The drive from hell, Arizona….

If you want to read this in order, scroll down to the prior entries and work up.  All the pictures are found here.

So we shoved off from Pie Town around 3:30 mountain time.  The route dad prescribed would take us through a small town named Alpine and then down route 191 which dad described as very “scenic”.  He said that Alpine was a neat little town.

On the way to Alpine we spotted some elk off to the side of the road. They were big, much bigger than deer.  Ali got a few good shots of them.  We got to Alpine with minimal fuss.  I was getting a little low on gas so I decided to fill up, not knowing how long it would be until we hit our next town.  I didn’t see a whole lot of note in Alpine, it’s an old town, established in 1879 but other than that, the gas station seemed to be the highlight of the place.  When I went inside to pay I decided to use the bathroom.  I had to laugh when I saw the hand written sign taped to the door that read:

LARGE DEPOSIT   ?

PLEASE FLUSH TWICE

Ali laughed when I relayed the sign to her.  So anyway as we were leaving Alpine we saw this sign and thought nothing of it. 

91 miles to the next town, should only take a couple hours. 

So after Alpine we were climbing gradually.  We kept trying to get a shot of the GPS when we were at max elevation.  The highest we saw was 9300 feet, close to two miles up!

As we climbed we took a little detour to go down a side road.  It had a sign indicating buffalo could be seen.  We drove back the stone road for a couple miles but saw no buffalo.  We stopped and walked around a bit.  There was absolutely no one around.  We snapped a picture of this old weather beaten sign. We also got a treat when we ran across a big pack of cattle hanging out along the road.  We stopped and got out to take some pictures, it was really neat.

The drive was very nice we drove through sweeping curves cut through dense forests as we climbed.  The van was really working hard to push us up the incline but luckily there were hardly any vehicles on the road so it didn’t matter.  Finally we got to the more or less “top”.  Then things started to go downhill, literally and figuratively.

We emerged onto a very steep, very twisty section of the road with sheer cliffs next to it with no guardrail.  We also came across a sign that said something to the effect of “shitty mountain roads for the next 60 miles”  I still had a sense of humor and figured it couldn’t be all that bad, could it?

  Ali was panicking.  She is scared of heights.  As I carefully navigated the turns and steep declines she was leaning away from outside of the van. She held on for dear life, like we were about to plummet over the edge at any moment.  I tried to reason with her, asking her if she really thought I would let us go over the edge?  Reason didn’t matter, she was scared to death.

 There was some beautiful views to be had as we went down the increasingly sharper turns.  Several times I stopped the van and walked right up the edge of the road to inspect just how far the drop off was.  Then I took a bunch of pictures of the views.  They were almost worth the hassle of the drive, almost.

I doubt my speedometer crossed 20mph for a couple hours.  The newly repaired brakes on the van were being put to a torture test.  I could smell them cooking as they tried to keep the van creeping downward.  At certain points I resorted to downshifting to first gear to give the brakes a chance to recover, they smelled red hot.

This drama continued for what seemed to be an eternity but finally we came down into what appeared to be flat land and straighter road.  We both breathed a sigh of relief.  We cruised along for maybe 10 minutes, happy to be able to at least go 40 mph.  We already had passed the 3 hour estimate dad had offered and still had well over halfway to go to Sierra Vista.  Then we started going back up. 

Our sense of humor finally vanished.  Not again.  Yep we were going back up another mountain and although I deemed it not possible, it was worse than the first set.  When I saw this sign I was almost in disbelief.  Surely this sign has to be a cruel joke.  10 mph for the next 11 miles????  Doing some quick math that would mean it would take me roughly an hour to go 11 stinking miles??  Unreal.

The road was as bad as advertised, it was steeper and meaner than the first set.  We took a picture of the GPS as we navigated down the ridiculous sharp turns, it was unreal.

This section of the road took FOREVER to navigate.  To make matters worse, we ran out of daylight and had to travel the last section of the mountain in the dark.  By the time we got to the small town of Morenci on the other side of the mountains we had spent a full 6 hours on the road.  Unreal.  Ali called Torrin once we managed to get cell phone coverage to inform her of our delay.  She laughed at our situation.  She mentioned something to me about this route taking a hellauva long time when dad talked about it but I didn’t even bother to hear her.

So finally we were back onto normal road.  For a long time 191 opened up to a two lane highway although it was pitch dark with wilderness butted up right against the road.  The speed limit was 70 mph but I was hesitant to go that fast because of the frequent animal crossing signs posted along the road.  I had visions in my head of smacking into a goat or elk.  So I kept my speed at around 55 as other native drivers flew by me.  Hell 55 felt like 100 after driving 10-20 mph for four or five hours.

Finally I got back to I-10 and after that it was maybe another hour to our destination.  We crossed time zones again and pulled into Torrin and Damon’s place somewhere around 10:30 local time, meaning our epic journey totalled almost exactly 8 hours.  We were both exhausted as we greeted them quietly as Emily was already in bed.  I had seen pictures of their house before and knew it was big.  I didn’t get a true appreciation until I walked in.  It is a mini-mansion of almost 4000 square feet.  They gave us a quick, quiet mini-tour.  Damon went all out when building this place, everything he did was top notch.  He is most proud of and I was most impressed by the theater room.  It literally looks like a small movie theater with stadium seating. It had 8 comfortable recline leather seats, a 133 inch projector screen, and surround sound. Wow, what a set up. 

