This is part 2 in the saga of Uncle Day Weekend, a recounting of our trip up north over part of Labor Day weekend just to get away from the heat. Part 1, if you remember, focused on the events leading up to the trip itself.
Sunday morning arrived to find us engaged in our usual
harried efforts to throw everything together at the last minute before a road
trip. Typically, we start off at
harried, progress to flustered, and usually come within sight of completely
unhinged, a pattern which normally includes a fair amount of ugliness and some bitter
recriminations between Elizabeth and me. It’s funny; people tell us all the time that
we are so good to each other, so kind and respectful. HA!
That’s just the show we put on for mass consumption; the truth is, we
fight like hell. We rip each other apart
at times, and have no compunction about going for the other’s throat (remember
the open door, anyone?). The secret to
our success, I suppose, is that as nasty as our confrontations can be in the
moment, we get over them quickly, and accept them for what they are: clashes
between two people who agree on where we want to go, but almost always disagree
about how to get there. Which is exactly
why I didn’t tell her about taking a different way to Flagstaff .
Once all the decisions about what to bring and what will fit have been made, the car is loaded, the kids are in, and we’re finally on the move, the resentments and rancor of the moment are usually allowed to expire. Within a few minutes, our hands will touch, a few soft words will be spoken, and our natural equilibrium will be restored. It’s a lesson we learned from twenty-five years of traveling together. There are few forms of misery worse that being truly upset with each other on the road.
Once all the decisions about what to bring and what will fit have been made, the car is loaded, the kids are in, and we’re finally on the move, the resentments and rancor of the moment are usually allowed to expire. Within a few minutes, our hands will touch, a few soft words will be spoken, and our natural equilibrium will be restored. It’s a lesson we learned from twenty-five years of traveling together. There are few forms of misery worse that being truly upset with each other on the road.
We stopped at Walgreen’s before officially heading out. There,
Elizabeth
picked up a magazine for Jess, and for Maria she bought a travel edition
Etch-A-Sketch, which is a little smaller than the original and uses a stylus to
draw with instead of the familiar knobs. She bought a bag of sunflower seeds
for herself. It’s the only time she ever
eats sunflower seeds, but for some reason she consumes them like an addict
whenever we go on a road trip. She
insists that she trusts my driving skills implicitly.
It was 9:30 when we started east on Glendale Avenue . We passed over the I-17 a few minutes later. Cue the questions. “We’re not taking the freeway?” Elizabeth asked, a bit
uncomfortably.
“No,” I responded, looking straight ahead. “I thought we’d try going a different way.”
“Is it faster, Dad?” Jessica asked. Here we go.
At least I knew I would be able to sit through this interrogation
session, seeing as how we were already in the car.
“No, it’s not faster,” I said. “But it’s nicer.” There was a loud moan of despair from the
back seat, followed by a bout of low-volume complaining. I couldn’t hear
exactly what she said, so I felt no obligation to notice it.
“Freeway, Daddy?”
Maria asked.
“Not this time, sweetie,” I said, watching her in the
mirror. She stared blankly for a moment,
then randomly tried to reach over and hit Jessica, and failing that, started
scribbling on the Etch-A-Sketch. I caught a sideways look at Elizabeth, who was
still watching me with a half skeptical, half
what-are-you-planning-to-do-with-us look.
“We’re in no rush to get there, right? I just wanted to see if we could find a more enjoyable
way to go. You know, take our time, just
enjoy the ride. Besides, the way we’re
going will get us out of the heat faster.”
She considered this, and then apparently decided to reserve
judgment. More likely, she had decided
to wait for things to start going wrong, and then attack. Who can blame her? That’s what I would have done. The questions
stopped. Hmm, I thought. All in all,
nowhere near as bad as I expected.
Jessica continued to grumble for a few minutes, and Maria was absorbed
in her doodling. I made a mental note to
tell Elizabeth later that the Etch-A-Sketch idea was brilliant.
Well, I thought, relaxing into
my seat, I’m one up on my plan already.
We took the 51 north from Glendale Ave , and then caught the 101
east to Shea Boulevard . I said a silent prayer of thanks to the
architects and engineers of the Loop 101 as we
leapt over a big chunk of the Valley in a matter of minutes. I am old enough to remember the days when the
17 was the only real freeway in town, before they even finished the I-10, and
the Superstition freeway barely made it to Power Road . Traveling from west to east across the north
valley on surface streets took well over an hour; and here we are, barely a half-hour
from home, and I can already see the pathetic example of desert hubris that is
the Fountain Hills fountain before us.
