Hard-Driving Days: Oregon to The Grand Canyon

It is daylight on December 31st, 2024 in Grants Pass, Oregon. 

It will be New Year's Eve - and most probably 2025 by the time I clamber out of the driver's seat in Kingman, Arizona at the end of this hard-driving day.

Susan is feeling punk. Tired, achy, very raw sore throat. She records our fuel purchase in my mileage log book in the morning before she collapses into an uneasy sleep in the passenger seat. She will sleep through most of California as we drive the long way down from Oregon to Bakersfield on I-5 before I swing east toward Arizona, our New Year's Eve's destination of rest and recovery. 

I had explained this will be a travel day filled with fascinating variety; but Susan is ill and unable to keep her heavy eyes open for hardly any of it. We leave from Southern Oregon, a moist land of towering Douglas firs, cross the snow dusted road cuts in the Cascades and end the day in a parched land of the Mojave Dessert dotted with spiney Joshua Trees.

Susan sleeps and misses the view as we cross the Cascades into California, skirting the snowy flanks of Mt. Shasta in Weed before we roll into the Sacramento Valley, slipping between the Sierra Mountains on our left and the Coastal Range rising on our right. Susan eyes are closed as we pass by Mt. Lassen in the distance and the Marysville Buttes and the highway exit to the town of my birth. 

On a crowded I-5 corridor at the exit for Davis, Susan sleeps as a wicked piece of highway debris is cast up by a truck and into my windshield, giving me a jagged fracture in the low center portion of my view, expanding like a spider web being woven across the glass by an invisible spider, toward the driver. It seems like I go through windshields like a empath goes through Kleenex on these Washington-to-Texas and Texas-back-to-Washington road trips. 

Beyond Sacramento and Stockton, the interstate traffic thins out as I accelerate down the ribbon of highway that hugs the inner edge of the blonde Coastal Range bordering my natal San Juaquin Valley. 

Our drive through California was to be arduous, and my driving philosophy is 'miles before sustenance'. I drive, I do not stop (except for fuel). These are short winter days and we are burning daylight if I terry at any roadside attraction or pause to satisfy one's oral fixations. I need gas, not food. And drinks just make you want to stop and pee. A waste of time. Susan is sick and has no appetite, in a strange way this makes for a complementary driver/passenger duo. I cut off I-5 and take a two-lane highway into Wasco to link with 99 into Bakersfield. I am ready to make an exception, I stop at McDonald's for an afternoon $6 Meal-Deal. I give my fries and a Sprite to my passenger, French fries are known to be medicinal for my ailing wife. She feels a little better as we turn eastward over the Tehachapi Mountains and drop into the Mojave Dessert just after sunset.

It is 9 PM outside of Barstow - that means the ball is dropping in Time Square, New York, New York. We think of son Grant and Kaileen in NY, wondering what they're up to? Knowing they despise the crowds in Time Square, we expect they found a good time with friends somewhere in Brooklyn maybe. It is quite dark in the middle of the Mojave on New Year's Eve, save the oncoming headlights of the truckers out on the divided road, Susan keeps asking me, "Are we in Arizona?"

I tell her "Not until we cross over the Colorado River. We have to go through Needles before we get to Arizona." I have strategically planned to have a minimal amounts of fueling stops in California, I hate paying California prices for gasoline. I will be on less than a 1/4 of a tank when we cross into Arizona, and I will fill up 8 miles past the California state line. I never know if AZ in on Pacific or Mountain Time. We reach Kingman, AZ (surprise! It's Mountain Time, so we lost an hour and we so happen to lose midnight on New Year's Eve. Oh well. Maybe next year?)

My Google map phone app tells me we've driven 947 miles from Grants Pass, OR to Kingman, AZ toady. My odometer says its only been only 863 miles in one day. Where have the time and miles gone? We check in at 1 AM local time, our reservations are confirmed. We go to our room after a long hard day of driving and find the bed unmade sporting a half drained bottle of Prosecco and some empty paper party cups waiting for us. Unacceptable. I am tired and not happy. We return to the front desk and we are offered an "ungrade"; a fresh, made up room with 2 queen beds. I tell her, "It's not an upgrade, I had a room with 1 king bed." 

Front Desk Agent grimaces at my correction. Susan tells her, "It's fine if our room was not ready, it's nice that you have another room for us."  I disagree, but I've said all I'm going to say. The second room is nice. We sleep.

End of Day 2: 863 Miles.

Adventure List Goal #1 Accomplished!

New Year's Day, 2025
South Rim of the Grand Canyon

From our bed in Kingman, it was a 2 1/2 hours drive to the Grand Canyon. Susan, with a Masters Degree in Geology, had never been to the geologist's mecca of the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon was at the top of her Adventure List on our trip back to Texas. Yet, she was not feeling well. The weather on the South Rim was brisk, but warming into the 40's (F). Over a relatively late (8:45 AM) hotel complimentary breakfast, the question was: How are you feeling this morning? 

If you're not up to spitting over the rim into the Grand Canyon, we could drive you straight home to Texas. What do you feel like accomplishing today? 

Her first response, "I won't spit into the Canyon. What is it with boys? Why must boys spit and pee on everything?" Her second thought, "I'd like to stick with the plan, I want to see the Grand Canyon. Let's go [cough, cough].

The New Year's Day crowds were thick. We were part of the first group to be counted toward the over 5 million visitor per year. We walked along the South Rim, taking in various views across the mile-deep canyon, trying to do justice to the scene with the constraints of a camera lens.

It was already midday and our tentative plan to visit a second Arizona National Park was scuttled when we realized after consulting with a ranger that Petrified Forest NP closes at sunset. We would run out of daylight this 1st day of January. So, our plans shifted to getting a hotel in Winslow tonight and visiting Petrified Forest NP tomorrow.

But, along our way (sort of) was Sunset Volcanic Crater National Monument in the San Francisco Mountains. I had never left the South Rim by going east to Cameron, so I was up for the new road and a new sight, Sunset Crater - if we could there before sunset.

We're off on our next adventure...