Our bedroom was very nice.  It had a flat panel tv and Torrin even went as far as putting fresh roses on the bed stands, very thoughtful.  We both showered in the huge whirlpool bath tub and hit bed.  Even though I was incredibly tired I started watching an interesting show on the history channel.  I fell asleep with the tv on. (which Ali woke up and turned off later)

The next morning we got up and quickly got ready to head off to the starfish class, Emily’s swimming lessons.  When we got there we ran first into Damon’s mom and later his dad. We hadn’t seen them since Torrin and Damon got married a few years back. It was fun watching Emily going through class.  She really enjoys being in the water.  I think it is smart to get a kid comfortable in water at a young age. 

After starfish we all went out to breakfast with Damon’s parents, his sister and her two little boys.  Breakfast was very good.  The little boys were very cute. After breakfast we headed back to Torrin and Damon’s place. their place by the way, is featured through out the website for his business, check it out.

When we arrived, Nicki was instantly scared of their cat, Ethel.  Ethel was very friendly and just wanted to say hi to Nicki.  However Nicki wanted nothing to do with it and would back away in fear as the cat advanced, it was ridiculous.  Well we left Nicki at their place obviously when we went out.  When we got back and walked past our room we smelled something.  We looked in our room and didn’t see anything but then Ali discovered the source.  Nicki shit in Emily’s room….

I was pissed.  Nicki had been hardly eating during the trip, she surely should not have had to go.  Ali began the clean up process after I asked Torrin where the rug cleaning junk was, not telling her why I needed it.   After scolding Nicki big time and taking her outside, I came back in and took a peek in the room.  Wow, you can’t even tell it was there, the spot was totally clean. Damn we need carpet like this!  Damon said they had it treated with some teflon stuff.  Well it definitely works.  Add that to house upgrade list we want to do.

We got a tour of the rest of the place in the daylight.  It really is impressive with 14 foot high ceilings, first class surfaces everywhere you looked and warm inviting colors on the walls.

We got to watch the last half of the Eagles/Packers game in the theater room. Wow was that cool, well everything except the outcome with the Eagles special teams choking miserably and costing them the game.

After the game Damon wanted to take us out on his Polaris Ranger which is a 4 wheel ATV.  He wanted to show us the start of the new house he is building.  So Ali, Damon, Nicki and I piled into the front seat while Baxter hopped in the back.  The Ranger definitely was a go anywhere vehicle, it plowed over brush, climbed steep inclines and maneuvered over very rocky roads without incident.  We stopped for a bit and let the dogs walk around.  After tooling around for awhile Nicki was obviously very hot so we headed back. 

On the way back we came across a young kid standing next to his ATV, obviously he was having mechanical difficulties.  Damon stopped and asked him what was wrong.  Evidently a clamp that holds the exhaust pipe in place broke and it allowed the pipe to lay on the clutch cable.  As a result the ATV was unable to move, it acted like the clutch was constantly applied.  Damon looked through the various goodies he had thrown in the back of the Ranger and whipped out some metallic HVAC tape.  He wrapped it around the pipe and temporarily raised it by taping it to the seat.  It worked like a charm and the kid was back on his way.  Damon is always willing to lend a hand.

After we got back we sat out on their back porch for awhile and just hung out talking which was nice.  Soon we ran out of beer so Damon and I ran out to the convenience store to grab some more.  By the time we got back a friend of theirs and her mom and grandmother had stopped by for a visit.  We noticed that both of the dogs were outside standing at the door looking desperate to come in.  We asked why they were outside and were told it was because their friends grandma was scared of dogs.  Well that sorta seemed silly to me so I went out and hung with the dogs until they left.

The rest of the day was laid back.  Torrin and Damon made dinner which was good.  We hung out in the theater room and watched Eraser.  I worked on a couple of computer problems Torrin and Damon had with their laptops. It was nice and relaxing.  We got a good night’s sleep in prep for our departure on the long road back east Monday morning.

Monday I had my standard pop tart breakfast and we casually got our stuff gathered up to head out.  Nicki was obviously excited to go.  As I was going out to the van to load up, Nicki followed and hopped in the driver’s seat.  She remained in the seat even as I went back and forth between the house and van. She was ready.

We said our goodbye’s and thanked them for the hospitality.  We had a good time there.  The house is indeed awesome.  I got a lot of time to spend some one on one time with Damon, getting a chance to know him better.  He is a good guy that has a very honest and genuine personality.  I was glad we got the chance to spend the time there. 

As we made our way back to the highway, we stopped to fill up right before the on ramp.  After gassing up we headed up the ramp and immediately spotted an old mini-van on the shoulder with the door open and a person standing by the road.  It looked like they were half trying to flag someone down so I stopped right in the middle of the road after verifying no one was behind me at the moment.

I lower the window and we are faced with an old woman with no more than two teeth in her mouth and heavily wrinkled, leathery skin.  She starts pointing at Alison and mumbling stuff that made no sense. Something about she wasn’t going to let people like us take advantage of her.  It was bizarre.  I saw that some motorcycles were coming up behind us so I ended the encounter as the woman was still agitated and pointing at Alison.  I said “ok, thank you…” as I raised the window and drove away. Obviously the woman had mental problems.  Alison and I were both stunned and gave each other WTF looks as we merged into the traffic.  I hoped this wasn’t a preview of how the return trip would go…..

One more part to go.