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Quest of the Phoenix 2017 (6)

Part 6 of 11

By Nathan SturmPublished 7 years ago 12 min read
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Up at 6 AM again (after an eight-hour rest; hard to believe this is a “vacation” with me going to bed and getting up so early) and spent three hours preparing myself. First, I went and got a nice nutritious continental breakfast with all of the food groups represented (except meat), then I spent some time planning my route to South Mountain Park, grooming, and dressing carefully to hide the fact that I was slightly out of shape — I would be hiking in the rising heat of the late morning, so I couldn’t get away with wearing a jacket or whatnot.

The plan was to drive to the park, spend a couple hours checking it out, and then drive straight north through the middle of Phoenix before bearing east into Scottsdale before returning south to Tempe and then Mesa. You know, just to see the town and stuff (and possibly also turn up a stand selling Sonoran-style hot dogs).

The drive through western Mesa, southern Tempe, and southern Phoenix was okay. Again I was struck by how Phoenix consisted mostly of sprawly commercial suburbs with buildings only one or two stories tall. Which, at least, is stuff I’m familiar with. Now that I had had a nice long rest, Phoenix seemed less intimidating than it had yesterday, and much less intimidating than Vegas. Again, though, road construction, which made progress even slower than it already would have been with all the traffic and the 30-35 speed limits, etc. I headed south on Central Avenue (around which the whole road-scheme of the city seems to be built), which apparently led directly into the park. The mountain(s) hovered closer as I progressed through the slightly more ghetto far-south of the city.

Then suddenly I was in the park. There was no booth with rangers or anything like that, just a winding road that occasionally grew other winding roads and distressingly small parking lots (mostly all full already). Signs indicating the locations of the major trails were few. So basically I just kept driving up the mountain, slowly and carefully, for the roads were not very safe-looking and pedestrians and even cyclists kept barreling down around the curves with no evident regard for the ease with which they could be run over or knocked off the cliff. Eventually, I reached what was marked as the summit. Here, at last, was PARKING (and also bathrooms). It was now 9:45 AM and already about 75 degrees. I’d brought sunscreen and a couple bottles of water, and worn my big, scary steel-toed boots.

The view up here was amazing; an open place looked down on Phoenix, and in any other direction you could see other spires of the mountain-cluster and the miniature desert valleys between them. I randomly walked down part of the mountain and got maybe 30 feet down before determining that it was too steep and you weren’t supposed to hike here, despite the presence of discarded drink bottles. Climbing back up, I was already feeling the exertion a bit.

I then walked back down the road I’d just driven up and eventually found what I’m pretty sure was a “trail.” Stepping down into it, I entered a land of frickin’ magic. I was now IN the desert, personally, physically, intimately, etc., and all the tribulations of the trip so far were suddenly worth it. I’d been seeing interesting landscapes for days now, but this was the first time I got to really see the details of this ecosystem, which was so different from my home. I wandered randomly around the little valley, made labyrinthine (and seeming larger than it was) by the towering cacti and woody shrubs and paths through the rock like man-sized pseudo-canyons, never quite sure if I was on an actual “trail” or not (the park service should probably do something about that), but enjoying the hell out of myself nonetheless. After perhaps 45 minutes I haphazardly worked my way through the gravel and the vegetation back to the road and re-ascended it (which left me pretty damn hot and sweaty and out-of-breath by now).

As I reached the parking lot at the summit and approached my car, some middle-aged people behind me, who’d just arrived, were speculating whether or not there was a bathroom up here. “Yeah, there is, right over there,” I said and pointed.

“Oh, thanks,” the one guy replied, and then, presumably glancing at my license plate, “So you’re from Michigan?”

“Yes.”

“Ohh. We’re from… Ohio,” he said. At that moment I realized that a nimbus of ebon-purple light was playing about his head, smoke was coming out of his ears, and a blackened trail along the earth had appeared where he had walked, wilting what little vegetation there was.

“You should cover that up,” he said of my plate. Discordant flute and violin music along with booming primordial drums seemed to be playing somewhere, as though the orchestra of Hell were in the next valley over.

“WRETCHED OHIOANS,” I replied, horrified to have encountered God’s cursed people here, “GET THEE BEHIND ME. THY VILE PRESENCE BESMIRCHES THE SANCTITY OF THIS PLACE. IN THE NAME OF BOTH MICHIGAN AND MICHIGAN STATE, I CURSE THEE, AND CAST THEE OUT, THOU UNCLEAN.” Actually I didn’t say that, I just said “Sorry,” sarcastically, in reference to the “you should cover your Michigan plate, hur hur” thing, and then we chatted for a moment about where in the state I was from, which they apparently regarded as far enough north to be “innocent” of any football-related shenanigans. The part about them blackening the earth by their foul presence is completely true, however.

Departing the fiendish Ohioans, I was typically and predictably tailgated the whole way down the mountain by people who really, really wanted to kill pedestrians and then drive over the edge to kill themselves, etc., but they were forced to deal with my “speed limit” way of doing things until, eventually, we reached the base of the mountain and the end of the park.

I then drove north on Central Avenue and crossed the Salt River, entering downtown Phoenix (or “central city”, whatever). Unfortunately, there was yet more road construction here, so I detoured to 7th street just to the east and continued north on that. Downtown Phoenix was actually quite nice; it seemed to possess just the right balance of big-city and not-big-city, at least for someone like me who has minimal experience with big cities. I then turned east on Camelback Road, which took me into a rather more upscale part of town where Camelback Mountain itself rose and several expensive-looking homes were built into its slopes. The whole area was very attractive, though I was suddenly a bit self-conscious of my filthy car and sweat-stained shirt.

The same Internet-people who compared Phoenix to a poor man’s Los Angeles had also compared Scottsdale to Beverly Hills, and it was VERY obvious that there was a LOT of money in this neighborhood (technically its own city, but it and Phoenix and Tempe and Mesa and Glendale and Chandler have all kinda grown together by now). I felt vaguely like I didn’t belong, but then again I was just passing through, anyway. When I turned south again I immediately passed into a resort-and-recreation district that reminded me a bit of Charlevoix, Michigan, in the summer (which I’m not a huge fan of, though my mom and stepdad seem to like it). Too many beautiful rich people clogging the roads with their bodies, which was even worse than clogging the roads with their cars.

However, the far south of Scottsdale and the north of Tempe grew more comfortably proletarian and I pulled abruptly into a drive-thru restaurant as part of my program of trying new and unhealthy fast food whenever possible. The staff seemed composed entirely of individuals speaking English as a second language and I had to restate my order (a third-pound bacon-guacamole burger and some jalapeno poppers) a couple times. I was in no hurry, though, and actually enjoying my motorized amble through the city. After getting my food I crossed the Salt River again and soon was back “home.”

The burger was good, of course. I had planned to get sushi for dinner from a place in Mesa that had gotten good reviews, but I wouldn’t have stomach-room for that for a few hours, so I resolved to do laundry.

AFTER loading most of my dirty clothes into the laundry room I discovered that you had to pay quarters for the soap, so I went out to my car and got quarters. I then discovered that you also had to pay quarters to start the washing machine itself. So after putting my clothes in and sprinkling the soap onto them, I bought something from a vending machine to break two dollar bill down into quarters via change. Then I discovered that the washing machine was not working even after I put in the quarters and set the cycle and closed the lid. There was no “ON” button.

I went to the front desk and asked if I was missing something. The young man there asked, “did you close the lid?” Yes, so I figured I’d try it again. If that didn’t work, he said he could call the maintenance guy in the morning. Thanks.

