Ghosts

I’m not one to live in the present. I’m always planning ten moves ahead, or else I’m daydreaming in my seat, dwelling on the past. For all of the moments when I looked at my disheveled self in the mirror and thought my best days were behind me, I saw one thing above all others on my trip this summer that put everything in perspective. You see, as of press time, I’m still alive and kicking. What I came upon on an abandoned stretch of road had been dead for years, and the skeleton won’t be around many more in its present state.

The scene: Arizona, Route 66. Indian Country. A place where tourism centers around the romanticized highway of old: Instead of gift shops, there are trading posts. In place of souvenirs, curios. My brother had read about a popular haunt for American automobile history/tourism buffs. We exited Interstate 40 and turned onto a rough dirt path, took another turn and found ourselves on the old alignment of Route 66 before Eisenhower’s plans reached fruition. The narrow asphalt strip had been chipped away by the elements and sported an array of weeds and sagebrushes which had grown through its cracks. I winced more than a dozen times when hearing these things hit the undercarriage of my sedan. And then, 2.5 miles later. Shit, man. Shit. Would you look at that.

The Painted Desert Trading Post. A relic of the burgeoning U.S. highway system in all of its ancient splendor. A way station for the downtrodden making their Depression pilgrimage westward. A watering hole for postwar middle-class families en route to the Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Disneyland and beyond. And it clearly has been dead for a long, long time.

We exited the car (after positioning it back toward our point of entry and leaving it running in case of an encounter with brigands, highwaymen or property owners whose barbed wire and KEEP OUT signs we failed to notice) and slowly made our way into the building. No, structure. A building in this state would have been condemned and mercifully flattened decades ago. Inside, a broken television set. A piece of waste one brought for miles out here to dispose of, presuming that the final resting place of semi-indoors prevented it from being called “litter?” I goose-stepped gingerly across rotting boards and dust, fearing rattlesnakes but finding none. Ryan took a walk around the perimeter. My peripherals detected something galloping fewer than a hundred yards away outside one of the holes that was formerly a window. A deer, maybe? A feral cat? Didn’t see it again. A dozen minutes, maybe we spent. Mostly in silence. Nothing to be spoken that didn’t come from a running V6 engine, the occasional breeze or that staccato open-field buzz that’s either some kind of field insect… or that rattlesnake I came prepared for but never encountered. And the rumble of trucks on the interstate a scant two miles away. Checked my phone. Several bars worth of service, so at least there’s piece of mind of something went awry. Still, how the hell to direct someone out to where we were? The roof will surely cave in soon enough, and I don’t want to be underneath it when it does.

“You ready?”

“Huh.”

See it while you can, because age will take the Post from us sooner rather than later. It’s already caving and I’m anxious for the next time I come near Holbrook, for I may take that same ghost road, and may be severely disappointed with what I have found.

12 minutes inside part of American History. For something that dead, I never felt so alive.

Kaibabträume

Leaving Flagstaff on Thursday, I ventured farther north into Northern Arizona and the aforementioned dead area for my phone. Contrasting with last year was my car’s air conditioning choosing to work on this day along the Arizona Strip. I was going to try US 89 and see Page, Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell for the first time, but ample road construction had me at a standstill for 10 minutes so I finally u-turned over to 89A and resumed my preferred route up past the Vermilion Cliffs and up the Kaibab Plateau. I love the cliffs, but the much cooler temperatures of the higher-elevated plateau are my favorite part of 89A, especially in the vicinity of Jacob Lake. Here’s a video I took at the transition point between elevations.

Spent the rest of the day in Kanab, Utah and stopped for the night at Aiken’s Lodge, of all places. The next day began with a return trip to Pipe Spring National Monument in the Kaibab Paiute Nation and I ended up in St. George, Utah. I found a sixer of IPA from the local Zion Canyon Brewery at a gas station and later that evening drove all over Washington County (successfully) looking for more. The going-out would actually slow down over the weekend, as I was in Las Vegas but tired and sedentary staying at my brother’s house. Watching the Olympics insipred me to work myself over in his pool, but desert sun my ass. No tan to show for it.

Northern Arizona: Even better than advertised

Not that it gets much mention at all, but the northern half of Arizona is about as good a road trip as you are going to find in the Southwest. There are only two detractors here: The first is the US highway construction, but you’re going to find those tax dollars going to work on most major highways in this country. The second is the desolate feeling you may get: If not backed up waiting to pass an RV or boat on a narrow road, you could go a long while without seeing anyone else. Cell phone coverage may be zero for hours at a time, so bring plenty of water and make sure your car’s in good running condition (with a good running air conditioner!); lower clearance vehicles should also take heed that many of the less-traveled roads are gravel and dirt (/mud) and may want to stay off.

