As many of you know (okay, like 3 of you), I recently took a road trip to Tyler, Texas for my sister’s wedding. As I currently live in the Bay Area in good ol’ California, this is quite a drive. Why did I do it? Because, amazing as it seems, it still saved us money over flying down there and renting a car.
The road trip was also a chance to go to some states I hadn’t had the time to get to yet, Arizona and New Mexico. And there were a few sites along the way that turned out interesting, though most I saw just on the way back due to being less pressed for time. We took Interstate 40 for most of the trip, along what was once the old Route 66 route. The last town in California along that way is Needles, home of Snoopy’s brother Spike. I did not see him in town, but kept an eye out for him. We stayed at the Needles Inn on the way out, a nice cheap place run by a nice lady that unfortunately has some of the thinnest walls. It was cheap, clean, and I can sleep through that, though my wife is the type that will wake up if you are breathing too hard.
One thing you will notice about Arizona and New Mexico is that it is very pretty. Then, after around 1/2 hour, you will get bored. Very bored. Especially Arizona, which despite having a few national forests was largely scrubland desert. New Mexico shook things up a bit with a few rock formations that were cool. We stayed at the most awesome Travelodge ever created in Santa Rosa, NM. Everything there was brand new but it still had the cheap Travelodge price.
As for Texas, let’s just say the thing about everything being bigger in Texas isn’t true. Everything in Texas is pretty much just like everywhere else. Sure, they got Whataburger, but we got In-N-Out. But all your favorite chain stores are in every city, a feature that has turned most of America into a giant clone stamping of city layouts. McDonalds, RiteAids, Walgreens, Targets, Wal-Marts, Budget Inns, Motel 6s, KFCs, everywhere and everywhere. Even the specialty boot store we went to in Tyler was part of a large chain that stretched into most of the Southwest.
One thing that is bigger in Texas is the traffic jams, specifically in Dallas, which was also undergoing repair work on the roads we were driving through. Downtown Dallas does have lots of giant ramps that are like a maze of intersections, which is sort of neat provided you aren’t lost and ramping to God knows where.
Tyler was pretty nice, it had the mid-sized city feel that reminds me of my home in Illinois. In fact, were there snow on the ground, much of it would have been indistinguishable from Illinois. My only regret is not having enough free time to see a movie at their still operational drive-in theater.
Culturally, Texas was pretty much just like everywhere, though with a lot of people driving giant trucks. Most of who live in the city and their truck was spotless, so it sure wasn’t for work. I guess when gas is considerably cheaper mpg is less of an issue. Most Texans are nice, but Tyler is pretty white, and I think we counted three Asian people seen in our time there. My wife is Chinese, so there were a few stares, some are probably just curious, but it was uncomfortable enough to notice. We also had experiences such as a store clerk who chatted away with everyone except us in her line, which was odd. Again, those incidents were more exceptions than the rule.
The hotel we were at was nice, and had the best breakfast bar of any of the places we stayed. It also had a waffle maker machine, something that is more common than you would think in hotels. You get a cup full of waffle batter from a dispenser, then put it in the waffle machine and flip it over. Then wait for the timer, and you waffle is done! Easy as pie. Or waffles! Most places had “continental” breakfasts, but those continents were more like uncharted desert isles. At one place, my breakfast was a Honey Bun and some coffee! I was so excited when a Motel 6 had cereal…
We left Texas the day after Christmas (Boxing Day for those of you who worship Box Jesus) and headed back plus one Mom in the backseat. Without a wedding to get to, we could spend more time looking around. Our first overnight on the way back was Amarillo, and we ate at the famous Amarillo Steakhouse, home of the famous 72 ounce steak challenge. Despite Amarillo being somewhat large, the Amarillo Steakhouse seemed to be the only place in town anyone was at. It took over an hour of waiting to get a seat, which I don’t have that much of a problem with as I’ve been to busy places before. There was a gift shop, a shooting gallery game, and…that’s about it.
