah and in Idaho. We could never get away with those shenanigans in Arizona.

 

There’s a lot more to this trip. Follow if you dare.

Rifle CO, Hardass Town: Pandemic Road Trip Part 15

Holy crap, November 12 and we were still on the road, still looking for coffee joints. In Glenwood Springs, charming neighbor of chi-chi Aspen, we found The Bluebird Cafe. If we could afford to live in Glenwood Springs, I would be going to this cafe several times a week (if not every day).

I may have already stated this for the record, but I feel compelled to reiterate that tourist towns should remember that people drink coffee and people eat breakfast, sometimes as early as 6:00 a.m. Perversely, many places don't open until 8 or 9. Though I have to admit, Ernie and I were pretty much the only customers in Bluebird. So possibly I'm just being an entitled jerk.

Michael wanted to make sure we took pictures of the old storefronts that were built in the early days of the town.

And right next door . . .

However, it turns out that quaint old buildings were not the main attraction of Glenwood Springs. Technically that would be Glenwood Canyon. But I'm not talking about that, either. I'm talking about the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I've been to ReStores in other towns, and let me tell you, they are not in the same galaxy as this place. Apparently being so close to Aspen means they get the good stuff. Like this Steinway made out of Brazilian Rosewood, a wood so rare it can't be exported anymore (the piano was probably made sometime in the 60s).

This was one of several pianos, though it was the only one made of rosewood. They had a lot of really cool stuff, and I took a lot of pictures. Honestly people, if you need to furnish a house or office, come to this place and get everything shipped.

My little house couldn't hold furniture this big, but I can dream.

Seriously, I may as well add a gigantic dining table to keep my gigantic coffee table company.

Add a sideboard. The lamps are nice, too.

Add some artsy-fartsy decoration.

And an adorable thrift-store dog. But the best buy was out front.

We couldn't buy anything from the ReStore, we could only form unwise ambitions for an uncertain future, but on the way back through town, we stopped at the Community Thrift, and I snapped this photo of a fallen angle and his friend, the pug, and then my camera battery died.

My camera had its own battery, a rechargeable thing that had never given up the ghost on a road trip despite heavy usage, but on the other hand, I had never taken photos for 2 weeks straight without recharging. So I had to switch to my phone camera for the rest of the day.

While I'm thinking about it, here are my email notes:

Rifle CO, hard-ass town

Yampa River

Glenwood Canyon

Meeker Rt13 CO

 Our plan was to drive across Utah on I-70, then make the long haul back to Flagstaff on HWY 89. Michael pulled over quite a lot, enthralled with the landscape. At one point I took the photo that summed up the trip.

I-70 passes through some fascinating terrain.

The town of Fruita also has some interesting sights.

Dinosaur's are just a thing in Fruita. But at least they practice safe social distancing.

The sedimentary deposits in Colorado and Utah from the Mesozoic are still intact (they've mostly eroded away in Arizona), so there are plenty of dinosaur bones to find. Utah is a class unto itself as far as scenery is concerned. Wonder after wonder greets you as you turn every corner. I-70 cuts through an extensive line of up-thrust rock called the San Rafael Reef (or San Rafael Swell).

Deeper into Utah, I took the essential road trip photo.

We settled for the night in Salina, Utah. There was a popular Mexican Restaurant in town, El Mexicano, where Ernie and Michael picked up supper. While they were wrangling supper, I plugged my camera battery charger in and plugged in the battery. It took a couple of hours, but it charged like a charm. The next day, I would be able to snap like a fiend again.

On TV, the political storm still raged. Threats and imprecations flew. But I had a feeling it was all steam, vented by a monster who had never believed he could be stopped. Soon we would be going home, doing a mountain of laundry, apologizing to pets for our absence. But we had one day left. We were going to make it count.

Snowy Sumos: Pandemic Road Trip Part 14

According to my credit card statement, the morning of November 11 we had coffee at the Caffeinated Cowboy in Evanston, Wyoming, a little drive-up joint of the same general ilk as Dutch Bros. Across the way, this red sumo crouched in the snow. He may have been an omen.

Michael had been leery of the lightweight tires on the Malibu when we rented it. The sumo in the snow gave him pause. He decided we'd better get going before it really started coming down. Soon we were packed up and on the road, but we moved cautiously. Michael had no illusions about how those tires were going to handle an icy road.

Unfortunately, many of the motorists speeding past us had illusions to spare. In short order, we saw them by the side of the road, spun out and wrecked. We tip-toed past them, thinking we had dodged a bullet. And then this happened.

