As our days wind down here in Arizona, I realized I hadn’t a) really watched a sunset, b) really seen the stars, and c) really watched a sunrise. C is an issue for us, as the sun has a tendency to rise about 8 hours before Jenny and I even get out of bed. However, A and B seemed well in the realm of possiblity, so we took the opportunity yesterday to make it happen.
We headed out to Airport Loop Trail, which is nothing impressive in and of itself. It’s south of the main road through Sedona, and it’s a rocky trail that loops around the airport. However, it’s apparently a vortex and gives you some amazing views of the Sedona area. We hiked around to the western slope and timed it so we got there a little before sunset.
We hiked off the main trail to a cliff that overlooked… well, everything.
So many looking off into the distance pensive shots! And I must say, I am not that great of a photographer, but my iPhone 11 sure as hell is. Taking backlit shots into the sun is my new favorite hobby.
We were prepared with flashlights and hiked back to the car in the pitch black. We also actually started hearing coyotes off in the distance, so hopefully we didn’t almost die. (When I tell this story later it’ll probably involve me and Jenny fighting off a pack of coyotes with our bare hands.)
After that we grabbed a pizza and beer at a place called “Picazzo’s” which I think is the perfect level and type of stupid, but Jenny, being the art history expert she is, understandbly hates it. Pizza was amazing either way.
We pulled off Route 89A into a dispersed camping site called “Coffee Creek” in the middle of f**king nowhere and ate pizza and drank some beers under more stars than I’ve seen in a long time. BLACKER THAN THE BLACKEST BLACK TIMES INFINITY. Obviously no pictures, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the iPhone somehow pulled it off.
Last Arizona post (probably)! We leave Sunday morning pointed east. Stay tuned.
It’s been a week since the last post as we’ve been laying low a bit more as we decide our next move. However, some highlights:
Prescott, AZ
First off, we learned it’s pronounced PRESS-kit. We heard a local newsperson say it when we first got here and thought they were just being stupid. Then we heard it again and realized that’s just how they do it here. It’s like Arvada, CO is Ar-VAH-duh… not Ar-VAW-duh. Think soft “A” not soft “O.” Arv-ฤ-da, not Arv-ล-da. Seriously, I’m having a hard time making sure I’m explaining this right. Ask someone from Denver, they can explain it.
But yeah, it’s PRESS-kit. Why? No clue. Because they say so I guess.
We went out to Willow Lake Park which has an awesome path around the lake.
We entered on the north side of the lake headed counter-clockwise, and somewhere near the southwestern side of the lake there’s a pile of rocks you can climb up and overlook everything you just walked. (And get dramatic, pensive shot — YAY DRAMATIC PENSIVE SHOT!)
It went a little downhill from there though. (Literally, I guess?) There’s a path that goes all the way around the lake, hiking through some more rocks and getting back to the truck. And I decided I very much wanted to climb more rocks. But unbeknownst to us (because we didn’t pay attention to the map) the very important section of the trail that gets you to the other side of the lake is only there when the water is lower. And it was not low. It was high. So we got to that part and the path just kinda went into the lake.
Instead of just turning around, I decided there must be another way around. Long story short… there was not. We ended up walking down a road, crossing a highway, trespassing through an RV park, and starting down a trail that took us to a completely different lake. WE WALKED TO THE WRONG LAKE.
To reiterate, there was no way to get around the lake. (The first one, I don’t know anything about the second one.) And now it’s two hours later and we have to walk all the way back. Through the RV park, back over the highway, down the road, and all the way back to the truck. What we planned to be an easy mile hike turned into an all day event. After that we got a bunch of booze and some sandwiches for dinner and called it a day.
Route 66
Yesterday we decided to just hop in the truck and take a drive. Back when Jenny and I had first started dating and were living in New York, we took a random drive to Cleveland, OH to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The destination wasn’t even really the main goal, as all along the route through Pennsylvania and Ohio we stopped at just the most ridiculous things we could find.
Elysburg, PA – Legal made them put the question mark in I’m sure. The best part is that this is some back corner of an amusement park next to some storage unit. No one gives a s**t… except us I guess.North Huntingdon, PA – World’s Largest Big Mac (Fun fact, this was about 25 pounds ago)Cleveland, OH – World’s Largest Rubber Stamp
You get the point.
