*NOTE: Five years ago I began a journey across the country with Thiel, a dear friend of mine. I was moving from Chicago to Long Beach, California, and she agreed to make the drive with me. I present my journal of that journey on the corresponding day that it was recorded five years ago. Enjoy reliving this adventure with me!
Day 11: January 13, 2014
I got up early this morning and started getting ready. The bathroom in the wigwam was kind of cold, so I turned on the hot water in the shower to warm it up in there. I let it run for a few minutes, then got in and started lathering up. I wasn’t even halfway through when the water started to get cooler, and fast. I turned down the cold water, but it just got completely cold anyway. I turned it off and just turned it on as I needed it to lather up a washcloth or to rinse it out. No fun first thing in the morning! I told Thiel to wait a little while to see if we got more hot water, but she just decided to go without showering so we could get out of there. I called the office and got an answering machine, which told me that the office is open from 4:00 PM to 9:00 PM! Um…what if there’s a problem during the day, something like, maybe NOT HAVING ANY HOT WATER?!? I left a message for them but never heard a peep so far. That, I think, deserves some kind of refund or credit, as a hot shower is a basic part of one’s expectations from a place of hospitality. The water had become just barely warm again by the time we were ready to leave, but it was too little too late.
We went straight to Petrified Forest National Park, paid our $10 entrance fee, and went to the visitor center. We walked around a little trail behind the building and looked at all the petrified logs littering the landscape, then drove through the park. It’s a 28-mile road with pulloffs for good views, and side trips to interesting features of the park, and it connects with the Painted Desert, which is really beautiful. Such vibrant colors layered on top of each other; it really is stunning.
Petrified Forest National Park, AZ.
Thiel on a petrified log.
Petrified wood.
The Painted Desert, AZ.
Petroglyphs in Arizona.
An abandoned car in the Arizona desert.
The old road is virtually nonexistent in that area, so we took the interstate a few miles and exited for Meteor Crater, which is the first positively identified and best-preserved impact crater on the planet. It was featured in the movie Starman. It was amazing. It’s 550 feet deep (about 60 stories), two and a half miles around the rim, and almost a mile across. They said that you could have 20 football fields in the bottom and two million people in a stadium built up the sides watching the 20 football games simultaneously. It was caused by a meteor, only 150 feet across, which crashed into the site 50,000 years ago. They figure that an impact like that should occur once every 50,000 years. So I guess we’re due.
Meteor Crater, AZ.
Me at the meteor crater.
Thiel at the meteor crater.
We returned to the interstate and drove to the next place with old roadway that you can drive on, which was Winona, Arizona. We took the old road into Flagstaff, which is relatively near the Grand Canyon. It’s cold here and there is snow and ice in places. We’re pretty high up.
We decided to try to see if we could get a room at the Grand Canyon, as we ran out of daylight today to try to make it there and view it, but rooms there are very expensive. We found a cute little motel in Flagstaff, checked in, and went downtown to find some food.
Our lodging in Flagstaff, AZ.
We ended up at a pizza place. We sat in a booth that was tiny. Thiel ordered soup and a salad and I ordered a small pizza. The server told me that a small is pretty big, but I told her that was fine, as I would take the leftovers with me and have them later. When the food came, everything was so gigantic that we had to move to a bigger table, as ours couldn’t even fit the pizza and the soup, much less the salad! It was kind of ridiculous. The “small” pizza was the size of a medium pizza in most places I’ve ever eaten. Thiel didn’t even touch her salad; she packed it to go. That’ll be a midnight snack or maybe lunch tomorrow.
Dinner in Flagstaff, AZ.
Our miniscule booth at Alpine Pizza in Flagstaff, AZ.
When I checked in at the motel the front desk clerk told me that their attached restaurant (which is Greek—odd) is very good, and they serve a homemade breakfast starting at 7:00 AM for $3.00. THREE. DOLLARS. Come again?!? Needless to say, that’s where we’re planning on having breakfast in the morning. So…we’ll see if we can make it to Long Beach tomorrow night. It takes a lot longer to cross these large states, and distances here are deceiving. What looks like it’s just across the valley from where you’re standing is actually several miles in the distance. It’s really mind-boggling sometimes. I think, though, that I’ve seen everything that I’d hoped to on my way out to my new life, so I’m feeling ready to roll on in and finally see my new apartment, my new roommates, and figure out what’s going to happen next.
