I know I promised a post on my cruise vacation (which took place in May, for chrissakes) but, honestly, every time I sit down to organize my photos from the trip I start to break out in a case of idontwannadothisitsannoyinitis. It will happen eventually. Maybe. To sort of make up for this slight, I am going to finally post pictures of my move from L.A. to Nashville with the BFF, Nea (which took place in MARCH, and apparently I really suck at this "blogging" thing).
Day One: The Sad Goodbye, Rattlesnake Rest Stops and the Grand Canyon
Nea and I got up bright and early (for us) at around 8am and got ready to get on the road. This basically involved showering (not together, pervs), stuffing all last-minute items in my overflowing Jetta (now affectionately named "Jett" because the "A" decal fell off a while ago) and, lastly and most heart-wrenchingly, saying goodbye to LL Cool A. I have to thank Nea so much for agreeing to drive with me, because if I had to leave by myself after saying goodbye to LL I would have been an absolute mess. I'm talking tears into Arizona.
Unfortunately, in my grief I totally forgot to take a picture of my beloved Jett in her overflowing state. It truly was a sight to behold, and yet we could still see out of the rear window while driving! It was a feat of packing physics, I tell you. The goal for the day was to see the Grand Canyon, since it was only 50 miles out of our way and we'd both never had the experience.
Everything was pretty uneventful until we stopped at a rest area. As I was taking this picture of Nea:
I noticed this sign:
Now, it was neither summer nor night, but that still didn't stop me from being freaked right the fuck out. Needless to say, we didn't stick around this rest stop all that much longer. We got back on the road and made it to the Grand Canyon with a few hours of daylight to spare. Now, I knew the GC was going to be majestic but I don't think I was quite prepared for how BIG it was. Mock me all you want. I can take it.
Here are a few of my favorite pictures:
You'll notice that I am standing by a railing, and those other people are crazily perched on a ledge they had to climb down to with no railing available. Those other people are obviously insane.
We tried to stay until sunset but it started to get quite cold and we needed to rustle up a place to stay for the night and some food for our starving bellies. We ended up at the adequate but overpriced Red Feather Lodge to stay and, out of the four restaurants available, at the less than adequate and overpriced The Steakhouse for food.
The Steakhouse was exactly that: a place that served steak, potatoes and not much else. Oh, they had shrimp, too! I remember because I ordered the "Cowboy Combo" (steak and fried shrimp) but was delivered the "Cowboy Steak," which is just steak. When I mentioned it to the waiter he said, "No, you ordered the Cowboy Steak, see, I wrote it down right here!" Um, maybe you wrote it down wrong? Just a thought? Since I obviously wasn't going to win that airtight argument, I let it go and just ate my very mediocre steak. Sigh. At least they had beer.
Day Two: Sobriety Checkpoints, Motel 6 and Formerly Dry Counties
The goal for day two was to get all the way from the Grand Canyon to Amarillo, Texas, which is at least a 10 hour trek when driving conservatively (as I do). Luckily the drive along Interstate 40 for that stretch is quite beautiful, with the surprising evergreen terrain of northern Arizona and the gorgeous red mesas of New Mexico to look at. We were concentrating on hard driving, though, and didn't stop to take many pictures. One of the only times we were inspired to snap was this gorgeous rock formation in New Mexico:
Not bad for an image taken at 75 mph. Not good, but not bad. Mediocrity is what we aim for.
Shortly after this picture was taken, we noticed that all lanes of traffic were coming to a complete standstill and that a strong contingent of New Mexico State Troopers were patrolling the lanes of traffic. The signs to the left and right noted a "sobriety checkpoint." It was around 11am. On a Friday. What the heck are people in New Mexico doing that they need a sobriety checkpoint at this day and time? A trooper had me roll my window down and asked if we were the only people in the car (and I'm not sure my "unless there's someone buried underneath all the crap in the back" joke went over all that well) and then waved us along. It was at this point I came to the conclusion this wasn't a simple sobriety checkpoint, but some kind of roadblock set up to catch terrorists or bank robbers or murderers or something else equally nefarious. Which is awesome.
