Misterduck’s Wild Ride – 6 Days, 12 States!
OR
How I lived on nothing but Pop
Tarts, Diet Coke, and Beer for 6 Days
“You’re NUTS!” as several relatives and friends have told me. I wanted to do something
outrageous or just even a little out of the ordinary for my vacation. Vacations are supposed to be where you go to
relax, not set land speed records or endanger your physical well being. But I want to go see the Grand
Canyon.
How did I figure I was going to get to the Grand
Canyon? Well, last year I
drove from Ann Arbor to Grand
Island, Nebraska, that’s 850
miles and I did it in about 12 hours.
How do I get to the Grand Canyon? I used mapquest.com, mapsonus.com, and
randmcnally.com and saw that the quickest way takes me
through St. Louis, Joplin,
Tulsa, Oklahoma
City, Amarillo, Albuquerque,
and to Flagstaff. Ann Arbor
to Tulsa is 911 miles (if you avoid
anything having to do with Branson, Missouri!). Okay, that’s only 60 miles longer. Then I see that Tulsa
to Flagstaff is 970 miles. Coolness!
So it IS possible to get to the Grand Canyon in
about 2 days.
I then figure that I take two days to drive to Flagstaff,
Arizona, take two days to see the Grand
Canyon and Sedona, maybe a few other attractions, then take two
days to drive back. But I could always
change plans later. To be safe, I
located a $40 hotel in Tulsa using
Expedia and a $50 hotel for 3 nights in Flagstaff. Makes it fairly cheap.
Maybe some of you are
asking, “Why drive? Why not FLY
there?” That’s no fun, there’s no
adventure. Driving there make you feel
as though you accomplished something. But this is a vacation. True, but I want to come
back to work and say, “Hey, Phil, I just got back from DRIVING to the Grand
Canyon!” and watching Phil’s eyes bug out. As the late Malcolm Forbes said, “In an
airplane, you just might as well mail
yourself there.”
Back to our story. For a little more penny-pinching, I decide to
take the Saturn instead of the Aztek, and I went to
the grocery store and bought 4 six-packs (1/2 liter bottles) of Diet-Coke and
two six-packs of bottled water. It’s
cheaper than the $1 to $1.50 per bottle that I see in convenience stores. I get a case of Kellogg’s Pop Tarts. I get the oil changed in the Saturn, check all other necessary things such as air in the
tires and having all my CD’s in one pouch on the front seat. My underwear, my six Hawaiian shirts, my swim
trunks, and all my allergy medications are all
packed and ready to go. Last of all, the
cell phone and digital camera equipment
are all charged up and ready. I got to
be ready to catch some wild things and stuff
along my ride to be able to report to the local authorities, like a car chase,
a tornado, or even a UFO abduction!
So it’s Westward, ho!!!
Part 1: Amish with Slurpees, the Missouri
State tourist trap, and no driving
in smoke!
Part 2: Stupid Armadillos and Arizona
time.
Part 3: The Grand Canyon, Sedona, and
Germans!
Part 4: Off to the Arches (and NOT McDonalds!)
Part 5: Too much fun in Kearney,
Nebraska.
Part 6: The long way home.
Part 1: Amish with Slurpees,
the Missouri State tourist
trap, and no driving in smoke!
Date: 6/6/03
Miles: 911
I drop off the Ducklings at daycare and give them big hugs and a kiss.
Duckling1 knows what’s going on and she proceeds to wrap herself around
my leg, “I’LL MISS YOU DADDY!” she screams, which is heard across all three
sections of the daycare building.
Duckling2 just runs off to play.
After I pry Duckling1 off my leg, I leave and the time
is about 7:30AM EDT. Getting out of Michigan
is fairly easily and quick, I figure I’d be halfway through Illinois
by lunch. Michigan State Troopers are
identified mostly by dark Ford Crown Victorias, but
they occasionally have a lowered Chevy Tahoe here and there. (Note: Since the large Chevy Caprice went out
of production in 1996, Chevy attempted to keep their market share of the cop
car business by trying to sell police departments
Chevy Tahoes with lowered suspensions and claim that
they were adequate for pursuit vehicles.