What could be more
useless? I thought, watching it blast its foamy water in the air, a timed
ejaculation of foolishness. We live in a place where every drop of water
should be treated like gold, and the wise founders of Fountain Hills had this
for a stroke of genius: Hey, let’s create a fake lake and use it to
do nothing but shoot water 300 feet into the air once an hour just because we can. As a kid I thought the fountain was
cool. What kid doesn’t like to see water projected into the sky like the tail of the biggest Estes rocket ever? Come to think of it, maybe that’s how they
got the idea to begin with. Maybe the
founders asked the kids what they wanted to see more than anything, and this was
the result. In that case, the town just
as easily could have been called Twinkie Hills, with a 300 foot Twinkie, or
Guinea Pig Hills, because what kid doesn’t love a Guinea Pig, especially a
giant, 300 foot one? As an adult,
though, having done my biggest research paper in college on water issues in Arizona , I had the same
reaction every time we passed by: idiots.
Forget the $15,000 in student loans, the real price of higher education
is not being able to be oblivious to how much stupid stuff is going on around
you. Ah, forget about it, I told
myself. That’s nothing compared to what
happens in Las Vegas
every day. At least those people you
expect to act like idiots.
We turned left onto the Beeline highway, and left the
metropolis behind. It didn’t take long
for the re-emerging desert terrain to scrub away the slight sliminess of
Fountain Hills. It never does. The desert heals the people who love it
quickly. Even the aggravating appearance
of hillside homes miles beyond the outskirts of town wasn’t enough to overcome
the feeling of rejuvenation. This day, the recovery was aided by seeing that this end of the valley obviously received a lot
more rain than we lowly west-siders this monsoon season. The rocky slopes of the high desert hills
have more than a touch of green about them.
The land here felt fuller, not as stressed.
The great thing about Highway 87 (also known as the Beeline)
is how rapidly you move up in elevation.
The road rises much more steeply than the I-17 does, and you reach the pine
trees much, much sooner. In less than an
hour after leaving the greater Phoenix
area, you are within sight of pine trees.
On the 17, you have to come within 30 miles of Flagstaff in order to ensconce yourself in
conifers. Psychologically, it’s a huge difference. By the time you reach Payson on the Beeline,
you can roll down the window and smell pine.
Sometimes it’s roasting pine, as it can still be uncomfortably warm, but
it’s clear you’ve entered a high-altitude life zone.
On our approach to the town of Payson , we continued to comment to each other
about how green things are. There have
been years when driving through this same area is nothing but a study in
infinite shades of brown. It’s like
driving through a landscape of toast.
This year, however, it appeared that the regular portion of rain that was
scheduled for our area was delivered here instead, and that lifted my
spirits noticeably. I was happy to see that
it went somewhere useful. This part of
the state has been ravaged by fires in recent years, and it was nice to see
healthy green growth in the middle of summer for a change. I deposited a mental tick mark into the “Glad
We Came This Way” column.
We passed through Payson without stopping. We passed the McDonald’s at the intersection of
the Beeline and Highway 260, which carries the bulk of traffic heading to
points east such as Show Low, Snowflake, and yes, even Heber (sorry cousins,
maybe next time!). I can count the
number of times on one finger when we haven’t stopped at this McDonald’s, which
is probably true for most people, especially families traveling together. It seems everybody has a story to tell set at this McDonald’s, and most have more than one. It has to be one of the most eventful
locations in the country. I would put it
up against the one in Times Square any
day. If they ever wrote a book about the
things that went on there, it would be filled with strange and unbelievable
tales, all completely true. However, on
this day, the girls are still comfortable; no one needs to stop for the
bathroom, and we rolled right on by. I interpreted this as a providential omen, and placed a second tick mark into “Glad We
Came This Way.”
Continuing to head north, and up, on highway 87 (no longer
called the Beeline because the segment connecting Phoenix and Payson is now
behind us), we reveled in the sight of heavy, filled-sponge clouds through the
split in the trees above us. The weight of heat had been lifted from our
heads. My foot had eased up, not just
because we were driving a twisty two-lane road.
The tension in the front seat was tangibly being tugged away by the
mountain breezes, even though our windows were still not down. As we reached the community of Pine, traffic came to a stop. We looked at each
other with pinched mouths. What is it,
we asked each other. A wreck? Construction?
UFO? I was just about to add the
first tick mark to the “Wish We Didn’t Come This Way” column, when we discovered that
a holiday weekend celebration was impeding our forward movement. A small-town festival, with jerky stands, and
fresh fruit, and fry bread, and booths selling jewelry and candles, and
dreamcatchers . . .
Elizabeth and I looked at each other and smiled: genuine,
relaxed smiles. The highway was being
crowded on both sides, on the right by cars parked haphazardly on the shoulder,
and on the left by all the booths and people.
