Borders and bridges

Sunday, September 18 (Day 2) — If we had any preconceptions that today would be easy compared to yesterday, they all went out the window by the time we were through with the day's travels. There's just something about driving through miles and miles of unchanging scenery in high temperatures that saps your energy.

Energy was one thing in short supply as we collected ourselves following our first night of hotel stay. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the accommodations in Needles aside from the usual stale air and corresponding allergic reactions in the form of stuffy nose, watery eyes and dry throat. That's unfortunately the price I pay whenever I stay in a hotel, but it is so much more convenient than sleeping in the back seat of the car on some darkened highway shoulder. Not that we've ever attempted it. Not that I'd want to in some of the towns we've traveled through. Ben was up at the crack of dawn and carrying on loudly, which isn't unusual for him. He does that at home all the time, but at least there we can put walls and a door between us and the noise, and if he's particularly rambunctious then we can shove in a pair of ear plugs too. Not so in the hotel room, where we are all in close quarters.

Roni and I finally succumbed to the day around 7:30. We all showered, then went to the hotel lobby for the free continental breakfast. Nothing fancy here, just store bought bagels and cream cheese, Fruit Loops, danishes, apple and orange juice, and a few pieces of fruit. We ate quickly and got on the road around 9:00.

Sunday morning found little traffic on I-40 as we headed east to the Arizona border. In about 20 miles we had reached the Colorado River and the state line. They don't give you much advance warning, so Ben was engaged in his video game at the moment of crossing. We pulled off at the first exit at some utility company facility and were able to find a good spot so Roni could get a photo of the "Welcome to Arizona" sign. The scenery along the river is quite a bit more engaging than the desert land we left behind in California. The mountains are more craggy, the rocks redder. The river seems to bring out the natural beauty, although I wouldn't go so far as to call this area beautiful. A few redwood trees or something would help. We turned off I-40 after another nine miles and began south of Highway 93 toward Lake Havasu City.

This was all a new experience for me. I'd been to Arizona before, but never to Lake Havasu. The drive south from the interstate is about 25 miles along splendid mountains lined with fields of cactus and desert sage. It's a two-lane road mostly, so there's a lot of passing that gets done in the oncoming lane. Luckily there weren't many cars, and those we did encounter were courteous. I usually don't like to race along on these trips because I'm spending too much time trying to enjoy the view. I'm usually content to let the lead-footed drivers slide on by. We made decent time to Lake Havasu City, arriving about 10 a.m. This is a real resort area as evidenced by the number of boats and newer tract homes. The main attraction is the London Bridge, which sits in the center of town amid a collection of restaurants and touristy shops. The story is that the bridge was built in 1831 and originally resided in London, England. In the 1960s, a local entrepreneur paid a couple million dollars to have the bridge disassembled and shipped in more than a thousand pieces to the states, reassembling it where it now stands in Lake Havasu City. It has provided plenty of fodder for tourism, but really there's not much more to say about it than what I've just said. It's a nice bridge as far as bridges go, but it's still just a bridge. We parked in the visitor lot near its base, at a place called London Bridge Plaza, and went in for a look around. They have a large fountain just inside the main gate that was drained for cleaning or repair or something. There's a theater and a visitor center and a restaurant that are all done up in an old English theme. We walked out to the water's edge and got a pretty good look at the bridge's underbelly. Roni was disappointed because she expected it to be built out of cobblestones. It's made of nicely chiseled stone, but unless someone told you it was cut in the early nineteenth century you might just assume it was put in a few years ago. OK, so they lined the deck with U.S. and British flags. Makes for a colorful presentation, but it's still just a bridge.

We were more impressed with the huge fish swimming around the shallows near the promenade. Either the fishing is greatly restricted in Lake Havasu or these fellows never stray far from the tourist area where they are undoubtedly well fed. There were a few ducks and a goose bobbing about, and I also spotted a mud turtle that made a quick dive for cover. We dropped in on a couple of gift shops to load up on postcards, bought some shaved ice at one of the vendor carts, dropped in at the visitor center and then left. We couldn't leave town without driving over the London Bridge once, naturally, so we did that and found ourselves on the opposite shore inside a public park lined with palm trees and a long strand of white beach. Ben waded into the shallows just for the heck of it. Roni was about ready to say the heck with the rest of the day's itinerary and have us just rent a pedal boat and float around the lake for a bit. In retrospect that might not have been such a bad idea.

