A Slideshow of Scenery

 

8-7

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I zipped open my tent flaps this morning to be greeted by a fantastic day, clear and warm and blue, the sun’s rays lancing through the ponderosas to warm the needle-strewn ground. A perfect day for lazing about. So I did, burying myself in a book while water for tea and oatmeal heated on the grill.

Perhaps I buried myself a little too long, considering that I had a six-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. But that’s nothing to us, these days. Jane and I, we’re born to run.

Nevertheless, I eventually did load all my gear back into Jane so we could get a move on to the next destination: Chiricahua National Monument! Another Arizonan park, but one in the very far southeastern corner – and one that I’ve missed up until now, since I usually head west via the northern Albuquerque route rather than the El Paso route.

Jane rumbled to life and I promptly remembered that I had almost no gas. No worries, I was headed back south through Flagstaff so I’d just get some gas there. And so, we set out into the sunshine.

A few miles up the road, I passed a gas station, but it was on the left, so I continued on.

Another mile or so up the road, I passed another gas station, again on the left, so I continued on.

Well, about a block after that, Jane’s motor very abruptly stuttered, fizzled, and cut out, leaving me to frantically hew over towards the shoulder. It roared back to life abruptly, stuttered some more, and then finally hit its stride and burbled on like normal (with, of course, that same tick that it’s had for half of the trip, now louder than ever).

I saw another gas station ahead on the left. I turned into it as fast as I could, this time. No more left-turn snobbery from this gal.

I put a solid 14 gallons of gas into the car – the tank only having a capacity of 16 gallons – and then pulled over to the side to pop the hood and give her a good once-over. Could this sudden failure be gas-related? Maybe. Or maybe it’s a failing ignition coil, or something’s loosened up, or the tick is not as innocuous as I had supposed, or the entire engine is about to explode. I tend to spiral like this, with these kinds of symptoms.

A few minutes later I had the valve covers off, checking for anything suspect. No dice. The valve covers went back on, and I went through the ignition system. No dice again. In fact, all seemed well under the hood. Ultimately I tightened the hell out of the headers (which were quite loose, as I had forgotten to re-tighten them after the gasket replacement two days ago), closed the hood, and gave Jane a good heart-to-heart.

I had planned on taking a rural route through the Arizonan mountains to Chiricahua, which would keep me out of the searing summer heat wave that was slated to roll over the state later in the day. But suddenly, that rural route didn’t seem like such a good idea. With no idea what’s wrong with the car – if there’s anything wrong with the car – it’s always best to stick to routes where towns with parts stores can be found. So, begrudgingly, I changed my route to a much more awful one: the Phoenix route.

The Phoenix route is awful for quite a few reasons, actually, but there were two I was really concerned about: 1, the forecasted high temperature of 118*F for the afternoon, and 2, the massive amount of traffic one usually encounters in town. I’ve sat in Phoenix traffic before when it was 110*F out, and I really had no intention of doing so again. But sometimes, you gotta do what you gotta do. It would be a good stress test for Jane, at least, and I have people in Phoenix to rely on if things went south.

So off we went, descending from Flagstaff’s friendly climate into the pit of hell. Every time I think of Phoenix in summer, I am reminded of a quote from King of the Hill: “Oh my god! It’s like standing on the sun! This city should not exist. It is a monument to man’s arrogance.” I really couldn’t agree more.

The Descent

But on the way, a nice hill of saguaros

The day was sweltering, the city’s smog doing nothing to diminish the effects of the sun. Instead, it turned into a kind of one-two punch, the sun’s rays boring down to the earth with remarkable intensity and the smog holding in every last bit of heat, smothering the city in an ovenlike embrace. I could do without those two punches, thank you very much.

My arms prickled with sweat as I drew all appendages back inside the vehicle, the breeze through the window no longer being the cooling friendly type. My sweat soon vanished despite my best attempts to hydrate, wicked away by the very air itself. A square of sunlight draped across one leg and commenced roasting it until I shuffled my bandana around to cover the patch, and I counted my blessings that I was mostly sitting in Jane’s shade. It felt much like I’d imagine the inside of a convection oven to be.

Ahh, summer in Phoenix.

