It wouldn't be right
for me to leave on a new adventure without finishing the first. So let me do that here, in abbreviated form:
Road Trippin-Day 8: Really pretty things
Santa Fe to Williams, Arizona, via Albuquerque, the petrified forest and painted desert (is anyone else confused by where the heck we got our pronunciation for "Albuquerque" from?). We had also planned to see the meteor crater, but didn't make it before sunset. We stopped by my friend Jared's (from Georgetown) house on a reservation, which was cool. The roads were on open plans surrounded by huge cliffs in the distance. It was beautiful. The brush and grasses were rainbow-colored, and the sky was always full of distant storms. (That night we got to watch a lightning storm from afar.) We supplemented the beauty by listening to "Goodnight and Go" and "Hide and Seek" on repeat for the entire drive (and well into the next morning, too).
On the way to the national forest (they trapped all the pretty stuff along a road that you have to pay to drive on) we stopped at a crazy place called Stewart's Petrified Wood that lured us in with insane signage and the promise of free petrified wood. Of course, when we got there it was just a tiny piece given to the driver of the car, but whatever. :) I bought a lot of petrified wood for cheap that I plan to take to a lapidary and cut/polish myself someday. I also bought a meteorite and some agate. The great thing about Stewart's is that they had ostriches there, and a big sign that said "Caution! Ostrich Bite!" that if taken not as a general statement with Ostrich pretending to be plural, is very funny.
The Painted Desert was really cool, especially because we were also in a dust storm and the winds were really high. Unfortunately it was overcast so the colors were dulled. A lot of bumpy little hills looking almost like cindercones made of layers of richly colored sediment. Reds, pinks, whites, even blues and purples. The petrified forest was cool because it was pretty much just chunks of log lying around that happened to have gorgeous mineral patterns growing inside. I'll post pictures when I get back. Or maybe before I leave today.
Then we stayed at a tiny motel and slept for three hours.
Road Trippin-Day 9 1/2: The day of dooooom
We woke up at 3:30am and I drove us to the Grand Canyon. We were about an hour early, so we sat around in blankets listening to foreign tourists (some Portuguese, some Japanese, some British). Sadly the opposite ridge was higher than the horizon so the whole sky was light before we saw the sun peek over the edge. Seeing the sunlight spill onto the cliffs across the canyon, turning slivers of orange light into brilliant washes, was something else. Once the big show had finished, we got our cereal out of the car and had breakfast on a bench. Then I drank a several month old sugar free Red Bull so I could make the rest of the drive. We drove along the canyon for a while, and personally I found the non-primary views more interesting. I also preferred views where the canyon narrowed so it looked more like a canyon than a mountain range surrounded by cliffs. (I didn't expect the bottom to be so mountainous...guess I was expecting something more like The Lion King.) The drive away from the canyon was absolutely gorgeous, surrounded by the Marble Cliffs and things. (Take the 89 Alternate!! Get off the main highway!) We crossed the Colorado River, which was bright green. Up at the north ridge of the GC we saw the biggest milkshakes we've ever seen...basically soft serve in a giant drinking cup.
The road to Zion was again surrounded by storms...gorgeous. Actually getting into Zion felt like being Mario in the giant level. You'd seen strange colored hills approaching, and then suddenly you were in the middle of richly colored sandstone monsters rising up on either side of you as your road snaked between them. Most of the park views were only visible by taking their shuttle bus up the canyon, but we only had time to stop off at one place (some little waterfalls). All the really pretty stuff required hours of strenuous hiking. We did see some wild turkeys, though. Then when we left we saw a fire that had been started by lightning.
