Americana Travels,
Pt 13: Albuquerque to Flagstaff
May 24th, 2012 – I woke up around 8:30am, took
care of my end of things, and let Mrs. Pope sleep until whenever. I cleared
some emails, corresponded with customers, checked in with the Facebook crowd, texted
a few folk, and then listened to some tunes to get my head in the game for a
long road day. Hours-wise, today was scheduled to be a relative cakewalk in
comparison to the Oklahoma City/Albuquerque run, but there was still a lot to
be seen and a lot of road to cover. Once Mrs. Pope woke up, she checked the
weather and informed me that there was a high wind advisory going on for the
next couple of days . . . so the final legs of this two week journey was about
to give the forearms a workout.
At some point, I can’t remember the exact time; we had
checked out of the hotel and were en route to a gluten-free bakery in northern
Albuquerque. We arrived at the Great Harvest Bread Company, and Mrs. Pope got
herself a loaf of pumpernickel bread, a flavor that she hasn’t consumed since
well before the whole gluten allergy thing first came to light. We also picked
up some dog biscuits for Mongo (yeah, really missing the dude now). We then
fueled up and got some Starbuck’s before we headed to breakfast/lunch. We
pulled into a place called Jason’s Deli that was hugging the I-40, so this was
a logistically advantageous place to have a bite. Plus, this place has a
gluten-free menu, so for those keeping score at home, the Weary Road Travelers
2, road nothing. Mrs. Pope had informed me that she and our buddy Wilton had eaten
at this place while she was in Georgia last year and that the Muffaletta sandwich
was good and insane in size. Eh . . . yeah. Woulda’ been a better sandwich if
the bread was softer. Not quite sure why they decided to toast the bread. Looks
like I need Muffaletta Replacement Therapy. New Orleans trip, anyone?
From there, we tracked down a couple of oddity sites in
Albuquerque. The first was a giant arrow in the parking lot of a strip mall. I
tried to angle the photo so that it looked like it was impaling a small car. It
probably would have come across better if I took the time to jump up and down
on the roof of the car to give it that authentic crinkled and damaged
appearance. Sorry I didn’t commit to the bit better than this . . . I’ve failed
you, dear readers. After the giant arrow, we drove through a residential
section of town and found a high heeled shoe tree. We actually drove past the
house the first time because we were looking for something different, but when
we turned around and saw this thing, we kinda’ slapped ourselves for missing it
in the first place. I mean, how obvious is this thing? And yes, someone
actually took the time to nail high heeled shoes all the way to the top. Crazy.
Mrs. Pope continued piloting us out of Albuquerque and towards
our night’s residence of Flagstaff, Arizona. We were looking at about five
hours of desert driving and the wind was kicking up pretty good by this time.
We cruised along the westbound I-40 for a couple of hours, watching huge fields
of ranch land pass by, the occasion herd of cow look up from its lunch, and passing
slower moving traffic while doing our best to hang around the speed limit. We
had finished listening to The Innocent the day before while en route from
Oklahoma City, so we spent a lot of this trek listening to CD’s from comedians.
The first one on this leg was Jerry Seinfeld, and though I found his sitcom
about nothing to be hilarious, this stand up performance was near genius. There’s
a rhythm to good comedians and Seinfeld is a master, so many times I sat in the
co-pilots chair giggling and marveling at the dudes timing. After that, we
listened to another John Pinette disc as we pulled into Gallup, New Mexico for
a pit stop.
I took over the wheel duties at Gallup and continued the
steady march west across the I-40. The wind was pushing me all over the place,
but it still didn’t seem as bad as the day before when we were plowing into
that headwind all day. We continued listening to John Pinette as we made our
way into Arizona and pulled into the Petrified Forest State Park. We paid our
$10 admission and were warned not to remove any pieces of rock, pottery, or
petrified tree. I looked at the ranger with the thought of, ‘Who would do such
a thing anyway?’, but realized a split second later; the world is made up of
people who think they’re entitled to do whatever the hell they want and yada
yada yada. Me, Pope, on my soapbox once again. Anyway, we drove a little bit
through the Painted Desert, and folks, this is one of those places that you
want to get to early and spend all day exploring. The scenery is majestic and
every view point was breath taking. We continued down the road and stopped at
the ruins of the Puerco Pueblo.