Yeah, right, and donkey’s may fly out my butt as well…) I usually average about 5MPH over the
posted limit, I’m usually left alone by ALL cops, this avoids worrying
needlessly about a radar detector. On
I-94, the posted limit is 70.
The trip through Michigan
is uneventful (State #1), Indiana
is also fairly quiet (State #2). In Illinois,
depending on which website you hit, taking either I-55 or I-57/70 will get you
to St. Louis in the same amount of time
(which is “too long” anyway). I decide
to take I-55 because if I took I-57, I’d feel compelled to stop in Champaign
and spend too much time at Garcia’s
Pizza on Green street . I was hoping
to cross Illinois quickly as the
posted limit was 65 and the scenery didn’t change much. Illinois
state troopers are in white Chevy Impalas, but have unmarked Ford Mustangs as
pursuit vehicles.
That all changed in Springfield. It started to rain, but it was about time
for my first fill-up since Michigan. I stop at a convenience store in Springfield,
pull up to a pump and I start pumping.
In comes a BLACK Ford F350 crewcab truck with a utility box pulling a BLACK
trailer. A little interesting, I didn’t
think much of it until the driver hops out of the cab. It’s a guy with denim pants, shirt, and vest,
with a large black, flat rimmed hat, and a
beard halfway down his chest.
AMISH! Or some
other flavor of Amish, I know that there are various sects of Amish that DO use
cars and some modern technology, and that sometimes
they usually drive black vehicles (or even paint the CHROME parts black!). Okay, I figured that out. We looked at each other as though we both came
from Mars, him in his Amish get up, me in an
extremely LOUD Hawaiian shirt. But a few seconds later:
RING! RING!....RING! RING!
The Amish dude reaches into his pocket and pulls out a CELL
PHONE. Hmmm…these Amish are more modern
than I thought!
I can just imagine the conversation:
“Ya, Graber, I be at the 7-11, ya….some of der SlimJim’s? Shoore. Ya? Oh, no.
Der parson would give us holy heck if he
caught us with da National Enquirer and lottery
tickets!”
Being somewhat amused, I
drive off towards Missouri.
The various mapping websites sites conflict with each other,
one says to drive THROUGH St. Louis,
the other says to go around. Well it’s
only 2PM in the afternoon (EDT, so it
should be 1PM Central), so I figure driving THROUGH would be no big deal. Wrong!
It’s bumper-to-bumper crossing the Mississippi
on I-70, but I get a GOOD slow view of the Gateway Arch. Unfortunately, with everyone in traffic
changing lanes constantly and a cement truck
on my rear bumper, I thought it would be safe to NOT take a picture of the Arch
while driving…
I cross into Missouri
(State #4) and head southwest on I-44. I
highly recommend driving I-44 as it is
interesting enough and NOT all that boring for an interstate highway that has
billboards for Branson, Adult bookstores, and knife shops every 2 miles. I-44 runs along the north “edge” of the
Ozarks until about Springfield, so
the road has plenty of hills and curves to make things interesting. However, the closer to Branson you get, the
more Airstream trailers you end up getting stuck
behind. You see so many ads, even after
you pass by Springfield and head
into Joplin, you still see signs: “HEY!
YOU PASSED BRANSON! COME BACK
HERE!”. I gas
up in Joplin.
Now leaving Missouri,
entering Oklahoma (State #5),
it’s about 7PM EDT. I’m now on the Will Rogers Turnpike (motto:
“I never met a speedtrap
I didn’t like”) and the terrain is a little flatter, plenty more farms and
cows. But I keep seeing this sign appear
every five miles:
DO NOT DRIVE THROUGH SMOKE
Smoke? I don’t think they have a “driving through
smoke” problem, I think they have an ARSON problem here…
Since the turnpike is a tollway, I
figured this would be quick and easy, seeing only one tollbooth on the map and
encountering little traffic on the road with me. I get to the tollbooths and it’s a 3-booth
affair, with only one car in the left booth and 3 cars each in the middle and
right booths. Okay, I go to the left
booth. After a minute, the car in front
of me is still there and the tollbooth
attendant is still talking with the
driver of that car! The other booths
have cleared, but I now have a car behind me
and I can’t backup or move to one of the other booths. Then the attendant gets out of the booth and starts holding up a map of Oklahoma. They scratch their heads for another 3
minutes and I’m ready to lay on the horn by now, but I don’t fearing that when
I do talk to this booth attendant, she’ll give me
hell. The car in front of me
leaves and I figure he spent so long there because he just found out he was in Oklahoma
and NOT New Jersey.