The rest of the day went by fairly smoothly and we made it into Amarillo as planned, and beelined it for the first Motel 6 we saw. Motel 6, you are a beacon of hope for us cheap travelers, yes you are. I was leery about staying in Amarillo because Nea had stayed there on her own cross-country trip (moving from Reno to Nashville) several years earlier and she had discovered that night while trying to buy beer to calm her road nerves that Amarillo was in a dry county. Seeing as I very much need a beer at night on a road trip to normalize myself after a hard day of driving, I wasn't so much looking forward to a night in a dry county. As we pulled into Joe's Crab Shack for dinner, though, I noticed beer signs in the restaurant. Lo and behold, when we got a menu there was alcohol on it! Hallelujah! Either Nea wasn't in Amarillo proper when trying to buy beer or the laws had changed since she'd traveled though. I don't know why, but I was just happy to have a cold draft beer to wash down my fried seafood.
Day Three: Giant Crosses, Odious Oklahoma and Route 66 Nostalgia
So, day three. At this point the days were sort of running together, but I was excited about one thing: going to Oklahoma. I would regret this excitement later, but hey, I'd never been to Oklahoma and I wanted to check the state off my list. We weren't in Texas for too long, but we got an interesting surprise when we came across this massive (and I mean MASSIVE) cross on the side of the interstate:
I don't think you understand how large and imposing and scary this sucker is unless you see it for yourself. Here's a closer view:
See those little things at the bottom? Those are SEMI TRUCKS. According to the trusty internets, this cross is in Groom, Texas, is 19 stories high and weighs 1,250 tons. Yeah.
Pretty soon it was time to cross over into Oklahoma. I mentioned my excitement before, which can be seen in this picture:
I should have heeded the warnings of Nea, who'd made the drive through Oklahoma before and was trying to crawl away from the state for dear life when I took this picture:
Why is that? Because, my friends, Oklahoma sucks. I apologize if you're from that great state and I know there are probably lovely parts of the state, but the drive along Interstate 40 is terrible. It's long, monotonous, boring, flat, and just soul-sucking. Here's an example of what we looked at for like seven hours:
Even my feet are bored, and they're wearing cute socks. Seriously, folks, Oklahoma sucks.
The one interesting thing we did in Oklahoma was go to the Route 66 museum. The history of the highway is pretty cool, and the museum has all kinds of old memorabilia and pictures of the people who built the road and the people who traveled it. If you're ever making this drive, I recommend the museum to break up the monotony. Here are a few pics:
Oh, look! You can sort of see how packed my car was in this picture. You're a good girl, Jett.
After the museum we had some Subway nosh and got on our way. We did stop one more time in Oklahoma for some gas and a snack and saw something alternately thrilling and terrifying. We saw a Garfield's. You see, Garfield's is a crappy Chili's-like chain that Nea and I worked at in college with all of our friends. I have alternately wonderful and horrible memories from that place, and I had honestly forgot they still existed outside of the one we worked at in Tallahassee. But here she is, in the flesh:
No, we didn't stop to eat for old time's sake. We don't hate ourselves that much. The food there is terrible.
That night we made it all the way to Little Rock, Arkansas and another, much less clean and safe Motel 6. I actually used one of the towels from my car because the towel I was provided had some, um, questionable stains. We did eat dinner at a cool pizza place/music venue in downtown Little Rock that Nea's husband recommended. The pizza was good and the people watching was even better, as gaggles of high school emo-looking kids filed in and out of the concert space in the back. The band sounded just like a band high school kids would like: no musicality, just noise and screaming. I loved shit like that in high school. Now I am an old fogie and it makes my ears bleed. Such is life.
Day Four: Finally, Nashville
We had pretty light day planned for our last trek, as Little Rock to Nashville is only about six hours. I think? I can't remember, and am too lazy to look it up. Northern Arkansas is quite pretty, with rolling green hills, so it made for a very pleasant drive. At this point we were sort of over the whole "road trip" thing and just looking forward to getting there, so I don't have any more pictures. Oops. We rolled through Memphis without stopping for some barbecue because it was Easter Sunday and we weren't certain the restaurants would be open. We pulled up to the house around 3pm, and just like that I was home! Well, to my temporary home at least.
Now, to get a job so I can get a home of my own...one can dream, right?
This post's title is from "Hollywood's Not America" by Ferras:
