Arizona RoadTrip
The flight from LA to Tuscan AZ was short and sweet, much like the plane actually – only going back 25 rows, with 2 seats either side of the isle. Although it was a serviced flight, the most they offered was water. But that was okay, after all, we were spending less time in the air than it took for us to get to the airport and check in at the gate (and that was even with a kamikaze taxi driver who thought he owned the streets of Hollywood, ripping down the back streets doing 30 miles per hour over the 35mph speed limit. The Taxi ride alone gave The Mummy ride at Universal a run for its money.. perhaps this is a new ride Universal should consider – a Hollywood Taxi rollercoaster – if you’re pregnant, suffer from motion sickness or value your life, do not take this ride!
We were greeted into Tuscan with the hot but dry Arizona air – something both Michelle and I fondly remember. I am usually not one for heat, in fact in practically any case, if I was offered the choice of heat or coolness I’d always take the latter – at least with cool weather you have layers to work with – the same cannot be said for heat* (almost – see Vegas Post). However, Arizona’s hot weather a dry heat, the driest I have ever encountered, and its rather pleasant. You don’t sweat, you don’t feel overly thirsty, you just feel warm – but in a cozy sense as if you were by a wood fire on a winters night.. I know, weird right!
Knowing the score from our last car hire experience (first in best dressed), we arrived at Tuscan car hire, filled out the usual paper work and laid claim to a fairly new Toyota Rav 4 – complete with Sun roof – touring through the Arizona desert – yeah, sunroof is a must!
We set out of Tuscan and without giving any consideration to our destination for the day, Phoenix, picked a direction and drove. We were in no rush to get to Phoenix, and exploring Tuscan in any which direction seemed like a good idea. You might think this stupid, but if you did a google maps search of Tuscan and turn on satellite mode – you will see why.
Tuscan is the world capital last stop for military and Boeing passenger jets alike, we were surrounded by what the locals call, ‘the bone yard’. The Bone Yard is a vast area of land consisting of retired military jet fighters, B52’s, Tank carriers, Dreamliners and Boeing 777 aircraft. Hundreds of them had been laid to rest, engines carefully preserved – each able to return to service at a moment’s notice. Others were pulled apart and used for scrap. For the military jets, this was more of a second-birth, where instead of been completely retired or used as scrap, a lot of the jets were modified, usually with a combination of parts from different version of fighters to make something completely new – then sold off to one of the USA’s many allies.
After a few hours of driving around the boneyard we started our first stretch of this road trip from Tuscan (far south of Arizona) through to Las Vegas (exiting at the north western point of Arizona state border into Nevada).
We arrived into Phoenix in the late afternoon and checked in an hour after this due to a slight glitch /misunderstanding of our TomTom and secondary GoogleMaps navigation. The TomTom has been great this whole trip so far and we had both become very accustomed to letting the TomTom lead the way. To make things easier still, I pre-programmed the hotel destinations into the TomTom before we left Australia – though there was one destination I kind of shortcutted – and just set it to the nearby shop – I had meant to rectify this at some point, but then forgot about it, and wouldn’t you know – it was this leg that had the incomplete directions!
It was 6pm, we had had a long day, leaving LA at 5am for Tuscan and then driving up to Phoenix, both Michelle and I were starting to ‘feel it’ and then we arrived in a car park – ‘you have re-ee-ach-ch-ed yo-ur destination’, the TomTom stuttered, as if also feeling the strain from the long day as well. I stopped the car and looked up. There was silence for the first minute. The car idling away, I was scratching my chin, Michelle looking at her Google Maps on iPhone that she had been running concurrently with the TomTom. I paused to think, the area looking somewhat familiar to where we stayed 5 years earlier. That said, it wasn’t familiar enough to put money on it, also, this was the first leg that the TomTom and GoogleMaps disagreed with each other, with GoogleMaps insisting that I exit the highway about 20 minutes earlier. I ignored it of course, the TomTom hadn’t failed us before – but at that time, I still hadn’t realised I didn’t put the full address into it back in Oz. With Michelle insisting her phone was right, I shrugged my shoulders of it (Michelle will remember things differently), I turned off the TomTom and Michelle guided be back down the highway following her phone. Some 20 minutes later after 2 highway switches we arrived at the GoogleMaps destination – we were even further from civilisation than we were before. After a few minutes of squabbling between us, myself on team TomTom, Michelle on team Apple we realized that her iPhone had mis-interpreted the address and sent us somewhere completely random. Entering the full address into the TomTom this time we spun around, the Rav’s wheels squealing as we took off back in the direction we were last in and 20 minutes later arrived at the accommodation located at the opposite side of the shopping center that we had arrived at some 40 minutes earlier. We were both exhausted by this point, checked into our hotel and proceeded to Applebees, the same restaurant we went to 5 years earlier.