I pull up to the booth, hand her my five bucks (the toll is something
like four bucks plus change), and my left foot is ready to mash the accelerator
pedal.
“How ya doin’ Honey?”
“Fine, fine, fine….”
(Just get me my change and receipt and
let me go, dang it!)
“Where ya headin’?”
“Arizona.” (Oh sh*t! Now I did it, now she’ll have to start up a
conversation or something to keep me
trapped her in this %*$#@ booth!!!)
“Oh, ah knew some friends
out there and…” (she hands me
the change and the receipt and)
VROOOOOOMM!!!!! (I’m outta here!!!)
I assume because the
traffic on the WR Turnpike is nothing like the traffic we see on the Tri-State Tollway outside Chicago,
these tollbooth attendants don’t have that much to do…or anyone to talk to….
I arrive in Tulsa,
I found my cheap motel and I get in line in the lobby to check in. Hmmm…a few bodacious babes in
line….Hmmm…. Guys with
military uniforms. Hmmm…a few
bodacious babes WITH military uniforms!!
It turns out that I landed here in Tulsa
on the same weekend as the Miss Oklahoma
beauty pageant and an army reservist convention! Oh well, I’m only here to sleep. As I check my room, I see that the list of TV
stations available contains one HBO channel and SIX religious channels! Geez, you can even
see Benny Hinn on two channels simultaneously! ACK!
It figures, well, the city is home to Oral
Roberts University
and as you drive through town, you see many other “bible schools” or “bible
colleges” advertised along the highway.
Oh well. Time for a rest.
Part 2: Stupid Armadillos and Arizona time.
Date: 6/7/03
Miles: 975
I get up at 6AM EDT
(5 AM local) and head towards Oklahoma
City. I’m back
on the turnpike and it’s still a little hilly, kinda
like Iowa, but the cows are
uglier. No, wait…
I get to OK City and stop for the universally accepted
“breakfast of road warriors”, a Sausage McMuffin, a
breakfast burrito and hash browns. (The
Pop Tarts are for a snack later.) I hop
onto I-40 and start heading west. I
brace myself for the worst, assuming boring terrain is going to occur any moment
now. Well it does, but it’s not as bad
as I thought. It’s really not at all
boring driving any of the major east/west interstates (I-90, I-80, I-70, I-40) ONCE, but after one time,
THEN it gets to be boring. Since this is
my first time on I-40, it’s not bad. The further west I go, the longer the
distance between “hills” or “horizons” so eventually you can crest the top of a
“small” hill then see everything ahead of you for about 10, 20, even almost 30
miles, including any bad weather heading your way. I cross over into Texas
(State #6) with little fanfare. Yup, the
towns are smaller and further in between as I go, but all of a sudden you HIT Amarillo. I don’t mean
you gradually come into some
gas stations and some steadily increasing
numbers of houses and buildings, you just all of a
sudden go from stark farmland directly into town. BAM!
Speaking of BAM, that’s also where I start seeing (and
swerving away from) armadillos! They look
like small, gray loaves of bread that move fairly slowly across the
interstate. But hitting one is NOT like
hitting a small, gray loaf of bread.
It’s more like hitting a large, gray ROCK! Or so I’m told. I haven’t hit one (yet). But I keep wondering why nobody has ever made
up a song, “Oh I’m an armadillo from Amarillo!”…
I must be getting bored.
I stop at a gas station and watch the upcoming thunderstorm about 50
miles ahead of me. It starts veering southeast.
Just before leaving Texas,
the geography changes and I start seeing mesas
(you know, hills with flat tops on them?). As I enter New Mexico
(State #7), I start admiring the views as the mesas
grow larger and more numerous.