I got a plastic bag and de-loaded my dirty clothes from the washer, trying to save most of the powdery soap, and left a handwritten “OUT OF ORDER” sign on the washing machine. Then I washed my clothes in the bathtub in my room by soaking them for a bit and then spraying them out with the shower nozzle. Then I wrung them out by hand and laid them flat in the tub to drain for awhile. The dryer in the laundry room, which I hoped would still be working, also required quarters, and I didn’t have enough, so I figured that getting dinner in a short while would produce a couple and I’d deal with drying my laundry then.

The sushi place I’d been looking at was only a few miles farther southeast into Mesa. I called and ordered an Arizona Roll (which included jalapenos and sriracha in addition to the usual salmon and cucumber and so forth), some tempura-shrimp udon noodle soup, and a seaweed salad. I took my time heading out to pick the food up, which turned out to be a mistake since traffic was bad enough (yet again) that the measly four miles I had to drive took at least 20 minutes. Downtown Mesa was pretty nice though, kind of old-school compared to the rest of the Phoenix empire. Adding to the time it took me to arrive, though, the place was located in an ENORMOUS mall-plaza-thing which had so many businesses that I thought I’d come to the wrong location and spotted the sushi joint just as I was about to leave and look elsewhere. The restaurant was quite nice inside, though they were pretty busy and the young waitress seemed very embarrassed about having to deal with eat-in customers before attending to my carry-out order. An older lady (her mom?) ended up checking me out.

“Sorry!” The waitress said, to which I said, “That’s okay, thanks.” Except in extreme circumstances, I tend to be patient with food service folks since I worked in said industry for ten years.

On the way back I somehow missed my turn due to overestimating the distance I still had to drive and ended up back over the Salt River in some sort of desert-boonies area near an Indian reservation, so I turned around and slowly crept from street to street until finding the correct one, which had been partially hidden by yet more road construction. By now I was a little concerned how my raw salmon would be faring in the 90-degree heat (though of course my car was set at like 68).

Arriving “home” again, I ate, and the food was VERY GOOD. However the udon noodles were extremely FAT and I couldn’t finish all of them, so into the mini-fridge they went.

Then I gathered my wet clothes and took them to the dryer, which worked. However it was VERY LOUD, to the point that I was worried I might be disturbing other guests, and it also seemed to be VERY INEFFECTIVE at actually “drying” my clothes. I made a cup of tea and wandered around a bit and browsed the Intraweb; an hour later, the dryer stopped. It seemed to have removed approximately 35% of the moisture from my clothes. So I loaded them into an empty plastic waste bucket and hung them up around my bathroom and closet to air-dry overnight.

I then went out to the ice machine (which I’d discovered near the “laundry” room) and had a nice glass of ICE WATER. It occurred to me how lovely it was that I could spare all this water to wash my clothes, then get extra frozen water added to my liquid water to drink, all in the middle of a broiling desert. And there are all these palm trees and shit everywhere, and some lawns even have grass! (Others have gravel, which seems much more aesthetic and sensible to me.) Didn’t someone say something about how the water-level of Lake Mead used to be higher?

The rest of the evening I passed in chillaxing and reading from The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories, a logical choice in what according to Wikipedia is the sunniest place on Earth.

I also reflected on a few things:

  • First, I never saw any Sonoran hot dog stands. I would have no choice but to make my own at home later.
  • Second, today was one of the best days of the trip (notwithstanding laundry, road construction, and the malfeasant depredations of the accursed Ohioans) in part because it was a Saturday, a day of the week I always work, and I wasn’t working.
  • Third, I must admit to being slightly disappointed to discover that the Southwest was not, as in the movies, perpetually swathed in an orangish-reddish-brown haze of heat and dust. Mostly it was just clear blue skies (or grey skies that looked like rain but weren’t, oddly, in the Mojave).

On the negative side, I slept poorly due to loud imbeciles in the pool-courtyard area right outside my room continuing to vehemently argue about shit well past midnight. The sign next to the courtyard entrance clearly states that it closes at 10 PM. The staff did absolutely nothing about this. When I do my hotel reviews, I will have my revenge (for this as well as the thing with the washing machine).

Past Entries

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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Nathan Sturm

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