The Road Trip, part 17

Day 16 -- Holbrook to Tucson

Best Westerns are pretty good as quick in-and-out, one-night hotels right off the highway go. The one in Holbrook had a breakfast bar, nothing fancy but definitely served the need. Walking back to our room, I showed Carson how to check under vending machines for coins, and happened to spy two pennies in the filth under a Coke machine. We couldn't reach them, but a plastic knife came to the rescue, and soon two very dirty coins were ours. I made sure Carson washed them, and his hands.

Packed up and ready to move on, we first stopped at the Wigwam Hotel. A bit of old Rte. 66 runs through Holbrook, adorned with all sorts of old, schlocky signs and facades along the way. The Wigwam was the inspiration for the Cozy Cone hotel in Cars, and the parking lot has over a dozen vintage models (in various states of disrepair), so for Carson it was a treat and a half. (This road trip really was not meant to be an homage to Cars, but it rather turned out that way. The bluffs and cliffs in Utah are, with just a whiff of imagination, dead ringers for some of the car-shaped bluffs in the movie.) The lobby building wasn't scheduled to open until 3:00 pm, much too late to stay in hopes of buying a souvenir shirt, so we hopped back in the car and drove off.

But not far. Just outside of Holbrook is a huge store of souvenirs and petrified wood. We had picked up a coupon at the hotel for a free half-pound of petrified wood, and how could we resist? There were all sorts of raw and polished rocks -- semiprecious stones, petrified wood, fossils, meteorites. Unfortunately, there was a display of toys (not for sale) mounted high on one wall, which included two in-package Hot Wheels cars. Once Carson spotted those, he forgot about everything else. I told him they were not for sale, Val told him they were not for sale, the store clerk told him they were not for sale -- yet he had a very, very hard time letting go of hopes of buying the two cars. Val finally distracted him enough to select a few pretty stones, and we were off again, but dang, his near-addiction to toy cars really gets in the way sometimes.

The next town was Snowflake, where Jenny used to live (she was a teacher then); I hadn't been there since 2000, Val since 2003, and now it is showing many signs of growth. Immediately south is Taylor, and then there's a bit of a drive to Show Low -- very pretty, tall pine country. A few years ago, in 2002, there was a huge fire (the Rodeo-Chideski Fire) in the area. Dickie Joe ran a salvage company at the time, and when the fire was out he arrived to get to work. Dickie Joe prefers renting a room to taking a hotel, and Jenny (up in Snowflake) had one available. They hit it off, were married in late 2003, and now spend half their time in western Colorado. Life can take interesting turns.

It was 76 degrees in Show Low, Val noted from a bank signboard.

Out of Show Low is a long stretch on ridge tops and along canyons, until finally the road, Rte. 60, twistily climbs down the canyon walls above the Salt River. Near-hairpin turns finally reach a bridge, still high above the river; it looks fairly new, and the old span, now closed to traffic, runs alongside. The trek back up out of the canyon is equally or more challenging -- yes, paved roads, but tighter hairpins, steeper grades, and windy. Eventually we crested the canyon entirely, and were on our way into desert lands. It was obvious that this part of Arizona had had excellent rains this year -- it was very green, and Val (who lived in Tucson for several years) could not remember seeing the region so verdant. And, at last, we sighted the iconic Arizona flora -- the saguaro cactus.

These massive desert plants grow only in Arizona, a very small bit of eastern California, and Mexico, a region known as the Sonoran Desert; nowhere else. Despite its longtime use as the graphic shorthand for "American desert", they do not grow in Texas, or New Mexico, or Nevada, or Utah. They are magnificent, some truly towering, others with enough limbs and offshoots to look almost tree-like. They can live for many decades, perhaps centuries when conditions are right, and in some places are quite plentiful, dotting the hillsides and arroyos. The kids were delighted to see them, and they brought a smile to my face too. Val, an Arizonan from way back, is a bit more jaded to their appearance, but they are unmistakably Arizona's own.

We pulled over in Globe to take a break from the road, and to beat the heat, Val requested a stop at the local Dairy Queen. Again we scored -- the good DQ variety, vanilla and chocolate, with chocolate, cherry, or butterscotch dips (why the Austin franchises settle for only vanilla with chocolate dip is a mystery to me; popular, sure, but the different flavors are so worth having available). Refreshed, we saddled up, tanked up, and headed on down the road.

I was leading a small platoon of four or five vehicles as we entered the town of Mammoth, closing on Tucson, when suddenly I spotted an object in the road. I swerved a bit to avoid it, braked, and pulled into the first driveway, about 100 feet along. I hopped out and trotted back, hoping that the other cars had missed it as well. They had! With no other traffic in sight, I stepped out into the lane and picked up a rather frightened box tortoise, completely pulled into its shell. By this time the kids were closing on me, coming down the sidewalk -- I showed them the tortoise, which was just starting to think about poking out its head. Amalie and Carson were both pleased that Daddy had saved a "turtle". I walked it back into the roadside scrub and set it down, telling the kids to stand back and just watch. Soon it poked out head and limbs and began crawling away, but the kids kept a watchful eye on it until Val could ready the videocam. Silly tortoise got itself stuck under a scraggly bush, and though I'm sure it would have gotten out easily, I extracted it for better viewing. Then I stepped over to a prickly pear cactus, bedecked with fruits (a clear sign of the generous seasonal rains), plucked one (and they are prickly), squished it, and put it right before the tortoise. After a few moments analyzing the situation, the tortoise began munching the pear with obvious enthusiasm. We watched it for another few minutes, hoping it wouldn't go back toward the road, wished friend tortoise the best, and were back on the road to Tucson.

A rare event for us, reaching our destination before sundown -- we tossed aside the Google map and let Val's memory be our guide. She was visibly excited to be back in Tucson. Though Val hasn't lived in Tucson in over 16 years, the parts she remembers haven't much changed, and we soon found our next rest, the home where she and her family used to live, now inhabited primarily by sister Mary and her two daughters.

Joyous greetings given, we dragged in our bags and, finding my quarters for the stay, I dropped on the bed and took a late but much-needed nap. I almost never feel tired while driving, but it does wear me out when I'm done for the day.

From 76 degrees in Show Low, it had hit 100 in Tucson earlier in the day, though was down into the 90s when we arrived. That's one thing about dry heat country that doesn't get enough mention -- when the sun goes down, the temperature drops appreciably, as there's little humidity to hold it back. So the evenings are pleasant and cooler.