BAM!!!
Ooops. Duck
1, Armadillo 0.
Going across eastern New Mexico,
the views get prettier, until just before Albuquerque,
which looks to me as though this area has the
highest concentration of trailer homes per
capita than anywhere else. (I said
“looks”, not that it really is that way or not.) As part of the Front Range
of the Rockies, driving into Albuquerque
is nice and in fact, the downtown freeways and under/overpasses are all painted
pink and turquoise! It sounds tacky, but it actually looks very
good. I made another gas stop on the
west side of Albuquerque and just
looked east. Very
pretty. Onward!
I’m a little tired, but I can now more easily countdown the
miles before I reach Flagstaff, Arizona. The terrain is most interesting again as I
leave New Mexico and enter Arizona
(State #8), but it flattens out again.
Darn. BUT, at least I can see
another large thunderstorm coming at me from
about 90 miles away. Strangely enough,
the road eventually leads around the north side of the storm and it’s to my
left for another 60 miles.
Tired, tired, tired.
At least as I reach Flagstaff,
I perk up a bit and I don’t feel as tired.
Flagstaff and the mountains to the north of it sort of “pop up” out of the
ground, where as everything to the south, east, and west look fairly flat. I reach Flagstaff
and find the hotel I booked.
As I drive in, I notice the outdoor pool is empty, there’s a
big pile of dirt and there’s a big pile of broken concrete to the side. I learn that the pool has a leak and is being
fixed “as fast as possible”. Yeah,
right, it’s Saturday night and I don’t see a moving body anywhere. No chance of being a “pool rat” and lounging
about the pool to relax. I head to my
room and lay flat on my back and watch (on my back? Okay, I listen to) two episodes of The
Sopranos. I’m physically tired, but I’m
wide awake after about 6 Diet-Cokes.
What to do? I wander down the
street and head into a “Del Taco” restaurant.
Must be common around here. “Del Taco” must be Spanish for “extremely
miserable, soupy burritos and half-cooked French fries”.
After choking down that mess,
I’m still wide awake and a bit bored.
Hmmm…this looks like an interesting place, “The Museum Club” on Route 66 in Flagstaff. It’s one of those places that play both kinds of music, country AND western! I mosey
on in. I see the band starting to set up
and wonder when they’re going to start.
I find out the band starts at 9.
Cool, it ought to be any minute, as I look at my watch and see that it’s
11 Eastern time,
I’m thinking that it’s 9PM here. 11PM
passes, I ask the barmaid, “Ummm…when does the band
start?” I’m told again, that it starts at nine.
Then I WHOP myself upside the forehead and remember
that Arizona does NOT follow
Daylight Savings Time (except for on the
Navajo reservation), so they are three hours behind Eastern time!!!
The band doesn’t start for ANOTHER hour yet. But by that time,
it will be midnight (Eastern time)
in my head and I’m already drop dead tired!
Phooey. Might as well
go back to the hotel and force myself to sleep to get up early and head for the
Grand Canyon!
Part 3: The Grand
Canyon, Sedona, and Germans.
Date 6/8/03
Miles: 235
Boy, oh boy, oh boy, I’m gonna see
the canyon, I’m gonna see the canyon!!! Well, this is what I’ve been waiting for all
this time, I’ve been wanting to see the Grand Canyon. I love going to see scenic places and all
that. I get up at 5AM local time
(8AM Eastern as I have now figured out this silly Arizona time
change thingy), chow down on four Pop Tarts, and start heading up highway 180
north/northwest out of town. But before
I even get out of the city limits, I see…ELK!!! In a residential neighborhood on the edge of
town, there’s eight elks (whazza plural of elk,
“elks”?) standing by the side of the road.
I guess Saturns aren’t very scary to elk, they might have headed for the hills if I came
in the Aztek.
I snap a couple of pictures of them and continue on towards the Grand
Canyon.
For every 5 miles afterwards I keep seeing signs, “WATCH FOR
ELK”. I never see another elk the rest
of the trip.