We both had a fond memories from our last Applebees experience. The last time we went to Applebees the waitress looked through Michelle as if she was glass, flirting with me through the night and graciously giving me (ahem us, 4 beers free of charge). Michelle was unphased by the experience – she had her own earlier in the day while I was at work – so in a sense, Phoenix has been good to both of us – they love the aussie accent over here! This time around, we were served again by the same waitress, happily chatty and suggesting places for us to check out, but alas, no free drinks!
The most deceptive thing about Phoenix was its size on a map, unlike Perth, the suburbs in Phoenix are massive, of course not knowing this at the time we became disillusioned to thinking that the neighboring suburb was just 10 minutes away. We learnt this the hard way when we left Phoenix the following morning. The plan was to stop in at Twin Peaks in the neighboring suburb of Scottsdale for lunch before continuing onto Flaggstaff (some 300 miles from Phoenix). It took us 45 minutes (practically 40 miles) to get to the neighboring suburb – via highway!! Fortunately, as it turned out, travelling to TwinPeaks we were also travelling towards Flagstaff. TwinPeaks was a sports bar, inspired by the great outdoor style hunter lodges, a giant elk out the front and various ‘outdoor lifestyle’ propaganda decorating the walls inside. Topped off by gorgeous waitresses (photo below – no further description required!)
The drive from Phoenix to Flaggstaff was a breeze, large 3 to 4 lane duel carriage ways, meant we could just set the cruise control at 75mph (120kmph) and cruise on up the map of Arizona. There were plenty of opportunities to get of the hwy and explore, we stopped at a large outlet store where I picked up some new Nike’s at half price and the fuel stations were always a pleasure to stop at – featuring a variety of souvenirs and usually accompanied by a native Indian craft store full of interesting items – much more than your usual BP in Australia!
Flagstaff itself was a rather sleepy place, it had the same makeup as Golden, Colorado which both Michelle and I loved, ie 1 street town in a nutshell. However, unlike Golden, Flagstaff was nothing super. We had heard great things about Flagstaff, but I think these things were in reference to attractions or areas 20 or 30 miles out of Flagstaff – and being the last stop before the ski slopes in the area, and some 50,000 feet above sea level, you can understand why. Since we were using Flagstaff as a bed rest stop, we didn’t venture too far from the main strip of town, and well, it was nothing special.
This was good in a sense, throughout the whole trip both Michelle and I had been fighting fatigue – too many late nights and early starts, or worse (and this has happened once), slept half the day away! So with Flagstaff being a nothing place, we took some drinks back to the room, started planning out our next leg – Las Vegas baby – and had an early night with the intention of hitting route 66 at first light.
It may not have been first light, but we were on Route 66 by 7am – which was fantastic. As much as the previous legs of this trip had been a pleasure, this leg dipping in and out of historic Route 66 was the highlight. We had two options with this trip; we could either take historic route 66 for the whole trip, taking a grand total of 8hrs to get to Vegas, with a maximum top speed of 80kph, or we could take the highway and travel at 120kph, getting us to Vegas in 3 hours. With the sounds of coins running through our heads and the idea of a 3 and a half day drink binge ahead, we took the faster route, but with a few dips on historic route 66 resulting in us getting into Las Vegas by 12pm on the dot.
As we took the extended way to our hotel, the Monte Carlo, driving all the way down the strip and back again, I glanced over to Michelle, who had camera poised in hand and nose practically pressed up against the glass. It was time to ditch the car and let our hair down!