Travel Tips

I love roadtrips. For me, nothing compares to an isolated, two-lane road where you can drive for over an hour without passing another car. Blasting music, smoking a cigarette and barreling down the highway is the way I always prefer to travel.
I've taken lots of roadtrips over the years, the most fun of which have been over the past couple of years since I've been renting cars. When I first started renting cars, many of the trips were Tucson-based because, at the time, I owned a pickup truck which got terrible gas mileage, making it worthwhile often to rent cars in order to make long trips.

Send Photo to a Friend

Oil derrick outside Carlsbad, New Mexico

The Virgin Run: Going

Date: May 2006
Car: 2006 Chevy Cobalt
Rental Company: Budget
The first rental car roadtrip I made was a month after I turned 25 in 2006. I reserved a compact car from Budget's Tucson Airport location and got a purple Chevy Cobalt hatchback. The stated point of the trip was to see my sister graduate from UT in Austin, but I really just wanted to rent a car for a roadtrip.
I set out after work in the purple-mobile, heading east on Interstate 10 at great speeds toward New Mexico, a run I had made several times before.
I bought a six pack of Shiner Bock and, after getting hassled by the ego-maniacal Border Patrol west of Alamogordo, I reached the Sacramento Mountains in Cloudcroft, put back a couple and went to sleep for a while. I awoke later with the intense desire to leave (this is common when I sleep in my car alone), so I continued down 82 back into the low country, passing several deer and a ringtail and through the refinery town of Artesia in the middle of the night. I chose to take a back road into Carlsbad which led through an array of oil fields and is where I got what is now one of my favorite pictures (attached). As dawn came, I left Carlsbad and went south into Texas, passing by several alkali flats near Jal, then filled with water, where I got another favorite pic at sunrise.
In Texas, I stopped at a little diner in Downtown Odessa for coffee, then continued on to San Angelo. East of San Angelo, taking a small, untraveled farm road, I passed a DPS cop going in the opposite direction, who quickly flipped around and pulled me over. After some checks and questions, I got off with a written warning (I was only about 5 over). Continuing east, I traveled what would become a favorite lonely road: US 190. 190 is a 100+ mile stretch of rocks, prickly pear, sheep farms and a couple of tiny towns. Beautiful.
Through Menard and deeper into the Hill Country into Mason, then a jog to Llano and I was almost there. I got to my hotel on 183 and took a nap, waiting for the family to arrive.

Send Photo to a Friend

Prada Marfa near Valentine, Texas

The Virgin Run: Coming

At a suburban hotel made out of a former apartment complex in North Austin, while watching TV, I got the sudden urge to leave. To barrel through the night on crazy back roads listening to crazier music. So, I left. Merging west onto US 290 toward Fredericksburg, I hit the kitschy German town at a little past midnight, stopping only briefly to look at the now-empty Downtown. Merging onto I-10 and over that excessively boring portion of the Hill Country, I exited in Sonora, with the intent of heading south to US 90, my preferred route west. South on 277 to the empty "Juno Highway," where I encountered several hundred deer on the roadsides, several hundred more rabbits and killed a bat when it flew into my windshield (I also killed one rabbit, although I spared quite a few others). At Juno (nothing but a couple of ranch buildings), the road merged into 163, leading south to Comstock. Comstock was asleep save for a single Border Patrol agent (although he was probably also asleep).
West on US 90 toward Marathon, I became excessively and pulled off next to the railroad, only to be woken at around dawn by a freight train whistle (I guess the driver was upset that I was there). I continued on, but then noticed the beautiful sunrise behind me and stopped for a shot.
Alpine was just waking up, but I was able to get a decent breakfast at a little roadside hole in the wall. On west where I found Prada Marfa (picture attached), not a retail store but an art concept, it's actually over 30 miles west of Marfa in a particularly desolate stretch of country.
I reached Tucson that evening, just in time for sunset, choosing to shoot straight west on the interstates as opposed to back roads. The car was returned the next morning.