Fresh arrivals who parked on the right crossed the two lanes with
varying amounts of hesitation, which is what reduced traffic to stop-and-crawl. Neither
Elizabeth nor I seriously considered stopping; we barely even mentioned it,
although we both would have liked to. Under these
conditions, Maria’s mysterious ability to vanish and reappear suddenly in unexpected
places ruled out the possibility of calling an audible here. With unsought patience, we crept along
intermittently, spectators to the simple pleasures of small-town
exuberance.
It didn’t take more than a few minutes to pass
through, and soon we were back up to speed. A few more miles of ponderosa
pine brought us to Strawberry. Elizabeth packed a picnic
lunch, and I had a vague notion that we could eat it at the historic Strawberry
schoolhouse. We followed the sign and
made the turn onto Fossil Creek
Road , and began ticking off the 1.9 miles the sign
said was the distance to the school site.
For some reason, I expected to find a little log cabin schoolhouse
in a park-like setting, with trees and grass, and maybe even a table of
two. We drove right by it the first time, because it was on such a small lot. After we went a few clicks past what our
odometer told us should have been the spot, we turned around. Then Elizabeth caught it, a home-sized lot set back a little from the road. A small, home-sized lot, with a log
cabin-type house on rocky, bare dirt, without a tree on the property. Obviously, this would not suffice as a picnic
spot; we would have taken up most of the parking area if we tried to spread out
a blanket. At least I was right about
the log-cabin part. After driving back to the
highway, we stopped at a small general store.
I bought lemonade tea in a can so I could ask the man behind the counter
if he knew of any suitable places for a picnic in Strawberry.
“Which way you headin’?”
he asked.
“North,” I replied.
“Ah, that’s too bad,” he said. “If you were headin’ south, there’s some good
spots in Pine for a picnic.”
“We can’t go back,” I said.
“Besides, they were pretty busy.”
“Welp,” the man started, scratching his head. “If you go seven or eight miles ahead, there
should be a few picnic-type areas you could use.”
That sounded kind of vague.
“Anything in particular I should look for?”
“Nope. Seven or eight
miles up the road. That’s about it.”
“Strawberry doesn’t have a park or anything like that?”
“Welp, there is that little schoolhouse on Fossil Creek Road . Some people consider that a park.”
“We were already there.
We’re looking for something, you know, with a little grass, and some
trees. You know, for a picnic.” Didn’t
everyone picture the same thing I did when it comes to picnics?
He shook his head.
“Can’t really think of anything fitting that description.”
“Okay. Well, thanks.”
We drove the next seven or eight miles prowling for a place
to picnic along the highway.
Sorry, but this is turning out to be a much longer story than I expected. How I can be surprised, when I was there for everything that happened, is beyond my ability to explain. However, I need some more time to finish, so I'm posting this as part two. Part three will appear on Sunday.
I can't believe that I am actually being drawn into this story. Considering our recent trips to that area to scout for possible family reunion spots, I know all of the places you're referring to. It is a testament to you entertaining and affective writing. However, I'll refrain from telling my Fountain Hills dwelling aunt to check out this story on your blog! :)
ReplyDeleteHutton - I'm sure the fountain wasn't her idea, was it? In retrospect, using the word "slimy" to describe the town was pretty strong...wish I could say I didn't mean it.
ReplyDeleteKevin I am disappointed that Part 3 wasn't here. I wait with baited breath..
ReplyDeleteor how about bated breath.... No nightcrawlers involved here...
ReplyDeleteSB - Sorry 'bout that. It was not my intention to leave anyone hanging. I know you're probably teasing me, but I feel badly about not keeping my commitment to the blog yesterday. Sometimes, however, life intrudes, and that's exactly what happened. I think I'm going to blog about it in some fashion, so I'll spare you the details now. As far as Uncle Day Weekend (which is quickly becoming the longest weekend of my life!) goes, I think I can say that you should see it Tuesday morning at the latest. Thanks for letting me know you're reading (and enjoying) the story.
ReplyDeleteAnd as far as baited/bated goes, don't feel too badly; I spelled breath with an e at the end, and I just noticed that I misspelled the names of Sturgis (I spelled Sturges), and Evel Knievel (I spelled Evil Kneivel). I've corrected them now, but I'm sure there are more in there . . .
After rushing through toast and yogurt I have to say I was not disappointed with part 2.
ReplyDeleteHope McK - I'm so glad to hear how well part 2 went with your breakfast of toast and yogurt. I can't tell you how many people have complained about that particular combination. I have heard, however, that peanut butter toast and a hard-boiled egg goes exceptionally well with part 3, and, believe it or not, the old classic bagels and lox with part 4. I don't know why. I'm just glad part 2 turned out well for you.
ReplyDelete