In Albuquerque we ate a not-very-good-lunch in an open-air mall that looks like it was designed by Macaulay Culkin and Michael Jackson late in the evening at a 1992 sleepover. On the road out of town, a police SUV streaked by us on the shoulder, on its way to a traffic stop where five or six police vehicles had surrounded a grey sedan. I checked my iPhone and the Most Fucked Man app identified the sedan’s driver as the Most Fucked Man in the area at that time.
I’m from Arizona, and I can tell you that outside of the major cities, Arizona pretty much runs on a brisk trade of petrified wood and meteorites. Really, anything small, old, and hard that you can hock at a roadside stand. Very quickly after crossing into Arizona we passed a mile stretch that could be titled “cliché tourist Arizona in a nutshell,” an enormous (and seriously impressive) naturally occurring hole in the side of a cliff, with a tacky diorama of a Native American cliff dwelling inside. Above, on the lip of the cliff, lots of plastic animals, many of whom had been knocked over by the elements. Below, a mall of multi-colored Indian-souvenir shacks.
I was kind of shocked by the tons of dinosaurs in the early part of northeastern Arizona. By dinosaurs, I mean, depictions of dinosaurs as advertisements for fossil exhibits and gift-shops. Like all kids, I loved dinosaurs. How I wasn’t losing my shit more as a kid and demanding to be taken to northeastern Arizona is beyond me. I’m a little disappointed in myself, to be honest.
The road passed over many creeks. One of them was called Crazy Creek. The crazy thing about Crazy Creek is it doesn’t have any water in it.
We stopped at a gas station with a lot of food options. It smelled terrible inside in an odd way I couldn’t nail down. On my way to the restroom I decided that this gas station was on the site where they killed the last real buffalo after chasing it across six or seven counties. There are other buffalo, sure, but those are sell-out buffalo, content to live in pens on non-working tourist-only ranches and lick melted chocolate off of a fat kid’s hand. This was the last real fuck-off buffalo and when it went it cursed the spot where it died with a smell you can’t stand but also can’t identify. Then, on the way out of the bathroom, I noticed that there was a small Subway franchise in the rest stop, and identified the smell as your typical Subway smell, put through a couple of wacked-out effects pedals. I liked my explanation better.
That same rest stop was offering lollipops with scorpions inside. It was fun imagining a candy factory that also has to function as a scorpion-killery.
Back on the road, we passed a sign for a knife store called Knife City Outlet. Knife City is where all 1950’s leather-jacket movie-rebels are from. We passed through a one-street town called Meteor City. It seems like there are a lot of “Cities” in this part of AZ. If by some incredible confluence of circumstances a rapper emerged from one of these barely-towns, it would be really tough for that rapper to rep his city: “What y’all know about my city? I represent Meteor City! I see you, stoic Native American man who lingers outside his trailer! I ain’t forgot you, busted tire swing next to freestanding cinder-block wall! If you ain’t from Meteor City, you ain’t Carl or me or Frank or the other person I mentioned!”
Around Flagstaff, we start to see road signs showing the way to Los Angeles, but we veer of to Phoenix because we’re staying with my family. I am proud of Northern Arizona and its varied landscapes: two hours north of Phoenix, where my grandparents live, is all forest, and that’s pretty cool. At another rest stop, I see a seven-or-eight year old kid who looks like a POG Slammer come to life, very round with an image of a neon orange skull on a green background on his chest.
We get to my house right when the GPS said we would and my stepmom has made lasagna. My aunt and uncle and cousin are there as well as my dad and two little brothers and my brother’s girlfriend. My aunt says the weather isn’t hot enough and my friends aren’t getting the full experience. We have a nice meal, and sit and visit for a while afterwards. Then later we all break our laptops out and do work around a kitchen table. It’s a weird colliding of worlds for me and to be honest it’s great.
Six hours to Los Angeles.
TRAVEL JOINTS: Saves The Day - "Third Engine"
I know the exact hole-in-a-cliff you're talking about when I passed by it on a roadtrip myself. Did you manage to go into any of the shops? They sold the most fantastic collection of overpriced trinkets and miscellaneous bullshit paraphernalia. If you're ever in the market for jade necklaces and knifes with eagles etched into the handles, but don't want to visit multiple shops, the hole-in-the-side-of-a-cliff shops are your place.
Posted by: MattHAHAHA! POG slammer kid. If only that skull were holographic.
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