Send Photo to a Friend

Pearl Street Mall, Boulder, Colorado

North for No Reason, Part I

Date: June 2006
Car: 2006 Chevy Lumina
Rental Company: Budget
The second car rental was an even more senseless and ridiculous run north, heading from Tucson to Missoula, Montana and back in a week. I had several friends to stay with on the way, and I found a ride partner to go to Boulder, so the trip just made sense to me and would be fairly cheap.
I parked my truck at the ride partner's apartment, which was ideally located about a block from Budget's Tucson north location, and headed out in the evening up State Highway 77 into the beautiful, June evening. As we began to leave Tucson, it started raining, and would not stop until we reached New Mexico in the middle of the night.
We hit Globe, a small mining town east of Phoenix, for dinner and wound up at an Italian place. Although the meals were exceedingly expensive, they had cheap sandwiches, which we had, and were actually very large and quite good. We both had leftovers.
Driving into Arizona's White Mountains in the rain at night is an interesting experience. You can see nothing but car headlights and the silhouettes of the desert. Each turn comes quickly and you must use the recommended speeds on the turns not only as a judge of what speed to take the curve, but also to know that there's a curve at all.
We reached Albuquerque by about 4am local time (Arizona is not only Daylight Savings, so you lose an hour when crossing into New Mexico in the summer) and got gas north of the city. I had been driving, but was now exhausted so the friend took over, making the straight shot to Boulder along I-25 and 36.
I had been to Northern New Mexico several times, but this was my first trip Denver and Boulder. I was excited, but also tired and soon fell asleep. I was awoken several times, once when the friend almost hit pronghorns dashing across the interstate in the cool dawn of the start of the Great Plains. Those plains continue up along I-25, which skirts what's referred to in Colorado as the Front Range and is said to constitute over 80% of the state's population.
We stopped only briefly in the city of hypocrisy, Colorado Springs, at a Starbuck's to use the bathroom, and change clothes and brush teeth in the parking lot just outside. We finally hit Boulder by noon and feasted on sandwiches. I got a hold of my friend in Boulder who I would stay off, and off I went in the car, with the idea of meeting back up with the ride partner and his friends later on. However, after a brief orientation on Boulder, I fell asleep for several hours.
The first thing I noticed about Boulder were the prairie dogs, which live wildly in grassy areas on the sides of the streets in the middle of town. These animals are excessively cute and it's apparently a fairly serious crime in Boulder to harass them. We drove to Pearl Street and walked around for a time. Having missed the call from the ride buddy about meeting up, I just decided to skip his crew and pick my own food. So it was Nepalese for us, which turned out to be good but also had its own beer, brewed exclusively for them by a local microbrewery. Good stuff too.

Send Photo to a Friend

Gates of Ladore, Dinosaur National Monument

North for No Reason, Part II

The next morning, fairly early, I left Boulder, headed north toward my final destination of Montana. Having never been in the area, I spent some time walking around Fort Collins' Old Town, impressed by its public areas and layout, and snapped some pictures of a few spots around town. I would return to Fort Collins several times, although briefly, and soon add it to a short list of areas that I could see myself living in on a long-term basis.
After Fort Collins, I passed the snow gate on I-25 and entered, for the first time, Wyoming, exiting from the highway into Cheyenne. Wyoming was starker and more over-the-top cowboy than I could have ever imagined. One of the largest buildings in Downtown Cheyenne is the Wrangler store, and nearly everyone drove a huge pickup.
After making some phone calls and getting some coffee at the hotel Downtown (Plaza, I think), I found the back road to Laramie I was looking for through directions from a gas station clerk. The road turned out to go through what was, apart from the Yellowstone region, one of the prettier parts of Wyoming I had encountered. The rolling grasslands raised up to yield small pine trees and craggy rock faces skirted the highway above lakes and streams. Curt Gowdy State Park is in this region, and I can see why he would have spent time here.
Laramie was a stark contrast to Cheyenne. A university town, the Downtown area featured restaurants, cafes and gift shops but also standard retail, and seemed much more progressive than the rest of the ultra-conservative Wyoming that I had come to know through the media (Dick Cheney's home state, ya know). The university campus consisted mostly of granite facade buildings surrounded by tree-lined residential streets. Quite picturesque. The side of campus near the stadium was quite different though, with a strange, sloped black building that served as some sort of athletics facility. The football stadium dominates that side of campus though.
Forced onto interstate now, I continued west as the evening approached and reached Rock Springs. Rock Springs itself is butt-ugly, but it very much redeemed itself by having an excellent brewpub in the depressed Downtown area, of all places. I stopped in for a beer and smoked a cigarette while getting stares from the locals in the place, I can only assume because of my clothing, since I tend to look very non-cowboy (flip-flops, t-shirts, some amount of facial hair).
It began to fade into night, but I was insistent upon reaching my destination of a trailhead outside of Driggs, Idaho for the night. I hit Jackson Hole at a little past midnight, got gas and headed across the curvy pass that dropped down into the Gem State. I was glad to be out of Wyoming, honestly.
I know that I missed Yellowstone, but I had looked it up and could not justify the $25 admission for what would amount to about a half day of mostly driving through. Maybe another time, but I did actually skirt into the park when I drove into Montana the next day.
Driggs was a small, one-street town where the bar was the center of activity on that Saturday night. By that point nearly 2am, people had already gathered, drunkenly, out by their cars, ready to dare the drive home. Using a vague idea of where the trail began, I drove east on a small, unsigned paved road until I reached a fork: "Darby Canyon." This was a dirt road that shot into the mountains looming in front of me, worrisome seeing that I was in a mid-sized sedan, incapable of handling most of the backroads in the Rockies. But the road held up nicely and I found a place to pull off where I felt comfortable enough to sleep for the night.
I had come to this remote canyon on the promise of an ice cave, put into my head by my now-former boss who a self-declared expert spelunker. The idea sounded too attractive to pass up, and I had moved part of my trip around just to visit it.