I reach Tusayan, a small tourist
stop just south of the west entrance of the park, a little after 7AM local time. I have not seen a Sausage McMuffin
this expensive since I went to Hawaii. Geez…
It’s $20 to enter the park, you get
a map, and a big “Howdy!” from Herbert the Leering Park Ranger. Oh, he’s probably safe,
he just looks as though someone glued his
eyelids WIDE OPEN.
It’s 7:30
and I finally reach Mather Point at the Grand
Canyon. Wow, what a big
hole in the ground!
I’m snapping pics with the digital
camera and I hear behind me,
“Wimmern! Eine was für grosse
Bohrung im Boden!” German
tourists! I guess they don’t have something
like this to look at in Europe. There’s tourists of many nationalities here,
but of course I’ve noticed one thing:
Why is it that us crazy Americans pose
for pictures in front of the canyon like we’re going to do something
stupid, like simulate falling over the railing or pretending to jump off the
edge of the cliff into the canyon?
European tourists mostly take pictures of the canyon itself and not of
each other. American
tourists make a “Look Ma, watch this!” kind of dangerous pose just to show how
cute and stupid we are.
At several viewing points along the canyon rim, there is bus
parking, but I only see Japanese tourists come
off these busses. They all look like
they’re going to go shopping at an upscale mall (nice shoes, slacks, dresses,
etc). They don’t realize that it’s
mid-80-degrees for temperatures, fairly windy and dusty, and the elevation is
7200 feet all along the south rim. They
all make their way over to the canyon railing, all chanting (and out of
breath):
“ワウ! 地面のなんと大きい穴! ”
You can drive west in the part as far as the Grand Canyon
village, then you either have to walk or take a shuttle train to get to points
along the rim west of there. By the time
I got to the village, it was 9AM and
it was already starting to turn into bumper-to-bumper traffic. So I started heading east along the rim and
stopped at many points.
There are lots of signs warning you not to feed the animals in the park, like
the birds, squirrels, and lizards. But
the squirrels are on to this. So they
are very friendly, do tricks, make lots of cute poses, and play Three-card
Monty with the tourists trying to get rewarded with food.
By the time I get to the
visitor center at the east side of the park, it’s well
after 10AM and the place is jammed. Whoever made the claim that we (in the U.S.)
are “loving our national parks to death” is correct. Yeah, this was a Sunday that I visited the Grand
Canyon, but I was informed by the
rangers and the other park personnel that it’s pretty much like this during the
week as well. They are planning on
completing their shuttle rail system over the next couple of years with the possibility of limiting cars altogether
from driving through the park to the observation points.
Anyway, the squirrels have moved to a zone defense, trying
to accost anybody and any human carrying anything that might be edible, like
paper bags, camera batteries, and small
children. They hop onto the Saturn and
notice the Pop Tarts in the front seat.
Two squirrels start looking for a coat hanger.
I pick up some worthless
trinkets, t-shirts for the ducklings and a metal
horse sculpture for MrsDuck (she collects those kinds
of things), which I discover is $10 more expensive here than in Fruita, Colorado.
I escape from the park, heading out on Highway 64 towards Cameron. I am greeted by hundreds of cars, but the
trip is smooth sailing and quick with no cars ahead of me
in my lane. But I discover what I think
might be the second highest grossing economic activity in Arizona: Selling cheap trinkets and blankets by the
side of the road. By the time
I get to Cameron, I’ve passed by about 20 of
these (in 20 miles).
At the intersection of 64 and Highway 89, I see a white
Chevy Cavalier pulled off to the side of the road, a young couple is changing
the right rear tire, probably having been sabotaged by the above mentioned
squirrels for not paying “protection
money” while in the park. I almost
continue driving, but seeing that it’s hot out and approaching high noon, I
turned around and looked to see if I can help.
“Howdy!”
“Eez there tire fixing place near
and open today, thank you?”
MORE Germans! I see
that the Cavalier is a rental and all they have to work with is the cheap-@$$
scissors jack and pot metal tire wrench.
“Well, maybe back in Flagstaff,
you MIGHT find a shop that’s open. Since
today is Sunday, it may be hard” (As I say very slowly, but for all I know they
know English better than I do.)