I-80 turned into a parking lot, because there was a tunnel up ahead. Apparently it's pretty common for motorists to go speeding into that tunnel and hit the black ice that tends to form in there. They wipe out and block the tunnel. We sat for an hour and a half while they cleared the road. By the time we got rolling again, I really needed to find a bathroom. We made a beeline to the facilities. I took a phone pic and sent it to my Facebook friends.

I felt like I had been saved by civilization. Outside, the Malibu had collected some icicles.

We still had to drive through snow flurries. Yet my mom decided she wanted ice cream.

My email notes were a tad uninspired:

Baggs WY near Colorado border

Craig CO 

I took a lot of photographs -- once again, from the car, often with the window closed, which means that quite a few of them were blurry and splotched. But not all of them.

I couldn't get out a look at the formations up close, so I had to guess at their composition. I thought they were probably sedimentary, maybe mudstone and sandstone. But there are volcanic rocks that can look similar to sandstone, limestone, etc. Ash deposits in particular can look sedimentary. After all they are clastic. They can end up settling into drifts like snow. 

Our route seemed counter-intuitive. By Friday we wanted to be back in Flagstaff, yet we were headed in the opposite direction. Michael had a town in Colorado he wanted us to see, with a beautiful canyon nearby, so first we went east, and then we went south. By the time we crossed the border into Colorado, we were on HWY 13. On our way south, we saw some very fluffy sheep.

Our destination for the night was Glenwood Springs, a bedroom community for the exceptionally chi-chi Aspen. We had been on the road 9 1/2 hours, partly because we had been stranded for so long and partly because Michael moderated our speed to match the road conditions. We had supper at a restaurant called Tequila's. Then we settled into our warm and toasty hotel rooms. Ernie and I watched various Murder Channels. Mom and Michael drank their peach wine and watched the mayhem on MSNBC. We didn't know it, but Mom was going through changes. She had accomplished one thing that was keeping her alive: voting Trump out of office. She would soon reach the end of the other -- this road trip. 

Michael was saying a lot of things to her that he needed to say. Here's his account of an unexpected conversation that occurred in the middle of the night on the 10th:

Michael here: It is November 10 here in Boise. Mom is standing by her bed when I hear her at 3:23 a.m. I ask, "What are you up to, Mom?" "Ma," she corrects me.

"Okay Ma. What are you up to?"

"Well, you see, no one wants to help me." She pivots slightly, peering through the dark in the general direction of the bathroom.

I say, "Your driver" (whom she - as of late - has taken to calling me) "is here. He can help. Do you want to go to the bathroom?"

"Yes."

"Well, would you prefer to walk or to ride in your chair?"

She weighs the question. "I don't see why we shouldn't walk. What does the driver think?"

"He's not paid to think, Mom. He's here at you disposal."

"Ma."

"The driver apologizes, Ma."

"Why don't we walk?"

"Why don't we?" I slid out of bed.

"You're a good son."

"And a good driver, Ma."

"That too."

I take her arm and off we go toward the biffy. It is a slow walk through the dark but the driver knows where he's going. When we reach the sink and mirror area just outside the bathroom I flick the switch for that light and what seems like one hundred fifty watts suddenly showers us, causing her to wince and squint in response.

She asks, "Do we need the interrogation light?" I quickly reach around the wall and turn on the bathroom light which, with its perhaps one hundred less watts, throws out a warmer, gentler wash. I quickly kill the powder room light.

"Better," she says, inching forward.

"You need a hand perching on that throne?"

"No, I think I've got that part." I retreat around the corner a respectable distance.

I've heard mixed stories from Em and Ern regarding her middle of the night forays and lucidity. She arose only twice during the Coast trip and for the most part, "all hands on board" both times. For the most part she slept like a brick until seven a.m. (give or take).

Whether or not she ate the pastry we brought her (about 60 - 40 on that one) she proved to be an absolute coffee lush - sixteen (and, on occasion, even twenty) ounces at a pop. No matter how hot, she dispatched the coffee shack brew we fetched her each morning in short order. Extremely short order. I refuse to drink coffee that hot. I couldn't remember from one day to the next what the hell concoction they were buying her - hell, to me, coffee is nothing other than black water, an oil slick and bubbles - so one or both of them had to go along to order it.

Em here again: As of this writing, my mom can no longer walk anywhere, let alone to the bathroom. She can't even sit in her wheelchair anymore. She's locked inside herself more often than not these days, and she seems to cycle between that unhappy silence and brief periods of being more like herself, followed by long bouts of sleep (22 to 23 hours). It's not impossible that she'll live to see the New Year, but I check to see if she's still breathing dozens of times per day.

Yeah, we went on this trip just in time. On the 11th, we survived a snowstorm pileup. The next day we were in for an unexpected treat.