Of course there is the one city with everything you’ll need to stock up around here before taking that trip: Breathtaking Flagstaff, Arizona. A college town reminiscent of Boulder, only with more of a coniferous National Forest feel surrounding it, Flagstaff is growing rapidly and the roads are more crowded than I’d like to see in a city that still maintains fewer than five zip codes and sub-10 minute commute times to anywhere in the mailing address. My stay was on the Business Loop of I-40, which out West of course means Historic Route 66. Double-tracked railroad lines behind locales of cheap lodging are a must and I enjoy them where many otherwise jocund travelers would bemoan the train noise. But it’s part of the scene, I contend!

Flagstaff for me was an opportunity to reunite with two local sports radio personalities who had split since I last visited them a year ago and were now each hosting shows of their own. I received good information and a confidence boost that I was on the right track with my own endeavors such that I may one day reach their level of involvement in local high school and college sports broadcasting. Which is to say, not wildly popular or reaching a huge audience, but I never wanted to be the next ESPN so this would be a comfortable market and career result for me should I be as fortunate. Great city, even better networking.

Posting up in Denver

The biggest two day event around which I scheduled my two week trip came and went. I moved my cousin into a new house near her school, so Friday I was too busy to come into Denver for the Post’s Underground Music Showcase. Saturday, however, was all kinds of rock.

Saw a lot of great, promising and talented bands. There were ones I hadn’t seen (Red Orange Yellow, We Are! We Are!), ones I had (The Swayback, CAT-A-TAC) and a solo set from someone I’d seen in another band before (Jeff Suthers from Bright Channel). Talked a lot about the local music scene with Jeff and his musically-inclined friends after his show and enjoyed myself immensely.

Here’s some of Jeff at the Showcase.

Sunday and Monday were much tamer, though after meeting my friend Doug for lunch up in Golden he noticed smoke in the distance and guessed lightning may have caused a wildfire on Green Mountain. That’s pretty standard around this time of year when everything’s dry and the storms roll in. Problem is, I was staying at my aunt and uncle’s house in a subdivision at the base of said mountain. The entire afternoon and evening were full of excitement as I trekked up several hills to join a mass of gawkers at the flames and the firefighters/aircraft attempting to extinguish the blaze. At its closest it came about half a mile from where I was staying and eventually calmed, though not without getting me to smell like a barbecue.

Are the most exciting parts of road trips the unplanned ones? Probably.

High times on the High Plains

Boy, do I know this trip! I’ve got it down to a science, from neglecting to sleep the night before and driving double-digit hours straight to a destination, to gambling on passing up each Allsup’s or Loaf ‘N Jug for a service station with lower gas prices (87 octane rating is considered mid-grade and above in many places out west! And therefore, I must pay even more for petrol.) to deciding whether my hunger is great enough to counter the progress I’m making and stop at any number of DQ/brazier franchises along the way. And snapping photos of anything my eight year-old sense of humor finds funny.

What usually helps me survive these drives, besides the “Wake up!” rumble strips on highway shoulders, whose intended purpose I make good use of, is the aikPod and its bevy of rockin’ tunes, some of which I feel the need to share with the locals of particular hamlets on my route. I jacked some Neu! while passing through the main four-way stop in the Panhandle town of Stratford, figuring no one in the zip code had ever heard any Neu! before. No need to thank me. The shuffle then presented me with “Shout at the Devil,” which I generously cranked as well, as it probably was in heavy rotation in that town back in 1986 as starry-eyed local teens listened through car speakers as they sat on the hoods of their new Camaros; Camaros which to this day have probably moved but a few feet from the driveway to the front lawn… just as Junior probably never escaped his hometown when he grew older and is still living in the same house. Small-town blight both intrigues and depresses me, as I pass through many towns just like this one and step out of the car to take pictures of the erstwhile motels and cafes with boarded and broken windows and faded “VACANCY” signs, knowing full well no one in that town asked for it to be made a spectacle of.

And on that note, I made a stop someplace I hadn’t before. Today I went as far as Eads, Colorado. According to that house of lies Wikipedia, the population is roughly 700. Good enough for one bar and one hotel, in very close proximity to one another. They had = Coors, Jäger bombs. I had = Disposable income, A good time. Same bar I had seen each time passing through in the many trips I’ve made to Denver the past year, but this time I stopped and I was glad I did. Too glad, according to my tab. Not too keen on the hotel, though, so I probably won’t be spending any more nights in this lodging-monopolized town. I’ve killed 19 flies in the room today. If you’re keeping score, that’s 19 more flies I’ve killed today than I have people in my entire life.

Denver soon, though! You’ll get music opinions out of me yet.

Senior trip

It’s a misnomer really. I’ve been a senior for a long time, and I’ve taken a lot of trips in that time. I’ve been to the same places, some of them many times in the past year alone. This two-weeker is probably going to be my last big sendoff to my lifetime of summer vacations, though. Because after I’m done with school this time around, I’m gone. The plan tonight is to find time away from the computer to pack, brew some coffee and load the car. If I can accomplish all of those I’m going to take off in the middle of the night and get this thing started.

First stop is Eads, Colorado. Passed through three times before. Never stopped. But if one sign from one building in town I’ve noticed is telling me the truth, then one building in town serves Coors. I’ll take that chance.