This site was amazing in that . . . we were in the middle of
nowhere and people once lived here! Something like eighteen families once lived
on this foreboding site of desert. The Puerco River once ran through the land,
but even at its highest point, I couldn’t imagine the land ever being fertile
enough for crops and the survival of man. It’s inhospitable land. It’s windy.
It’s dry. It’s hot. It’s cold. The really cool thing to check out at this site,
though, is the petroglyphs etched into the rocks a few feet from the ruined
pueblo. A little while after we were done soaking in the history, we hopped
back in the rig and decided that we should get back to our original quest and
save the remaining portion (twenty-something miles) of the Petrified Forest for
a later vacation, so . . . we got back on the I-40 and drove towards the
setting sun. By the way, John Pinette . . . funny. We cracked up hard on this
disc, as well, however, neither of us almost died this time. Mrs. Pope doesn’t
agree with me . . . she thinks John Pinette is the funniest comic ever and
anything I say is dumb. So there.
We pulled into the town of Holbrook, Arizona, and found a
creepy and reportedly haunted Courthouse. The place was closed for the day, so
we hopped out and took some photos of the outside. Yeah . . . the place was
creepy in real life and after looking at the photos again, I could swear that I
see the draperies move from time to time. Just for the record, I’m never going
back there . . . my skin was crawling as I walked up the walkway . . . and I’ll
never be able to confirm any ghostly inhabitants, though, I’m pretty sure this
place is the site of a Hell Mouth. From there, we found Geronimo, the World’s
Largest Petrified Tree . . . so we stopped to take a picture of the monolith.
Twenty some odd miles later, we were pulling into Winslow,
Arizona . . . and, I’m sure most of you know why. For those who don’t, there’s
an Eagles song called “Take It Easy” that contains the now famous line of “Standing
on a corner of Winslow, Arizona . . . “, and once you’ve heard the song a time
or two, you can’t get it out of your freakin’ skull. So, we pulled up to this
corner and to our surprise, there was a statue, a mural, and a flatbed Ford, my
Lord (no blonde stoppin’ to check me out, though) all constructed to commemorate
the site. We rambled up to the corner and there was another cross country
trekkin’ family there snapping some photos, so we got them to take a picture of
us. And, naturally, I was humming “Take It Easy” for the next two hours.
Mrs. Pope decides to take a short nap between stops
We eventually got back on the freeway, sun blasting my eyes
into burnt husks, and listened to the last comic CD of the day, Billy Gardell .
. . you know the guy. He plays Mike on the sitcom, Mike & Molly . . . this
guy killed me. Damn near drove the car into a ditch . . . twice. A few miles
later, we pulled off on Twin Arrows Drive (or something along those lines) and
tried to snap some photos of these two giant arrows as the sun had already
tucked itself behind a distant mountain.
At about 8:30pm, a full twelve hours after I dragged my
sorry ass out of bed, we were checking into the Residence Inn of Flagstaff. We
had just traveled some ridiculous amount of miles . . . not so much for the
day, but for this entire trip. We have one more day, well . . . that’s not
totally true, there’s still Vegas, but you get where I’m going. We saw a ton of
stuff and wandered around parts of the country that I never thought we would.
And here we are, fighting off the wind and a chill in the air as we lug all of
our gear into our Flagstaff room.
We grabbed a quick bite at Picazzo’s Pizzaria, one of our
favorite joints in Arizona because they not only have gluten-free pizza, but
gluten-free beer . . . Yay! Mrs. Pope had her usual pizza (perhaps it had
cheese and sausage and more cheese) and a couple of pints of beer, while I
drank cucumber water and had a salad. Ha! Got you there . . . while I did have
the cucumber water, I had an order of buffalo wings that made my lips go numb.
My hair was sweating. I aged twelve years in the hour that I sat there
shoveling these toxic critters down my throat . . . and I’d do again in a
minute!
We’re calling it early and hitting the road as the sun comes
up, so this blog will be posted on Friday . . . which is today, since I’m just
now finishing it.
Pope
Quote of the Day: “Dude . . . I’m from California. Get the
f@ck out of my way!” -- Mrs. Pope
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