“Fluch! Verfluchte preiswerte, lousy amerikanische
Autos, faule amerikanische Mechaniker!”
“Um. Well, would you like some
help?”
“Nein, nein. Sie stürzen vermutlich
ein und Würfel eines Herzangriffs und Ihrer dummen amerikanischen Familie
klagt uns!”
“Um. How about a can of ‘fix-a-flat’?” as I show
them the can.
“Nein, nein. Ihre
preiswerten amerikanischen Spraydosen beschädigen den Ozon und töten uns alle!”
I get the “Nein” bit, just wondering if they don’t trust me
or something.
“Um. How about some
bottled water?”
“Nein, nein. Ihre amerikanischen Firmen füllten
vermutlich gerade herauf ein Bündel
Kuhpiss ab.”
“Um….okay. Take care!
Don’t get too hot!”
“Danke….(dummer Amerikaner!)” as he mutters something
under this breath.
Well, I tried doing my “good deed for the day”. Back down to Flagstaff
for lunch. Maybe head down to
Sedona. I stop at Del Taco again, hoping
maybe it was just a bad batch of food on a Saturday night. Wrong.
It still sucks. HOW can you screw
up nachos?
I head down Highway 89A, going down Oak
Creek Canyon
towards Sedona. Of course, I wonder why
it is named “Oak
Creek Canyon” as I
don’t see any oaks and I don’t see the creek.
All I see is the back bumper of two bluehairs
driving a big-@$$ Oldsmobile at 10 MPH in front of me
for 25 miles. Fortunately, I’m going
slow enough to see lots of fantastic scenery.
The driver of the Porsche behind me,
though, is having kittens because of our breakneck pace of 10, later slowing
down to 8, MPH.
I get to Sedona.
However, the eastern third of Sedona now resembles most any tourist trap
town like Frankenmuth, Wisconsin
Dells, Gatlinburg, or Branson. Except I don’t expect to see Yakov Smirnoff
trying to sell Jeep tours. (“Hey, you! We get
into Jeep, we go up mountain, we nearly fall off cliff, scare you so you
pee-pee in pants, I charge you $50, WHAT A COUNTRY!”) I check out some
of the shops, see that their overpriced trinkets and t-shirts are even more
overpriced than at the Grand Canyon. Even though there’s more to Sedona than this
tourist trap area, I decide to head back by going up I-17.
I’m already a little tired of fast food,
just 3 days into the trip, so back in Flagstaff
I drop into Bun Huggers, a hamburger joint and bar, somewhat
similar to Fuddruckers (customize your own burger). After I down a “big hug” (a large
cheeseburger named after a Teletubby
activity) and make fun of Jenna, the barmaid, I head back to the hotel to rest
up for the next day’s long drive.
Part 4: Off to the Arches (and NOT McDonalds!)
Date 6/9/03
Miles: 450
I get up at the crack of dawn, whenever that is. (My watch says 8:00,
the local time is 5AM,
unless you’re a Navajo, then it’s 6AM, and …..aaaaah,
ferget it!!!!)
I have a quiet and serene ride at 70MPH on Highway 89 (Arizona
2-lane roads allow you to cruise at 65), then up Highway 180 to Kayenta. “Kayenta” must be a Navajo word for “impoverished outpost of
something that poses for civilization”. It’s not bad, it
just seemed kinda
deserted for 10AM on a Monday
morning.
Here, I had to decide whether to head due north on 163
towards Monument Valley, Moab, and Arches
National Park, OR continue on 160 over to Teec Nos Pos, the four corners, and onto Durango and Ouray via
the Million Dollar Highway. I flipped a
coin. It fell on the ground, rolled
across the parking lot of the Burger King, and into the ditch.
Oh well. I decided on
the former and not the latter as I had never
been to Monument Valley,
Moab and all that.
But the choice was well worth it. I head north out of Kayenta
into Monument
Valley. Monument
Valley is the area you see in
DOZENS of cowboy movies, where the main character trudges across the desert,
walks past a humongous ROCK sticking up about 400 feet from the valley floor,
then he gets shot and dies (and wins an Academy Award). Anyway I stopped and took some
pictures and headed into Utah.
