Well… it was fun: the hot desert, the cool places, and friendly people.
The drive there through Pennsylvania and Indiana had a lot of roadwork delays and not much work actually happening. We almost ran out of gas in the backroads of Kansas, almost 40 miles on E through “historic byways.” In Pueblo, Colorado, there was a road rage incident around us in a sketchy area; was kinda wild.
Santa Fe, New Mexico was very cool and full of art and jewelry shops. It seemed to be a playground for the wealthy, though, with a lot of poverty around the state. Seems like America is set up this way. Sonoma is another wealthy enclave; rich n cliquey.
New Mexico and Arizona are beautiful, with dramatic landscape. The northern areas at higher elevations are cooler (Taos, Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Flagstaff), while the southern areas, Phoenix and Tucson, are hotter, where palm trees survive the winter. A surprising number of lakes. A lot of reservation land; we stopped by a Navajo trading post. In Oklahoma I saw a license plate that said “Cherokee Nation” and thought of Reservation Dogs. I love that Native humor.
Flagstaff is a really cool town; I would like to hang around there a bit more. Phoenix was booming and hot. People seemed generally friendly, except the guy at the Apple Store who signed me up for Apple News and a Fitness free trial after I said I didn’t want any of that. I canceled those before I forgot about them and started getting dinged monthly.
Lots of really long trains with double-stacked containers bearing Amazon logos, Chinese names, and a few Walmart logos, probably traveling from Los Angeles to parts east, were a common scene heading across Arizona and New Mexico. Lots of cattle too, moseying n roaming in desert fields at bovine slo-mo speed. Loved the saguaro cactus 🌵 everywhere in southern Arizona.
The trip back was a bit of a marathon: Tucson to Elk City, Oklahoma, to Nashville, Tennessee, to home. At a restaurant stop in Arkansas there was a Deliverance-vibe motor “home” with wood pallets strewn on the roof, not tied down, apparently busting the AC…