Fortunately, the dreaded traffic I had been anticipating never materialized, and I skated through town with only a moderate amount of roasting and a survivable case of dehydration. Count me lucky. Even luckier, Jane was once again back to running in her prime, the morning’s drama forgotten. Probably, it had just been the result of running bad gas too low in the tank – usually I try to fill up every half tank, as gas stations in rural places can have a pretty substantial water cut that makes for poor running. But it's always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to Jane and her opinions.

With Jane happy once more, I opted to turn off at Highway 60 to head east through a more scenic route. I had some considering to do, and considering is always best done on a nice road instead of a crappy crowded interstate.

My plan for the next two days had been to camp out at Chiricahua, hike around, see some sights, and then move on back towards Austin. But having just gotten a taste of that heat wave – and being very tired from the compounded effects of this trip’s demanding driving on top of a couple weeks of travel prior to that – I was not feeling too excited about going there. In fact, I was feeling much more excited about adding the park into my NEXT road trip, which I’ve already decided will be an extended loop around Arizona in the fall of 2024. Better weather, good stopping point on the way over, I came up with a lot of reasons to skip it in favor of going next year.

Well, that idea took root in my head and refused to leave, so even with the improved scenery, I decided that I would cut Chiricahua from this year’s trip. So instead, I settled back for a long drive towards New Mexico. Jane hummed along unconcernedly, apparently content with my decision as long as we had somewhere to go.

We wound our way towards the Superstition Mountains – a range I plan on visiting next year – glorying in the smooth blacktop, the saguaros, the rocky cliffs, and the reappearance of clouds, even if the temperatures did still leave something to be desired.

The road narrowed, twisting between rocky spires that looked much like fingers stretching to the sky, then plowing onwards through boulder fields and eventually into a canyon. A massive tailings pile rose into view, stacked so high that it towered above the canyon, a vast manmade mountain dedicated to the pursuit of copper.

Tailings pile in the background

Tailings "mountain" up close

We passed the ugly – but admittedly awe-inspiring – thing and wound our way out of the canyon and into a more peaceful, pastoral scene. Pastureland stretched out into low foothills, which rose into humble mountains crowned by clouds that echoed their shape. We passed farm after farm, each with their own agrarian specialty.

Stormclouds gathered in the distance, a large diffuse block spanning the entire sky. I was glad for the relief from the sun, but not enthused about driving through the usual awful summer afternoon monsoons. The wind whipped up, throwing dust into the air and veiling the landscape in a hazy brown cloud.

Difficult to tell where the dust ends and cloud begins

The first droplets of rain skittered across Jane’s hood, and we braced for the usual downpour. But then… it just never came. A dusting of droplets, not even enough to raise the asphalt’s tarry scent to the surface. We lucked out this time, considering the look of the storm.

The afternoon stretched on and we cruised through the unendingly beautiful landscape of first southeastern Arizona, and then southwestern New Mexico. It was a good day to run.

Eventually, we pulled into the dusty small town of Deming, New Mexico, notable only for being the only stopping point between Lordsburg and Las Cruces, each town more than 50 miles away. But hey, it had cheap hotels, and that seemed good enough to me. After checking Jane over to make sure that she really was still running flawlessly after the morning’s incident (she was), I wandered over to the local restaurant for some enchiladas. And on the way back I saw something that put Deming on the map for me: the biggest, brightest, most spectacular rainbow I’ve ever seen, arcing across the sky in defiance of – or perhaps because of – the dust that swirled over the town.

I only wish that I had been outside of town to see that – imagine the majesty of a rainbow like that sweeping across the plains and the distant mountains. Well, I can see it in my mind, anyways.

It occurred to me that today, in my mad flight towards home, I had the pleasure of experiencing almost every scene that the American Southwest has to offer. From the forested remnants of volcanos, to saguaro-strewn hills, to scrubby desertland, to bare desolate mountains, to canyons lined by rocky spires, all bleeding together into a flickering slideshow of landscapes scrolling over Jane’s hood. We saw the human side of it, too, the mines and the pastures and the fields, the blisteringly hot urban city and the isolated towns clinging to a sparse existence surrounded by miles and miles of wilderness.  It’s certainly been a unique day of scenery. It has me very excited to visit for a longer, more leisurely trip next year!

Occupied with those thoughts, I bunked down for the night and prepared for another long day of driving tomorrow. Boy, I sure wish I could teleport sometimes. But I guess then I would miss moments like these, places like these, and that would be very sad.

Kelly signing out.