But we finally get a table and…the waitress doesn’t seem to know a thing about the menu. It’s not like the menu is huge, it’s really simple. But she didn’t seem to believe that they served shakes. She then went all Houdini on us and we waited almost another hour for our food. In the meantime, we examined the decorations on the walls around us. More deer heads than deerheads.com! Also some elk, bighorn sheep, moose, and other animals. Our seat was a prime location had someone actually been doing the 72 ounce steak challenge, but no one was so it was just an empty stage. The guys wandering around playing music by tables didn’t seem to want to come near us, either, despite the almost an hour it took for our food to arrive. Most of the food finally did (we are still waiting for our bread!), but we had to demand some of the sides and the steaks were cooked wrong, but not wrong enough to send it back (I usually don’t send steak back anyway because of all the horror stories.) The steak…..wasn’t very good. We had better steak in Tyler, and even better steak in downtown SF (for less than half the price, I might add) so the evening ended up being pretty disappointing.
One cool thing about parts of Texas for those of you not from the area is where cotton is grown, there will be cotton debris by the side of the road for miles and miles. Hey, I think it’s cool, and therefore it is.
We got out of Texas and made it to Albuquerque, the town you can never spell the name of and Weird Al made that long long long long long long long long long long long long song about. Downtown Albuquerque is pretty happening, we ate at a cool pizza joint then headed over to their zoo for their River of Lights or whatever. That was pretty neat, with dozens and dozens of light up decorations, many animated, scattered throughout much of the zoo. Parts of the children’s zoo by itself is pretty neat, with a giant castle and dragon theme. Why dragon statues are in the zoo, um…yeah. But the light up stuff was great, including this neat guy:
Arizona don’t have much to brag about except some parks which we skipped due to how out of the way they were, and can you believe how much going on that glass thing that’s over the Grand Canyon costs? It’s crazy, let me tell you. So forget that, let’s just stay on I-40 and go by dozens of Indian art dealer places, each one you know is coming up because there are like 50 billboards. One good thing about the SouthWest shops we were in was I now know what kachinas are and some of them are pretty awesome.
We did stop at one place – Stewarts Petrified Wood Shop!
Because it had GIANT FREAKING DINOSAURS!!!!! WOOOOOoooOOOO!!!
Also ostriches….
Arizona also has Elk Crossing signs, in addition to the deer crossing signs we all know and love. The elk I saw was all far enough away from the road to not concern me, but the several dead elk we saw along the way proved that even elk wander onto the highway to suicide. I can’t even begin to count how many dead things we saw along the side of the road, I even saw my first armadillo in the wild dead on the side of the highway. Coyotes, deer, elk, raccoons, possums, cats, dogs, tires, and birds lined the side of the road wherever we looked.
Back in Cali-land, we overnighted in Bakersfield, home of like 300 motels that were all build in the 50’s and 60’s on the same road and all advertising Color TVs! Most of them look like they weren’t renovated since the 60’s as well, and we ended up in a Travelodge.
In Bakersfield, we also visited the CALM zoo, which only has animals found in California. Including this guy:
California is also home to Boron, California, complete with 20 Mule Team Road. Yes, this is where Borax was based. They had a neat greasy spoon/Mexican place that was good eating. Driving past Bakersfield is plenty of cool hills and valleys, and even trains that run along side the road and go into lots of tunnels. And we saw a double rainbow, but didn’t go all weepy like that idiot on YouTube.
Finally, we made it back home and I got to spend a week doing touristy stuff with my Mom, who by this time has been out here enough we were running low on new touristy stuff. Though there was the Curious George exhibit at the Jewish Museum. Did you know the Curious George creators H.A. and Margret Rey escaped the Nazis on bicycles then wrote a book about a spotted rabbit that was used to reeducate the Germans on how to not be evil Nazis? It’s true! There was also some girl writing a Torah, but she wasn’t there so we got to see an empty room. Exciting stuff!
So now the adventure is over and it is back to work.