The plan for the rest of the day was to stop in Vegas, see it, play the nickel slots with 5 dollars, stay in Vegas, drive home sunday. We got to Vegas, stopped at a gas station, got creeped out by the people there, spent an hour in traffic on the strip, saw ridiculously elaborate casinos, got scared by the seediness of it all and my dad's warnings of chronic gamblers stumbling drunkly through the halls of nearby cheap motels, and decided to stay in the next town over (this was at 9pm). So we went one more exit. Nothing but restaurants and a casino hotel. One more exit, still nothing. Got back on the highway, then complete darkness and the sign: the next exits were 15 and 30 miles away. The only exits. Okay...so we drove 15 miles, no motels. Just darkness. 15 miles later, still nothing. It's okay, we'll find something at the next exit. Then all of a sudden WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA! Ack! What? We didn't even stop the car in Nevada, let alone send a postcard? Ack! The sign: Next exit: 40 miles. Next exit after that: 60 more miles! Gah! What? How can there be NOTHING here? I'm freaking out because I'm so tired I can't stay awake for another hour and a half to make sure Kina doesn't fall asleep (we did wake up at 3:30 that morning after all) and I just want to stop driving and sleep and I'm mad and frustrated. We can't even get off the highway to turn around because there's a concrete median and no exits! We drive 40 miles, no decent motels, but a few gross ones. Is this even possible? So we stop there, in Baker, CA, check out the one motel there, find out it's expensive and super sketchy, so we go to the Denny's down the street to recoup. What are our options? Drive 60 miles to Barstow and stay there (because once we get into LA there's no way two girls are staying in a cheap motel alone, pepper spray or no), or drive all the way home. The latter option makes sense if we can stay awake (we'd get home around 2:30am), but it's lame because it's so anticlimactic. We'd get home, someone would be up, "how was your trip," "fine I'll tell you about it tomorrow," check email, go to bed. A day early. Lame. Plus I wanted to cut my hair and wash the car first. So what we did was this: called my parents, told them we were sleeping in barstow. Had coffee at Denny's and went crazy on caffeine. Bought energy drinks. Kina drove all the way home, we slept on her boyfriend's couch. Then we woke up, ate our cereal (from real bowls this time), cleaned out the car, washed it, cut my hair, got iced chais, and went home. Then told them we actually had been in town all day. Not a huge surprise, but a clever solution to the problem, I felt.
So that was the trip, not so abbreviated, I apologize. Sorry for the shift in tense. I'll be back one more time to say goodbye before I go.
Road Trippin-Day 8: Really pretty things
Santa Fe to Williams, Arizona, via Albuquerque, the petrified forest and painted desert (is anyone else confused by where the heck we got our pronunciation for "Albuquerque" from?). We had also planned to see the meteor crater, but didn't make it before sunset. We stopped by my friend Jared's (from Georgetown) house on a reservation, which was cool. The roads were on open plans surrounded by huge cliffs in the distance. It was beautiful. The brush and grasses were rainbow-colored, and the sky was always full of distant storms. (That night we got to watch a lightning storm from afar.) We supplemented the beauty by listening to "Goodnight and Go" and "Hide and Seek" on repeat for the entire drive (and well into the next morning, too).
On the way to the national forest (they trapped all the pretty stuff along a road that you have to pay to drive on) we stopped at a crazy place called Stewart's Petrified Wood that lured us in with insane signage and the promise of free petrified wood. Of course, when we got there it was just a tiny piece given to the driver of the car, but whatever. :) I bought a lot of petrified wood for cheap that I plan to take to a lapidary and cut/polish myself someday. I also bought a meteorite and some agate. The great thing about Stewart's is that they had ostriches there, and a big sign that said "Caution! Ostrich Bite!" that if taken not as a general statement with Ostrich pretending to be plural, is very funny.
The Painted Desert was really cool, especially because we were also in a dust storm and the winds were really high. Unfortunately it was overcast so the colors were dulled. A lot of bumpy little hills looking almost like cindercones made of layers of richly colored sediment. Reds, pinks, whites, even blues and purples. The petrified forest was cool because it was pretty much just chunks of log lying around that happened to have gorgeous mineral patterns growing inside. I'll post pictures when I get back. Or maybe before I leave today.
Then we stayed at a tiny motel and slept for three hours.
