Quest of the Phoenix 2017 (5)

Once again I was up at 6:30 and had a breakfast of tea and granola/fruit bar. Browsing maps and such on my phone, I was determined to CAREFULLY plan my route into Phoenix to avoid anything like last night’s debacle. In any event, I knew that my motel this time would have an actual “parking lot.” Still I retained some residual nervousness.

After checking out of my room I drove through the remainder of Boulder City, which looked to be pretty nice, colorful but peaceful. Later I read that it was primarily populated by RETIREES, however, which is always a bad sign. Beyond the town I came to a weird rocky landscape near Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam. I turned off of the highway to see the Dam in question, but signs warned of some kind of “security checkpoint” that you had to go through and I didn’t fancy the idea of guys pawing me down and rifling through my stuff to make sure I wasn’t a terrorist plotting to blow up the dam. So instead I took another turn onto a scenic overlook above the lake.

When I got back on the highway, the concrete wall-things to the sides were too high for me to see the actual dam as I passed it, sadly.

The landscape here was very, very strange. It was still desert of some sort but it looked somehow artificial and “wrong,” a slag-heap, abandoned-construction-site type of mass of barren hills that reminded me a bit of some evil wasteland in a Nintendo 64 game (the weather remained unusually grey and hazy, so there was even the suggestion of “distance fog.”)

I was now in western Arizona, which was fairly boring. It retained some of the unpleasantness of the prior area and otherwise consisted of dry, shrubby expanses specked with occasional, isolated human settlements that seemed like they didn’t belong there. In the town of Kingman I pulled off the highway for lunch, intending to try another fast-food place at which I’d never eaten before. I settled on a taco chain which we don't have back home, but which notably has fish and shrimp tacos (which is what I ordered).

Past the drive-through window was a tiny, TINY lane that curved directly into a street that was CLOGGED with endless traffic. The guy in front of me was stuck there, so I was stuck at the window. After a moment, the manager of the restaurant poked her head out and — I am not making this up — asked me to back out of the one-lane drive-through because I was sitting on their timer and making it seem like it was taking them too long to serve me, etc. Had they, uh, checked to see if there was anyone behind me? I did as asked, nonetheless, reflecting on how crazy the West was. Too little of the transportation infrastructure had been properly designed to accommodate the insane level of traffic that EVERY town seemed to have.

After eating a couple shrimp tacos in a massive parking lot, I went into an adjacent Wal-Mart where I bought bananas (my diet was getting too light on plant matter) and gum, and took a pee. Then I got back on the highway (which took awhile due to the difficulties of navigating all the TRAFFIC) and continued southeast.

I was now entering the actual Sonoran Desert, signaled by my first sighting of a Saguaro Cactus, though a few lingering Joshua Trees suggested that the Sonoran and the Mojave overlap somewhat. The landscape grew more interesting, with more variation and rocky hills dotted with more cacti and so forth. Meanwhile I was now on Episode 8 of the Hammer of Retribution, the last one I’d burned off, which was pretty good with some interesting symphonic-black-metal bands and stuff. The previous day I’d mostly been listening to Episode 7, which I was a bit “meh” on due to it consisting mostly of folk/heathen metal which has never been my favorite. At some point I also passed the slightly infamous ghost town of Nothing, AZ, which long ago hit its peak population of, like four or five, and has since plummeted all the way to zero.

My gas was getting perilously low and I wasn’t sure I’d quite make it to Wickenburg, the last town of note before reaching the outskirts of Metro Phoenix. I did make it, though only by a slim margin. There were bikers everywhere. I’d seen quite a few of them on the road, and the gas station I stopped at accumulated like 30 of them in the span of five minutes. Was there a motorcycle convention going on or something? Anyway, after refilling my tank I proceeded.

The nervousness was back as I reached the outer suburbs of Sun City, Surprise, and Peoria. I’d heard that Phoenix’s traffic was even worse than usual by Western standards, and the sheer size of the metro area made me concerned about getting lost, even though I had my route well-planned (complete with a couple alternate routes if need be). I stayed on Highway 60 for a long time, and at one point found myself hemmed in by multiple lanes’ worth of cars on all sides, with a police car directly behind me for several miles. Eventually he turned somewhere. The temperature had been rising through the 80s, and eventually hit 93.

Right around Encanto Village in the center of the city I finally departed the highway, taking a cross-street east before I would then use another to head south to the intra-city freeway (which I wanted to spend only a minimum of time on) that would take me to Mesa. I seem to have screwed up at a light and almost got stuck in the middle of an intersection (due to traffic being so thick that I couldn’t tell if I had enough ROOM to pull ahead), but I managed to back out of most of the cars’ way, mostly. Otherwise, looking around, I noted Phoenix’s resemblance to both the Bay Road area of Saginaw (albeit bigger and with palm trees) and to the movies’ depiction of Los Angeles circa 1992, both of which I’d kinda expected. There was also road construction everywhere.

Getting on one of the freeway-loops that are used to traverse the metro area was about as scary as Vegas had been, and I almost clipped a guy changing lanes (granted, he had started accelerating right after I looked away). Nonetheless I found my exit and drove into downtown Mesa, where my motel lay. The street was divided here, and a strange metal sculpture-grating-thingy rose from the median. A few people hung around on benches. I parked out front and went to the front desk.

The girl at the desk looked Indian (as in South Asian) but spoke with what sounded like a stereotypical Rosie Perez Latina accent and furthermore kept adding the word “like” to her sentences at seemingly random points. She was helpful and nice though and pointed out the location of my room as well as the laundry room (I’d been worried I might have to find an actual laundromat at some point) and some other stuff.

I moved my things into the room, noted that it had its own coffee pot, and immediately made myself a cup. Then, for awhile, I just sort of chilled and did nothing.

I had already purchased a ticket to the Phoenix Film Festival to see an amalgamation of short horror films over the course of about 90 minutes, starting at 9:25 p.m. It would be dark then. And contemplating this, I discovered that I really didn’t want to go. I was so damn tired of driving, worrying, and figuring out where to drive so I wouldn’t have to worry (much), and for the first (and only) time during the trip, I was slightly homesick. Thus, despite the embarrassment of having flushed money down the drain while failing to do what I originally intended to do two nights in a row now, it is probably for the best that I spent the remainder of Day 5 hanging out in my room doing absolutely nothing except eating some instant noodles, reading, and just sort of lying there in the dark. I vowed that tomorrow, I would get back on track and do a bunch of interesting stuff to make up for it. Which I did, incidentally.