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- Cooch, on retarded geography at Lake Havasu. |
 Into The Nothing • At 8:25 a.m., after struggling through a Sav-On drug store to find camera batteries, film and ice, the two idiots made their way on Interstate 5, thus beginning the trek that would change their lives forever. Or something like that, just not as poetic. Still, once we cleared the Anaheim route we'd used the night before to go to the Angels game and entered "the 909," things became very real. Cooch: "News flash. We now are doing this." Once we left the L.A. area, the landscape became full-out desert quickly, covered with the disgusting scrub brush that dominated the next 1,000 miles. Mmm, scrub brush. Having never been west of Chicago, I'd never seen anything looking even remotely like this. So naturally, I just start taking pictures of everything, pictures I full well know won't come out to look anything like the landscape I'm looking at. I could sense the disdainful looks coming from the elderly on the tour busses going to Vegas. There are two kinds of towns in the California desert: purely for the sake of the discussion, let's call them "Ludlow, California" and "Barstow, California" - straight up hypothetical though, I assure you. Barstow is the "Strip Mall Paradise" - a town solely in existence to get people to waste money on crap and save anyone who needs gas, because you can be damn sure the only thing for the next 150 miles is grifters, sand and skeletal remains. Ludlow is the "Bathroom With Benefits" - smaller than a Barstow, featuring a bustling downtown of a gas station ["Chevron"] and an eponymous motel run by an old guy in a cowboy hat. The sad thing is, the lack of things other than mountains on I-40 through SoCal means that for 200+ miles, all the road signs point to places just as these. Our first gas stop came in Needles, really the last town in California and a Barstow-style "SMP." However, it featured a business loop of the highway... couldn't figure that one out. Turned out it would be the trip's most pricey gas stop (@ $1.79 per), but it was also my first hot dog on the trip. Hey, is there any cuisine better than a gas station hot dog on a sweltering day in the desert? Don't answer that. Just after noontime, the CRV passed over the Colorado River into Arizona, where it's the heat, the humidity, the tumbleweeds, all of it. Dry heat my ass. Yeah, it doesn't feel like the 135 degrees it really is, but it still feels like my innards were being baked to a flaky golden brown. Lake Havasu City has become a desert oasis of sorts, frequented by Spring Breakers and weary travelers wanting to look at some obscenely blue water in the middle of a red desert. I wanted to go to see London Bridge, because hey, it's British and that's my thing. As we rolled into the resort town, I could not avoid how ugly everything was. And the lake looks fake, or dyed... kind of like Cher. And finding the Bridge, well, that was a whole other kind of fun: Havasu Park Ranger: "Sure. You're gonna want to turn around, head to the coast, get on a boat, go about 10,000 miles across the Atlantic and head up to London." All I could think to say was thank you. With his help, we did eventually find London Bridge, sitting over an inlet of the lake and surrounded by kitschy Brit shops. Meg found a bathroom, because apparently, having gone three other times in the past five hours wasn't enough. Arizona is barren like outer California, but comes across as a much prettier state, maybe just because I like John McCain. I found it funny that there were several washes (rivers) that passed under the road, yet not a one of them had even a drop of water in them. The only standing water in the whole state was on a golf course, and let me tell you, when you've been looking at sand for eleventeen hours, grass seems much greener. I saw a tumbleweed. You have no idea how excited I got about that - I almost stopped to touch it. Once we got to Williams, within striking distance of the Canyon, the scenery got much greener. The Canyon sits near a national forest, so my shock at "all the damn trees" proves I'm retarded. It was at this point, while stopping for gas again, that we began to realize thinking about finding a hotel would be a good idea. Planning to stay near the Grand Canyon? It's not cheap, hell, it's not even kinda cheap. However, I forgive them. It's $20 to get into the National Park, but it was worth every damn penny. Hell, they could charge $50 and I'd probably pay it. It's rare when I'm genuinely amazed by something, but this would be one of those times. You're driving in on the access road, and there's trees all around so you see nothing. But when you get out of your car and walk past the edge of the trees, it's just there. Right out in front of you, drops of thousands of feet, rock layers, all of it. We got there right when the sun was setting, and it was outstanding. Blubbering words can't even describe it - it made the entire trip through the hell of Arizona absolutely worth it. Plus, the danger signs were really funny. When we finally left the Canyon, it was pitch black, and our best option was to drive off route 130 miles to Page, Ariz., near the Utah border. There, the glow of Motel 6 would welcome us, blah blah blah. I'd been driving nearly all day, and I felt up to it, so off we went into the wilderness. And I do mean wilderness. About 10 miles outside the park grounds, we just pulled the car over to the side of the road, turned everything off and got out. Black. Complete black, other than the stars and a lightning storm off in the distance. I thought I'd seen a lot of stars in Feeding Hills... you have no idea. There was no civilization for 20 miles in all directions around us, not even as much as a street light, and here we are on the edge of a cliff looking out into nothing. I have never been so scared in my life, because all I could think about was what would happen if the car broke down out here. Back to that lightning storm. Funny thing about lightning off in the distance... when you're driving 130 miles, it's amazing how lightning off in the distance becomes lightning hitting next to your car. About 2/3rds of the way to Page, things got real ugly. Like, Wizard of Oz ugly. Bear in mind the only light we have is the car headlights and the occasional blast from God, and bear in mind we're pushing close to 8,000 feet above sea level through these mesas and canyons lining the edge of the roads. And here we are trucking along in this metal box, which in many places was the highest point for miles. I suspect she was scared. I also suspect I was more scared, with the whole breaking down fear mixing with the being cooked alive fear and the driving off a cliff fear. What can I say, I'm like a toddler. It was still a cool storm to drive through in hindsight. Plus we lived, got to the Motel 6, watched Letterman and went to bed. Just the way we planned it. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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AOL IM: JonCoochBU |
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