The geology and topography of southeastern Utah
(State #9) is fascinating. Being a born
flatlander (born in Iowa), I can
stare at these big humongous rocks and cliffs for hours. I soon arrive in Moab,
where all of a sudden, it’s Sedona again, but on a smaller scale. I didn’t stop as I didn’t know how long I’d
be at Arches National
Park. It’s
a Monday afternoon, and there’s a considerable CROWD trying to drive into
Arches. Red rocks, red dirt, red pieces
of sandstone perched on top of other red rocks, somehow
defying gravity.
I walk over to the trail to get a long distance view of Delicate
Arch, and I hear behind me:
“Betrachten Sie
alle jene grossen roten Felsen!!!”
I guess they don’t have these in Germany
either. I don’t actually walk UP TO
Delicate Arch as the trail is 3 miles long, 500 feet up, NO shade, and it’s
already mid-ninety degrees there in the park.
But looking through the viewfinder in my camera,
I can see some silly fools that have actually
made it up there. And I see a few more tumble back down the trail.
There are several arches all around the park, some
of which you have to hike a mile or so to see easily. I visit most of them and leave. Again, I’m a little disappointed because it’s
only a MONDAY, and the park is crowded and it’s almost bumper-to-bumper traffic
inside the park. It’s mid-afternoon, so
I thought I would play it safe and head to Grand Junction
or Fruita, Colorado
to spend the night.
I get up to I-70 and figure I can get to Fruita
in an hour.
All of sudden, there’s a brownish cloud in FRONT of me! DUST STORM!
Well, I treat it like fog and I slow down a bit. Fortunately, traffic was light.
I arrive in Fruita,
Colorado (how it got its name,
I’ll never know) and check into a Comfort Inn (State #10). At this stage of the trip, my eyes are only
trained to see TWO signs “Indoor Pool” and “Hot Tub”. Finally. I check in and mention
to the front clerk that I just came from Moab
and the arches. He makes a point of
noting that Moab
might be the only pocket of politically sensible people in the state. Huh? I
imagine he must have had a bad experience with Mormons or something,
but I don’t egg him on…
After so many miles in the saddle, the pool is great. I’m starved so just outside the hotel is (1)
a McDonald’s and (2) a Chinese restaurant.
Guess which one I choose. At the
end of the meal, the fortune cookie I get
reads, “You resemble a famous historical figure.” Wonder what that means. There is a gift shop next door, again with
trinkets and t-shirts that are about 1/3 the price of what you would pay at the
Grand Canyon.
I’ve just about gotten presents for everyone, but I see an “Official Red
Dirt” t-shirt, a t-shirt that has had a ton of red dirt beaten into it to give
it a rusty red color. On the back it
says, “Older Than Dirt”. Immediately,
I think of my mother-in-law and I get the shirt for her.
I head back to the hotel and call it a night.
Part 5: Too much fun in Kearney, Nebraska
Date: 6/10/03
Miles: 610
Now for some more exciting
driving. I-70 through Colorado
has to be the most scenic interstate highway in the country, however, I-70 in Kansas
makes up for it in boredom. Well, I’m
not staying on I-70 for that long. The
plan is to bop across I-70 to Denver,
then I-76 to Nebraska, and onto
I-80 for as far as I can stand it. I get
up, put on my t-shirt and shorts, hop in the Saturn and off I go. I figure I’d cover a lot of ground before
stopping for breakfast. The Pop Tart
supply is running low. It’s a fast and
scenic, but quiet, trip. “Quiet”? Yes.
The scan function on the car radio will sit and run for 15 minutes at a
time while you’re driving through canyons and
valleys, picking up NO radio stations, just fuzz and static. (My favorite channel!)
I stop in Dillon and hop out of the car. BRRRRRRRRR!
GEEZ %&$@+%*#&$* IT’S COLD HERE!!!!! I forget that Fruita
is at an elevation of 4500 feet, while Dillon is at 9000 feet! I RUN into the
McDonalds, nab a bite and RUN back to the car.
