Great American Road Trip, Part 2

A 33-hour road trip across the country begs for more than just music. I perused the options on my phone for an audiobook. Lo and behold, the entire volume of The Chronicles of Narnia runs in approximate 33 hours. Jackpot. I’ll listen to that. But each time I hit pause on the audiobook, all I can think of is the radio jockey back in California announcing the next song and a chorus of cheesy singers blurting out:

Con-tin-you-us-hate-dees hits!

It will haunt me the entire trip.

It seems to take us longer to go through California than we had expected. In fact, we stayed the night in the thriving metropolis of Barstow, CA. We breathed a sigh of relief when we crossed the border. Gas prices dropped. The speed limit rose. Restaurant signs exclaimed their dining rooms open.

Though Arizona has much to offer, not much of it can be experienced while driving 80 mph on interstate 40. Up ahead a sign advertises a bear sanctuary called Bearizona. On my left a freight train moves in a cliched manner across a piney ridge. An RV pulls a 30-year-old Geotracker. I take a sip of my Coke zero. 23 hours to go.

And a green sign along the highway appeared to look at me in a sad fashion while I read on its face, “378 mi to Albuquerque.”

We would absolutely love to simply drive and drive, without stopping. But I drink too much coffee, and dad drinks too much Diet Coke. Besides, this trip would kill us if we didn’t stop. We seem to stop often. And then there’s the dogs. They have to walk around and drink too. The two little rascals sit in the front seat of my dad’s vehicle panting and sleeping and panting and sleeping. I can smell the dog breath a quarter mile behind him, in another car.

Somewhere in New Mexico we pull off at some exit looking for a gas station. The distance between locales with any kind of civilization keeps growing longer. We park the cars in front of the pumps and walk up to the door. It’s a dive. A sign on the door announces that the restrooms are only for paying customers and that they have to haul their water 50-miles to get it to this gas station. Of course, none of that matters. They’re closed anyway. Why would they be opened at 7:30 a.m. on a Wednesday literally right next to the interstate? No matter, I walk behind the dilapidated building and pee on a rusted over shipping container that must have been some kind of nightmarish lawn ornament for the broken-down RV sitting next to it. We drive on.

We’re desperately trying to drive the full distance in 3 days and 2 nights, really we are. But honestly, we will probably shamefully add another night. I have nothing to prove.

The sun disappeared behind us and the desert blackened almost instantly. The lack of life out here shocks me, but not for long. The road drops down into a lower plane and Albuquerque lights look like an ocean filled with orange dots.

anthony forrest 

Start at the beginning of the road trip:

Part 1