Path: orb!not-for-mail
From: li@kryphos.Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Newsgroups: alt.kalbo
Subject: Road Trip! (3 of 5)
Date: 24 Jan 1995 04:33:26 -0000
Organization: Duchy of Wabesylvan Obspauk
Lines: 176
Message-Id: <9501240425.AA14504@kryphos.Data-IO.COM>
Xref: orb alt.kalbo:1443
Precedence: list
To: kalbo@Orb.Nashua.NH.US
Sender: kalbo-sender@Orb.Nashua.NH.US (Kalbo list maintainer)
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 9666

December 28, 1994

For the first time, when we left San Diego in order to head home, we 
headed south.  South to the 8, and then east.  As Kathy said, only 
Californians love their freeways enough to give them the honorific 
'The'.  

I'd never been that way out of San Diego.  It turned interesting fairly 
quickly after the shopping districts and the hotel circle.  Out from San 
Diego it turned into rolling hills and then we went through a pass that 
was bordered by mountains that looked as if they were just piles of HUGE 
rock.  Rocks bigger than most of the semi's that were rolling through.  

The road was a winding thing that followed a dried river bed that 
gleamed with white sand.  There were tufts of sage brush between the 
boulders that looked a little as if they were stacked by a child.  The 
fog rolled in and turned all the stacks of boulders into fantasy turrets 
for strange and marvelous castles.

The road wound up and then wound down again as the river bed opened up 
to a plain that was nothing but sparse brush, a few feathery bush-trees 
and wiry, thin cactus that nearly looked like leafless bushes reaching 
to the overcast sky.  We reached sea level again, and suddenly 
everything turned green.  Irrigation and farmers and flat, green farmland
in all directions.  John noted that it reminded him of Oregon, and it
really was a lot alike, except that there were Eucalyptus and palm trees
as the planted wind breaks instead of fir, maple or willow up north.
Well, that and the irrigation channels everywhere.  Sheep dotted a number
of the alfalfa fields.  Lots of sheep.

We stopped at the border between Arizona and California at John's Diner, 
open 24 hours a day, grin.  It was a little place with food from Americana, 
Greek food, and an interesting assortment of Mexican food.  The special 
was the Swiss steak for $4.29.  So I ordered that with an iced tea.  It 
came with salad and a 'vegetable soup' that was filled with chunks of 
beef as well as green peppers and more vegetables than I could name.  
John got the salad to go with his 'Continental Sandwich' that was beef, 
cheese and peppers hot enough to make him enjoy it.  Then the 'Swiss 
steak' came.  It turned out to be a chicken fried steak about as big as 
my *spread* hand, mounded with a gravy that was more like thick beef 
stew than gravy, a mountain of mashed potatoes and a mount of green beans 
with shredded carrots and peas.  Zow.  I couldn't eat more than a third 
of the steak. 

The iced tea never quite showed up.  Not too much of a problem as she'd 
given us plenty of water, but at the end of the meal I went and got my 
big mug from the car.  I asked the waitress to put my iced tea in the 
mug and she apologized profusely and nicely for not bringing it during 
the meal.  She also filled my mug and reduced the price on the tea, 
which was really cool.  So I drove the next two hours with and iced tea 
to keep me awake as we made our way along the 8.

One interesting phenomena was just vast acreages of trailer and RV parks...
we never quite figured out why they wanted to be out in the middle of
nowhere in RV's... but I guess the warmth is enough reason to be there, but
it seemed odd.

The Arizona landscape is flat with mountains and mesas that just kinda 
pop up in amazing colors.  There was an overcast and water vapor in the 
air.  With the way the light was, it made for some really spectacular 
views.  It was also nicely cool.  At a gas stop in Phoenix, a woman 
remarked that she knew that we had to be from out of state 'cause we 
were wearing shorts and only out-of-towners could wear shorts in 
December... <grin>  Something that others have said in San Diego.

John took over when we reached the 85, and he took it north to the 10 
and that north to the 69 to the 89 in Prescott.  Grin.  Complicated?  It 
worked and we ended up at a Motel 6 with a slew of pictures of layered 
mountains under a streaked sky. 

I sat down to write a bit and John started looking restaurants over in 
the Yellow pages.  He found a brew pub and a slew of steak houses with 
buffalo meat and a few chain restaurants as well.  The Prescott Brewing 
Company was right in downtown Prescott 'Arizona's Christmas Town', and 
we decided to go to that one.  It turned out to be a really good choice.  
Really, really good food with a really solid porter.  I had bangers and 
mash with a hot apple sauce and John had the Grand Canyon Chef's Salad 
that had turkey and bangers and all kinds of vegies and cheddar cheese 
and dressing on the side.  We finished with a really, really rich 
chocolate cake that actually went well with the porter.  

