Day 4: The Road Less Traveled

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Driving Cross Country - August 29th to September 6th
From: Las Vegas, NV
To: Albuquerque, NM

Five States Traveled:
Nevada
Arizona
Utah
Colorado
New Mexico

Total mileage: 714 miles
Total mileage to date: 1,281 miles

We get up and are out of the hotel by about 9 AM. Driving out of Vegas, we drive through the older and seedier portions of the city. There's a dense block of adult video and bookstores for several miles, interspersed with little "theme" motels that rent out by the hour. Yikes. You can get anything you want in Vegas if you have the money... except a cure for syphilis and genital warts. I think I'll start a modern VD clinic and make a killing.

We leave Nevada and drive through a corner of Arizona into Utah. We're trying to find a liquor store so that we can have a beer in Utah, which tightly controls beer sales. As we're heading into Zion National Park, we see one sign and immediately pull over to be rewarded by a six-pack of Polygamy Porter. Brewed in Park City, UT, this fine porter has the mottos "Why have just one" and "Bring some home for the wives." Hee hee. A good chuckle was had by all.

We head into Zion and wow. Driving up through the switchbacks in the mountains, the view is absolutely incredible. The roads are paved with brick-red asphalt to blend into the hillsides and there's this long tunnel that was built in the early part of the 20th century that has cutouts every 50 yards so that you can see out of the mountain. At the last pullover in the park, we stop. Bug is on a mission to have a beer in every state in the continental U.S. He can cross Utah off the list. While Bug and LJ set up the tripod to take some pictures, I walked across the road and climbed up the hill a bit to get a wider angle shot. I kept both eyes wide open for snakes and other stuff on the way up, as I was wearing sandals.

After leaving Zion, we duck back down south into Arizona on these little two lane roads in the back country to head towards Four Corners. There was frequent cursing when trucks would slow us down. Bitches everywhere. :) We were playing tag with another Tahoe from Alaska for a few hundred miles until we pulled into a gas station and peeled out before they did. Ah. Open road.

As we ducked back into Arizona, we crossed Lake Powell and pulled off the road up to the top of this hill to take some photos of an absolutely gorgeous vista that covered the mountains, the lake, the dam, and skies dotted with clouds. In the distance, you could see rain falling and lightning bolts flashing out of a clear sky. God lives here. And if he doesn't, he at least has a P.O. box.

Looking at the map, I realized that all of these back roads were part of the Navajo nation. Now when I was kid, I read a few books on the various native american tribes. And I remember that the poor Hopi with their kachina dolls and rain dances used to try to grow corn in this area to scratch out a living. But they were always being raided by the nomadic and more warlike Navajo who would chase the Hopi up into their cliff-side dwellings and steal all of their ripened corn. Bastards. But on the map, the Hopi reservations are completely surrounded by the Navajo nation. Sigh. Some things never change. It would have been cool to swing by the Canyon de Chelly to see the cliff-side dwellings, some of which were inhabited 10,000 years ago, but it's too far out of the way.

Four Corners National Monument is where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Arizona share a common border. But by the time we get there, it's closed. It's on Navajo Nation land and they're lazy putzes who can't keep their friggin' stores open after sundown. So we go down the road about a mile to the "Welcome to Colorado" sign and make sure that we have a beer in Colorado. Check that state off. Then back onto the little winding roads to head into New Mexico. The sun is going down now and it's absolutely beautiful behind us. So I grab a camera and focus into the side passenger mirror and take a photo. The image looks like I was hanging way out the window. I'll have to remember that little trick.

It's dark now and LJ jumps into the driver seat to give Bug a break. Knight is so tired that his eyes are twitching involuntarily. To stay awake as we drive for five more hours through the darkness, we tune the XM radio to the comedy channels and laugh our way into Albuquerque. The desert at night is phenomenal. There's no highway lighting, minimal skyglow from cities, and a cooling breeze. The stars are clear and cover the entire night sky. You can see the Milky Way and Mars, which is especially close right now as a luminescent red dot rising in the eastern sky. Big sky land. Nice.

Larger cities start appearing just after we leave the Navajo Nation. When we pull into Albuquerque at around 11 PM, we hunt around for a hotel near the University. We finally find a hotel near the convention center, check in, stash our bags, and stroll out to find some food. We drive a few blocks to find a place that's open, realize that we could have walked, and park on the historic Route 66 route. This stretch of old downtown Albuquerque was renovated and now has coffee bars, tourist shops, and restaurants that cater to the nearby University of New Mexico. We sample a local brew but the kitchens are all closed so we jump back in the car to find a Wendy's or some other fast food place.

As we're walking to the car, we see several local police cars blowing down the street at high speed. Back in the car, we drive a few blocks and see five squad cars blocking the road. There's a traffic stop with five officers behind car doors pointing their service automatics at this guy who's stepped out of his car. Two other officers have shotguns pointed at him from fifteen feet away. They called in the clans for back-up on this guy. Maybe he has an outstanding warrant or something. The guy in the street has his hands up on his head and is carefully obeying every shouted command. So we detour around them and grab our burgers a few blocks away feeling like we just witnessed a "Cops" episode in the making. On the way back to the Doubletree hotel, we cruise by the traffic stop and see that the driver and passenger have been bundled into squad cars while crime scene technicians are tearing apart the trunk and searching inside the car.

Remind me never to piss off the police. They're the biggest gang in town, have faster cars, and can shoot you without going to jail. All you can do is cry like a little girl and beat yourself up so that you're not too pretty when you go into the holding tank with Big Bubba, who is 340 pounds, newly single, and has the words "poor impulse control" tattooed across his forehead. If you're going to jail, just get the officer to shoot you. Being hospitalized and handcuffed to the bed sounds better than sleeping on your stomach.

But I digress again. We went back to the hotel, snarfed our food, measured our cholesterol with much frowning, watched a bit of Robin Williams' antics in "Jumanji" and hit the hay hard.

 

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