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Published: August 27th 2017
Start of the scenic route
Turned out to be very scenic indeedEver notice how on TV and in movies cars stay magically spotless on road trips, much like the lead actresses’ hair and make-up? It’s all a terrible, terrible lie. My car is a mess of dead bugs, water spots, and dust and I generally feel pretty gross after the 6
th or 7
th hour on the road in the heat of the afternoon sun. Leather seats may look cool but I think cloth is secretly the way to go for these long trips.
I’ve also decided that I take after my father in that my vacations aren’t generally very relaxing. I was deeply concerned for our schedule when I woke up at 7 this morning. Ken was notably less so and elected to continue sleeping... which I probably should have done too. In my defence if I drive thousands of kilometers I want it to be ACTION PACKED! I can sleep and sit around at home! My brother Matty may also add that I’m the same way even if I don’t drive thousands of kilometers and I’m somewhere I’ve been hundreds of times (Edmonton). I seem to remember a comment that I
Zion National Park
A sample of the rock formations at Zion need to be “walked frequently”. To save some time I offered to check us out of the hotel while Ken took the rest of his bags out to the car. It was an excellent excuse for me to chat with Juliya at the front counter again... purely in the name of efficiency of course.
Anyway... On the road to Flagstaff today; a mere 8 hours away. Pft. Scoff. Guffaw. Child's play. And that was even on the longer “scenic route”. At least we assumed it was more scenic. That’s the rule, right? The longer and more out of the way the road is, the more scenic it must be?
Well in this case yes. Very much so. Some basic advice for you: When you go to Utah you need to drive to Zion National Park. As much as it pains me to speak in an non-sarcastic manner about something, it was stunning. Would recommend. Pictures do not do it justice. I mean that sincerely. And though I was skeptical when we first crossed into Arizona, it ended up being pretty spectacular as well. There was something about the vast open desert with nothing but sheer rock cliffs on
Getting Toasty
Was in the red once or twice today. She's a cool weather Canadian pony for sure but has done just fine otherwise either side. Majestic. Yeah, majestic! That’s what it was. Textbook definition. It was well worth extending our 8 hour drive to an 11 hour one.
Now it turns out that Utah and Arizona are pretty warm in late August. Haha, only kidding. Scientifically speaking it was actually “hot as balls”. Not only does that make me rather irritable and sweaty in the late afternoon, it also makes “Our Lady of Blessed Acceleration” rather cantankerous as well. She’s a Canadian car with coolant made for Canadian summers so she isn’t a big fan of the Southwestern summer sun… particularly in the traffic of the National Park and up hills. To make her feel better we shared in the misery by turning off the A/C and the rest of the accessories to bring the engine temp down. We also yelled at traffic in front to drive faster to keep up the flow of slightly less scalding-hot ambient air through the engine compartment. Ha! Now we had an excuse if we were caught speeding.
On the topic of the car we stopped for gasoline in bustling “Orderville” where we were greeted by the station’s owner and fellow mustang enthusiast, Roger. He
Greetings from Canada
Like all proper restaurants Satchmo's has a paper table cloth and crayons owned a slew of mid-sixties Stangs, a 1990 Stang, and an old Bronco that his dad bought new back in ’66. We asked him for some lunch recommendations and as he suggested we decided to check the next town. He didn’t even acknowledge the café across the street which in a town that size really speaks to the food quality there.
So for third day in row, Ken and I had Subway for lunch. Thank God they have 45 000 locations worldwide or else we’d starve to death. Fun fact: that’s almost 20 000 more franchises than McDonalds. For dinner we went to a local Cajun restaurant “Satchmo’s” where I had jambalaya and Ken had a pull pork sandwhich. We washed everything down with corn bread and local beer. Fantastic.
You know…I’m starting to suspect you all aren’t finding the RV game as hilarious as we think it is. C’mon people “Anal Force” and “Anal Stryker”? Hahahaha! Classic. “Anal Leprechaun” and “Anal Expedition”... this stuff writes itself. And you can bet there’s plenty more where that came from!
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