Being as most of the really cool stuff is closed up (Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, anything worth hiking in Sedona, meteor craters, etc) we decided to just take a drive down “Route 66” (aka highway 40) and see what we see.
We drove out to Holbrook, AZ first. There’s a dinosaur museum…
That sign though. There’s a million reasons that sign is necessary, and they all involve drunken idiots climbing fake dinosaurs.
… a wigam motel (strangely enough called Wigwam Motel) where you literally sleep in a wigwam with a classic car parked out front…
…one of them being Sir Tow Mater.
Next we stopped at the only place that seemed open for some Mexican food. We’re pretty sure it is a family establishment considering the entire family was in the establishment. Seriously, the entire dining area was cleared and four generations of this family were sitting around watching Power Rangers The Movie. I guess there’s not much else to do on a Saturday afternoon in bublef**k Arizona in the middle of a pandemic.
Also, as we were sitting eating our very delicious burritos we see this guy show up. At first we a little confused / disturbed, but then we saw the previously mentioned children run out of the restaurant to wave and say hi. It looked like it was the first moment of happiness these kids have had in quite a bit. Bravo guys, spreading some goodness.
We hit the road headed back towards Flagstaff, and eventually stopped at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. Now, I’m sure Jenny explained to me at least twice what this place was, but these days it’s a just place you can buy alcohol that has a big rabbit out front you can mount like a racehorse. And just in case you happen to forget where it is…
Moving further west, we stopped at Winslow, AZ, and I swear nobody would give a crap about this town if Jackson Browne* hadn’t decided that “Arizona” and “corner” rhymed enough to put in a song. But I guess this town has nothing else better to do that erect monuments to it and name a corner of the town “Standin’ on the Corner Park.”
*Yes, I know, it is an Eagles song. Jackson Browne had started it and wrote THAT line, but was unable to finish it. Glenn Frey came over and wrote the rest of the verse. Browne liked it and they wrote the song together. Thanks Wikipedia.
I wish I had the words to express to you how this is absolutely just a random small town street corner that had one line in a decent song back in 1972, and they’ve spent 50 years bragging about it. But hey, we came out to see it so… f**k us, right?
OMG I GET IT!
Next stop was a place called Two Guns, AZ. This is an abandoned “ghost” town that has a crazy history from everything Jenny told me. There’s an old gas station, shop, remnants of a friggin zoo, an “Apache Death Cave” (that we unfortunately did not find), and an old RV campground that you can apparently still stay at. Tons of graffiti and tons of old broken down buildings. Totally weird and totally cool.
After that we headed into Flagstaff to grab some dinner and went home.
At this exact moment Jenny is making cupcakes for the first time. Also for the first time, she’s realizing making cupcakes is a pain in the ass. Check out the Instagram as I’m sure we’ll have some pictures up of her resounding success. Who needs granulated sugar* anyway?!?!
*We forgot to get granulated sugar. We bought ingredients for cupcakes, and forgot the sugar. SUGAR. Thankfully we had molasses and the mathematical formula to substitute it. We’re never laughing at people on Nailed It ever again.
We’re leaving Arizona end of next weekend and starting our trek east. It’s crazy to say we’re moving around this much at this moment in time, but doing the math the risk is pretty low. If we play this right, we could get across the country and not interact with a single person. We’ll pay for the gas at the pump (wearing gloves and immediately disinfecting). And almost all RV parks are doing check-ins over the phone now. We’ll pack lunch from food in the camper so we don’t have to go into any fast food places. Outside of that, it’s just Jenny, me, the cats, and the open road.
Speaking of the cats, we don’t know exactly what date they were born but we were told sometime in April. So… happy 8th birthday boys. You’re annoying as ever, but we love you.
Hey guys. Just got done watching the first night of Wrestlemania 36 and… um… well, these are strange times. For anyone who doesn’t watch wrestling, they performed it in their practice facility with no audience. So everyone comes out hamming it up for the crowd… that doesn’t exist. Then while they’re wrestling there’s absolutely no crowd reaction. And you hear everything the wrestlers are saying. It was also all pre-recorded. Now I don’t watch wrestling much throughout the year, I just use Wrestlemania as my yearly homage to my childhood, but even for me it was weird as hell.