Send Photo to a Friend

Darby Canyon Trail, outside Driggs, Idaho

North for No Reason, Part III

It was cold that night and the small sweatshirt I had brought did not really keep me warm. I woke up very early, getting only about 3 hours of sleep, and continued the drive down the small dirt road eventually reaching its end at the trailhead. Ahead of me loomed enormous peaks the likes of which I had only seen that close up in pictures. This was the back side of the Tetos, and the recent rain coupled with snowmelt had made the green, forested canyon of their entrance a bit of a torrent.
I was not alone at the trailhead that morning. Two men and two dogs had either camped there the night before, or had come in before me, and were getting ready to set off into the mountains to train the dogs, who were apparently in the rescue business. One of the dogs was apprehensive about my presence, but the other greeted me eagerly with a fetch stick, which I indulged for a little while before talking briefly with the two men (they seemed shifty, and that just made me suspicious). I set off up the trail just before they did, crossing the almost flood stage creek on a small wooden foot bridge, which shook with its force. The trail continued up the creek for only about 1/2 mile before I hit an obstacle: a low, rushing creek with no footbridge. I assumed that this was normally dry, but it was now very much the opposite so, seeing a log, I carefully shimmied over on my stomach. The trail then curved sharply and ascended toward the mountains. I began to realize that I was in bear country and started becoming nervous and making excessive noise. I reached the top of a waterfall but had yet to see a cave entrance, so I dropped down to the waterfall and explored it a bit. After that point, I was just tired, so after what was probably less than 2 miles of hiking, I turned around and headed back, shimmied across on the log, got into my car and left.
Lacking a good map, I was solely reliant on Rand McNally's little red squares, which indicate random points of interest without indication of what exactly they are, for guidance on what to see. One such square was Mesa Falls, which required a small detour that I was willing to take that day. This turned out to be a great decision.
There are actually two Mesa Falls: upper and lower. I thought the lower was amazing, but then I saw the upper. Wow! The viewpoint, placed there by the forest service, allows you to get right next to the falls, and then just below its crest, where you're truly able to feel the spray and hear the road of the dark blue water crashing down.
Continued north into the awful town of West Yellowstone, crossing through the park briefly and into the ski resort town of Big Sky, where the weather began to threaten again. Into Bozeman, which had way too much money for its own good, and back northwest to Helena. The state capital city was actually nice, but very small. Across a short-cut to Missoula and I was at my hotel, tired and uninspired.

Send Photo to a Friend

Dungeness, Washington

North for No Reason, Part IV

The next morning, I set out yet again for the return trip: south to Idaho and Utah. What looked like an interesting back road, Highway 23, turned out to be excessively boring and I was through with it after 10 minutes but it relented for over an hour until I reached Idaho Falls. A bit of tourist viewing and checking out the dead town (it was Sunday), and south on to Pocatello. Indulging in a bit of crappy Jack in the Box, I continued south to Salt Lake, eager to meet up with my friend from high school.
I had been to Salt Lake before, but this was the first time I got to experience the real town. Salt Lake is interesting because, although it's in an ultra-conservative, religion-dominated state, the city itself is fairly liberal and anti-Mormon, housing a large university student population and Mormon apostates (the most vehemently anti-Mormon group on the planet). We went drinking, ate dinner, then off to sleep. The next morning, I got her a bottle of wine at one of the few state-run liquor stores in the city, then jetted south on I-15 toward Arizona for the return trip.
Stopping in Nephi, I decided to absorb some small town Utah culture at a drive-in, getting a burger, fries (with quintessential fry sauce) and a milkshake. South further into Utah's parks region, skirting Bryce and Zion (although not stopping at either, since my time was so limited), through Panguitch and up into Cedar Breaks. "The Breaks" as they're called locally are only accessible for about two months out of the year due to their extremely high elevation, but I was lucky enough to hit them just at the right time. Once the sun set that evening over the beautiful, red crags that constitute the landform, it got excessively cold, and I decided that it was time for the drive down to Cedar City.
Cedar City, the namesake of The Breaks, is a college town perched on the interstate in Utah's Dixie region. Not quite as Mormon as its larger, southern neighbor, Saint George, the religion is still very much present in the town. First stop was a coffee shop where I booked a hotel room (I had thought about sleeping in the woods near The Breaks, but it was just too cold). I hit a crowded Taco Bell for dinner and went to sleep at my Super 8.
The next morning, it was back to Arizona via Hurricane and the polygamist stronghold of Colorado City/Hildale. Along 89A past the North Rim turn-off and into Marble Canyon. Marble Canyon was, for years, the only crossable section of the Colorado River for many, many miles. Now, it's one of the only access points with a paved road to that river for many, many miles. I drove down the road, to the BLM-run Lee's Ferry site (Lee's Ferry no longer exists since the construction of the Navajo Bridge) and dipped my feet in the cool, swift Colorado River as it came out of Glen Canyon and entered the Grand Canyon to the southwest.