We had to walk off the meal.  Since we didn't have an antibiotic cream 
for the slice out of my finger, we went to a local Walgreen's, bought 
the cream and walked back to the car.  A good six block walk that 
settled things enough to watch Wayne's World 2... <chuckle> and The Late 
Show.

----------
December 29, 1994

The Motel 6 was not very conducive to sleep, sadly, in addition to 
having eaten too much, had a bit too much to drink, and a lack of 
blankets didn't help me any more than the advent of a low grade head 
cold.  Sigh.  It didn't help that in the morning, since my right hand 
was semi-out-of-order, I'd tried to wring dry the towel around my mouth 
guard with my left hand and snapped it right across.  Already grumpy and 
tired, when we reached the car we found that one of my hardback books 
had a cover and a few pages completely munched... 

Not a good start to the day.

It didn't help that for all the above reasons and a few more I really, 
really, really wanted to be *home*.  Home where things were familiar and 
stable and fixable and safe and...

Sigh.

John managed to jolly me along, and the sunshine helped, somewhat.  But 
big, rolling thunderheads started following us as we headed straight 
North along Arizona's state highway 89.  That was when he gave me the 
camera and completely free license to take as many pictures as I wanted 
of the spectacular Arizona scenery.

By the time we reached Sedona, the columns and mesas of red sandstone, 
and Tamale Mama's I was in a better mood.  Then he added a stop at a 
wind-blown Navajo run set of road-side shops and got me a necklace of 
silver and malachite shaped into a dream-catcher.  The beads glow like 
dark pearls set in the shining silver.  But I think I'll treasure the 
smile the small, wiry, Navajo woman selling at the stand gave John and I 
as she watched him trying to cheer me up by holding the necklace up to 
me and declaring it perfect. 

Another thing that really helped make the day was that, all through the 
trip we'd been seeing raptors of various sorts, and down the road I got 
a really close up look at a *huge* golden eagle.  A deer had been hit by 
some car and was lying on the side of the road, and perched on it was an 
eagle, its wings half-spread, draping the top shoulder of the deer.  As 
the truck in front of us drove by it, the eagle bridled and half flapped 
against the blast of air from the fast passing truck.  The wing span was 
nearly as long as the deer, and the single stroke nearly lifted the 
forequarters of the dead deer.  Wow.  THAT was an amazing sight.

Our original almost-plan was to stop, perhaps, in Falstaff.  Maybe to 
take a chair lift to the top of the mountains there and x-try ski across 
to some really spectacular views.  As we entered the town, though, 
things were terribly dreary and all the mountains that slept over the 
town were all blanketed in clouds.  We stopped for diesel and John 
heard a couple talking about how the Grand Canyon was completely socked 
in and they'd been unable to see *anything*.  That helped us decide to 
just keep going.

So we did, through some incredible lands lit by the evening sun.

We ended up by Lake Powell in a little town called Page at a Best 
Western facing the Lake.  A tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant with a 
smoky bar attached was named Salsa Brava.  The chips and salsa fresca 
came well before the menu and we inhaled a basket of chip and a bowl of 
salsa even before deciding what to order.  Their Traditional Combo Plate 
had a soft taco with our choice of meat, a pork tamale, and either a 
cheese or chicken enchilada along with beans and rice.  Of course we had 
to order that.  I had the carnitas (pork) soft taco, and the meat was 
savory and so tender it just fell apart to the bite.  The tamale was 
firm and flaky and the filling was nearly as spicy as the enchilada 
sauce they used.  Yum...  all together marvelous. 

This time we stopped before we ate until we hurt.  <grin>

And John and I talked for a while and we both realized that the main 
reason we've loved adventure vacations up to this time was that *both* 
of us have really been pretty good at discovering what a particular 
place is all about and enjoying it as it really is.  Finding the best in 
the local food, the local favorites so far as exploration, and looking 
for the beauty in whatever happens to be there.  It's not to visit 400 
different Points of Interest, it's to enjoy what exists with the other 
person.  That helped more than anything.

Well, that and finding that the Safeway across the street had dried corn 
husks for sale.  <grin>  The one essential ingredient for tamales that I 
hadn't found up to that point.  It was in their produce section, 
something I probably should have expected, but hadn't managed to look in 
up to this point.

O.K.  That *and* being able to pile the quilted coverlet from the extra 
bed on top of me and sleeping with nearly a foot of lofted coverings on 
top of me.  Yum....