The headline match was Undertaker vs AJ Styles in a “Boneyard Match.”
But Chris, what’s a “Boneyard Match?” Glad you asked!
So weโre all in agreement that every Undertaker match needs to be filmed like this from now on, right? #BoneyardMatch#WrestleMania
They had the match in a graveyard. That’s all. But on a night of pre-recorded matches, they Hollywood’ed the f**k out of it, and it was basically the big final showdown between the good and bad guy at the end of the movie. And it totally worked and was awesome (after much calculation on what I had just watched). Listen.. Undertaker has ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS getting in a ring anymore. And I don’t mean that’s he’s not a great character, or hasn’t earned the right to work as long as he f**king wants to. I mean that the man can barely walk, nonetheless be throwing 300 pound men around. But I think it worked having him perform on a Hollywood stage. It got all the good GREAT stuff he’s still got left, and allowed us to ignore all the bad. And if you’re interested in other opinions, take a look at #boneyardmatch on Twitter. Plenty of opinions, mostly positive. Even better, find a way to watch it. It’s an event.
And while I’m at it… God bless the WWE at this exact moment. They could have easily canceled it, postponed it, whatever. But they gave us an outlet on a Saturday evening sitting in our homes with nothing much else to do. They gave us the glorious ridiculousness and stupidity of professional wrestling, and with everything going on I think this country will take it. Thanks guys.
In other news, we’re still chilling in the Sedona, AZ area of the world. We’re still deciding what the hell we’re going to do, but we’re leaning heavily towards a drive back east when our reservation here is up. If our original plan was in action, we’d be on our way to Memphis at this exact moment. Specifically, we’d be parked somewhere around Amarillo, TX to spend the night.
As for now, our plan is to get to Cape Cod by early May, hopefully as they’re coming down the other side of this roller coaster ride. We’ll be hanging out there until Jenny gets the smoke signal that a nephew is on his way, at which point she’ll be hopping in a rental car and heading straight down to Long Island (which is also hopefully going through the other side of this mess as well.) After that, the hope is we can hop back on the original itinerary as we would have started on Cape Cod beginning in June.
::fingers crossed::
In the meantime we’re keeping ourselves busy. As I was sitting around drinking beer and watching grown ass adults throw themselves around a wrestling ring, Jenny made us pasta from scratch. Seriously, SCRATCH. Like, rolling egg yolks into flour. Who does that?!?
I don’t deserve this woman.
Needless to say, it was delicious. Soon she’ll be baking cupcakes… and I will weigh 250 pounds by the end of this. #notcomplaining
Also in the news, we made a trip up to Flagstaff. Made a nice easy hike up to the top of Slate Mountain, which kinda just gives you the same awesome view the whole way up, so not more than a few photos necessary. Then we went to Lumberyard Brewery where we picked up some food and beer, I had the best burger I’ve had so far on this trip, and drank my hefe walking around Buffalo Park. Jenny ran here 12 years ago with her college team, and we had the fun thought experiment of telling her the context of how and when she’d be back for her second visit…
“You’ll be back here with a boyfriend of 10 years, but you won’t be married or have kids… like not even close. You’ll also be driving around the country in an RV and not working at all… OH, and you’ll be in the middle of a global virus pandemic that has killed over 64,000 people.”
(When I showed her this before posting – so I don’t get in trouble – her response: “well, I’d definitely believe the not being married or having kids.”)
So that’s it, I guess. There’s a song I had been promising Jenny I’d learn to sing with her for karaoke for about 8 years now, and I never did. Since karaoke is no longer a thing (awwwwww, remember places?!?!) we may just record our own music video, obviously extremely drunk because why the f**k not be extremely drunk with everything going on. So keep an eye out for that I suppose.
To finish this out, please enjoy a video of George being a f**king idiot, a selfie on TOP OF A MOUNTAIN, and Buffalo Park.
(Also, Rick and Morty marathon Monday night on Adult Swim. You’re welcome.)