We made our way out of Lake Havasu City about noon and continued south on Highway 93 to Parker. I was doing remarkably well on fuel mileage, figuring I'd probably have enough to get us to Phoenix. When we had first discussed a travel itinerary for our vacation, I had planned on us heading this far and then continuing on to Interstate 10 where we would cruise on into Phoenix and then truck on south for Tucson. We'd make the drive in a day and then spend Monday resting up while visiting nearby Tombstone. But Roni had other plans. In fact, she devised most of the itinerary for our trip. Being that she has always been the event coordinator in the family and I'm perfectly content to drive whatever route so long as I know what it is, I let her have full control of selecting the destinations. She read in one of the tour books about a ghost town near Wickenburg, and seeing as how we hadn't visited any ghost towns recently, we thought it sounded like fun. It was just a short drive, after all, and right on the way to Phoenix. Short, as it turned out, was heading east on Highway 72 through hot, desolate wilderness to where it linked up with U.S. 60 at a town called Hope, then proceeding east another 50 miles to Wickenburg. Problem was, we hadn't had lunch and were all growing ravenously hungry the closer we got to our destination. Hope, as it turned out, was nothing more than a gas station and a couple of bars. The other towns we passed after that had little more in the way of food that wasn't in the form of hole-in-the-wall diners. We'd promised Ben Burger King if we found one, and he was growing increasingly disappointed that we hadn't.

The scenery through here is both monotonous and boring. There were some other new types of cacti that we hadn't seen, and finally we found our first organ pipe cacti. But the road is long and sparsely traveled. We were doing 50-60 mph much of the way. It seemed like the distance to the next town never got any shorter. And as the miles dragged on and the temperature kept climbing — 95... 96... 97... — I started feeling spacey from fatigue and lack of food. I think the strain of yesterday's drive finally had started to catch up with me. There's something insidious about the way desert heat works on you. We are so used to upper 90s from living along the Delta that we just took Arizona's heat for granted. We have yet to turn on the air conditioner, and were driving along with the windows rolled down, just enjoying the atmosphere of the open road and the desert. But what we didn't realize is that a dry 98 degrees here is not unlike 108 degrees back home. You get dehydrated quickly. Our water bottles that Roni had been keeping on ice grew toasty warm in no time once they were sitting in our cup holders. Ice melts quickly in the desert. And it melts people as well. By the time we reached Wickenburg and found Ben's Burger King, I was ready to drop. Sitting in a cool restaurant and consuming fattening burgers and fries along with a cup of iced tea helped take off some of the edge, but there was no way I'd be replenished enough to make it all the way to Tucson today, which was still another 180 miles away. We decided right there that we'd go no farther than Phoenix, and Roni bagged her idea of visiting the ghost town. It was simply too hot and we were too exhausted.

We looked around Wickenburg for a few minutes. But this being after 3 p.m. on a Sunday, most of the shops were closed. We did manage to find the Chamber of Commerce visitor center (closed, of course) where they had a static display of an old steam locomotive that we grabbed some photos of. Then it was back onto Highway 60 for the last 52 miles into Phoenix. I found the Rams-Cardinals football game on one of the local AM stations and listened to the final few minutes of the fourth quarter as the desert gradually faded into an urban landscape. We went through Surprise and Sun City before finally reaching Phoenix proper. It's all one big metropolitan area as far as I can see. I bought gas for $2.86 a gallon, which is the cheapest I have seen it for since passing a truck stop on I-5 near home where it was $2.78. I got 422 miles on less than 11 gallons since Mojave, which is excellent. Wish I could do that all the time. The tire problem I mentioned yesterday was much less of a factor today because I didn't spend much time on the interstate. Tomorrow will be a different story as we head for Tucson.

We spent about an hour hunting for a hotel room. Roni scoped out a couple of places that looked promising based on the AAA tour guide, but when we got there we discovered they were located in the seedy section of town, close to the industrial yards, topless bars and adult bookstores. There were people approaching cars at stoplights and soliciting them for who only knows what. We pulled off the main drag for a moment to reassess the AAA book and came up with some hotel candidates uptown in the hotel district. Eventually we found the Comfort Suites (Room 111) near the conference center off I-17. It was only 5:30, but I was wiped out both physically and mentally. A shorter day in terms of time spent on the road, but it felt twice as long. At least this place has Internet service. I got to try it out for a bit before it cut me off around 9:30 p.m. I think the server didn't like the fact that I downloaded a couple hundred megabytes of e-mail messages that hadn't been synced to the laptop. I'll remember not to do that for next time.

We ordered Pizza Hut for delivery. They got it to us about 40 minutes later than promised. Ben wasn't too happy about that. He's had a long couple of days and really wants some play time with Dad. Dad needs to get more rest so he doesn't feel like road kill the rest of the trip. Time to shut the iBook down and get to bed.