Road Trippin-Day 9 1/2: The day of dooooom
We woke up at 3:30am and I drove us to the Grand Canyon. We were about an hour early, so we sat around in blankets listening to foreign tourists (some Portuguese, some Japanese, some British). Sadly the opposite ridge was higher than the horizon so the whole sky was light before we saw the sun peek over the edge. Seeing the sunlight spill onto the cliffs across the canyon, turning slivers of orange light into brilliant washes, was something else. Once the big show had finished, we got our cereal out of the car and had breakfast on a bench. Then I drank a several month old sugar free Red Bull so I could make the rest of the drive. We drove along the canyon for a while, and personally I found the non-primary views more interesting. I also preferred views where the canyon narrowed so it looked more like a canyon than a mountain range surrounded by cliffs. (I didn't expect the bottom to be so mountainous...guess I was expecting something more like The Lion King.) The drive away from the canyon was absolutely gorgeous, surrounded by the Marble Cliffs and things. (Take the 89 Alternate!! Get off the main highway!) We crossed the Colorado River, which was bright green. Up at the north ridge of the GC we saw the biggest milkshakes we've ever seen...basically soft serve in a giant drinking cup.
The road to Zion was again surrounded by storms...gorgeous. Actually getting into Zion felt like being Mario in the giant level. You'd seen strange colored hills approaching, and then suddenly you were in the middle of richly colored sandstone monsters rising up on either side of you as your road snaked between them. Most of the park views were only visible by taking their shuttle bus up the canyon, but we only had time to stop off at one place (some little waterfalls). All the really pretty stuff required hours of strenuous hiking. We did see some wild turkeys, though. Then when we left we saw a fire that had been started by lightning.
The plan for the rest of the day was to stop in Vegas, see it, play the nickel slots with 5 dollars, stay in Vegas, drive home sunday. We got to Vegas, stopped at a gas station, got creeped out by the people there, spent an hour in traffic on the strip, saw ridiculously elaborate casinos, got scared by the seediness of it all and my dad's warnings of chronic gamblers stumbling drunkly through the halls of nearby cheap motels, and decided to stay in the next town over (this was at 9pm). So we went one more exit. Nothing but restaurants and a casino hotel. One more exit, still nothing. Got back on the highway, then complete darkness and the sign: the next exits were 15 and 30 miles away. The only exits. Okay...so we drove 15 miles, no motels. Just darkness. 15 miles later, still nothing. It's okay, we'll find something at the next exit. Then all of a sudden WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA! Ack! What? We didn't even stop the car in Nevada, let alone send a postcard? Ack! The sign: Next exit: 40 miles. Next exit after that: 60 more miles! Gah! What? How can there be NOTHING here? I'm freaking out because I'm so tired I can't stay awake for another hour and a half to make sure Kina doesn't fall asleep (we did wake up at 3:30 that morning after all) and I just want to stop driving and sleep and I'm mad and frustrated. We can't even get off the highway to turn around because there's a concrete median and no exits! We drive 40 miles, no decent motels, but a few gross ones. Is this even possible? So we stop there, in Baker, CA, check out the one motel there, find out it's expensive and super sketchy, so we go to the Denny's down the street to recoup. What are our options? Drive 60 miles to Barstow and stay there (because once we get into LA there's no way two girls are staying in a cheap motel alone, pepper spray or no), or drive all the way home. The latter option makes sense if we can stay awake (we'd get home around 2:30am), but it's lame because it's so anticlimactic. We'd get home, someone would be up, "how was your trip," "fine I'll tell you about it tomorrow," check email, go to bed. A day early. Lame. Plus I wanted to cut my hair and wash the car first. So what we did was this: called my parents, told them we were sleeping in barstow. Had coffee at Denny's and went crazy on caffeine. Bought energy drinks. Kina drove all the way home, we slept on her boyfriend's couch. Then we woke up, ate our cereal (from real bowls this time), cleaned out the car, washed it, cut my hair, got iced chais, and went home. Then told them we actually had been in town all day. Not a huge surprise, but a clever solution to the problem, I felt.
So that was the trip, not so abbreviated, I apologize. Sorry for the shift in tense. I'll be back one more time to say goodbye before I go.
posted by Sassafrassy at 10:46 AM
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