I soon arrive in Denver,
the epitome of “sprawl” and overdevelopment. I get on I-76 and notice that things (buildings,
houses, stores) are being built out further from Denver. Pretty soon, Ogalala, Nebraska
will be considered a suburb of Denver. Geeeez…
I’m back on I-80 in Nebraska
(State #11), familiar territory as I’ve driven this way several times. But it’s getting way boring, so I stop in Kearney
and look for “Indoor Pool” and “Hot Tub” signs again. But I also spot the sign “Live Music” along
with the two other signs at a Ramada Inn.
I originally figured I’d be a pool rat, then
crash in the hotel room and nothing more.
“Live Music”?
Okay. On a
Tuesday? In
THIS cow town? (Then again I
forget that almost ALL Nebraska
towns are “cow towns”.)
Inside the Ramada are TWO bars, one is the “Elephant’s Eye”,
the other, “Maxwell’s Live”. The first
bar, positioned next to the pool is for those who wish to get drunk and get
wet, sometimes
simultaneously. I avoid that and check
out Maxwell’s Live. $1 dollar Busch Lite’s. I can handle that. No cover charge. Even better. The band tonight: House O’ Hair. Uh-oh.
Actually, it was really quite good. Or that is I think it was, after the first
six Busch Lite’s, my judgment
COULD be a little cloudy. Was that me
on the floor after the second set, bowing and yelling, “WE’RE NOT WORTHY! WE’RE NOT
WORTHY!”??? I don’t remember. House O’ Hair is a great bar band that
specializes in ‘70’s, ‘80’s, and ‘90’s hair band (hard rock) music, playing
everything from ZZTop to Guns and Roses to Motley Crue to Nine Inch Nails.
After the first set, I got talking with the bassist (Pat) and the lead
singer (Danny), just all the usual “band crap” talk. This was going good until Danny mentioned,
“Hey, you look kinda like Jerry Garcia!” I didn’t quite take that as a compliment,
but after one too many beers, I wasn’t in the mood to complain. All in all, the band was very good. I crawled back to my room after the third set
and called it a night.
Hey, wait a minute.
What did that fortune cookie say?
A “famous historical figure”? Not what I had in mind. Screw it.
I’m going to bed.
Part 6: The long way home.
Date: 6/11/03
Miles: 890
I wake up. Having
forgotten to set the alarm clock, it’s well after 8AM local time. Considering the fun I had last night, I’m
surprised I didn’t wake up at NOON. (Why are my pants on my head?)
After about 6 aspirin and 4 Pop Tarts (or was that 4 aspirin
and 6 Pop Tarts?, whatever), I check out and start the
long trip home. I had called MrsDuck
to tell her where I was and she assured me
that if I really needed to, I could stop at another place overnight and come
home safely the next day. Naaaah. I’m outta Pop Tarts.
Fortunately, the Diet Coke supply holds and I’ve ingested enough caffeine
to make Nebraska and Iowa
more tolerable.
I had attempted to go from Kearney
and try to drive as far as I could on one tank of gas. I managed to get as far as Davenport,
Iowa, 496 miles (State #12). I almost could have succeeded in NOT setting
foot in Iowa, had the “low fuel”
idiot light not been screaming at me since the
Walcott exit.
On this particular week, the State of Illinois
decides to rip up and replace TEN bridges on I-80 between Moline
and Joliet. (I counted.)
It put me into the tail end of the rush
hour near Gary, Indiana. It’s just a “race” of sorts just to get home
as soon as possible, not necessarily to see anything scenic. Just getting home.
I get home just before midnight.
Here’s what I accomplished.
12 states in 6 days (MI, IN, IL, MO, OK, TX, NM, AZ, UT, CO,
NE, IA),
172 digital camera
pictures,
4071 miles,
129 gallons of gas, (Averaged 31.5 MPG.)
5 Sausage McMuffins,
24 Bottles of Diet Coke,
6 Bottles of Dasani,
A dozen or so beers,
And 36 Pop Tarts.
Copyright 2003, www.misterduck.net