The elusive monsoon strikes Phoenix, Arizona, with force this afternoon in what is becoming a rare appearance on these lands. Creating near white-out conditions, a strong wind from the north pushed sheets of water so fast that visibility was reduced to about 130 feet. The thunder and lightning that normally accompany the monsoon were fairly weak tonight, with only a few far-off strikes heard.
Recovery
Leaving the humid northeast and midwest, I entered the southwest and seemingly forgot to keep drinking. Hydration in the arid desert is vital, and normally, I know this but exhausted from driving 7,230 miles (11.712 km), I forgot this to my own detriment, and the pain reliever only went so far to alleviate the pounding in my head brought on by lack of water. Lots of water and sleep finally revitalized me, for the most part.
Together
Back together again. The mother-in-law is back in Germany. My mother is back home. We are ALONE. And for a while, we are done traveling, I am tired.
Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 16
No repeat of the stench-filled feedlots found in the other corner of Texas that Mom and I drove through. Just a grain silo and a bunch of not much else. Time to hit the gas and haul ass to Arizona. I need a hug.
It was only about 30 miles to New Mexico. Feels like we’re almost home.
Remember those back roads we tried to stay on for the previous two weeks? Well, that preoccupation has been tossed out the window as we hunt for the cactus that will tell us we’re home.
This photo of monsoon clouds was taken at 80 mph (130 kph) through the windshield of the van traveling west on Interstate 40 in New Mexico. Yes, it was from the driver’s seat; I was driving – duh!
Woohoo, it’s Arizona, and again, with no time to stop for a photo, it must be taken as we drive by. The next stop is home, as this trip is now more or less over.
Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 15
In the light of day, the room could be called old, rustic, or plain old crappy. Mom thinks Psycho is more fitting. We have concluded Weaubleau is pronounced WeBlow, and we wanna blow this town. Before we even emerged from our cabin, granny, her sister, and maybe Mr. Bates were setting up a yard sale. Mom takes a look at the stuff spread out on tables and can see her own past scattered amongst the junk. From Las Vegas ashtrays she’s owned to a heater she used in Angola, New York, while the sliced-up shower curtain only added more worry.
Leaving town, we drove past one of the guys from Deliverance. A shave, shower, and some dental work were in order. Missouri is definitely a state with rich contrasts. What the amenities failed to deliver on, the beauty of the landscape makes up for.
Breakfast was at 54 Café in Nevada, not the state: I meant Nevada, Missouri.
Nothing else much happened this morning as we were driving out of Missouri. Then, in the early afternoon, just before we were about to turn right, a procession of wide-load vehicles was coming our way. The lead vehicle pulls into the middle of the street with flashing lights to alert drivers in both directions to slow down. I can see a truck approaching, hauling a giant pipe about to make a right on our road. So I pull closer to the right. After the first truck passes, the follow vehicle leaves its position to race ahead of the first truck. We see another exact configuration approaching.
While Mom and I sit at the stop sign, the second lead vehicle stops in the middle of the road just as the previous guy did. A tow truck driver behind the lead vehicle is not paying attention, and before he knows it, he is approaching way too fast. With a Lincoln Town Car on his hitch, he locks up his brakes, and as he begins to slide right to avoid the stopped lead vehicle, he is heading directly at us.
There is no doubt in my mind that we are about to be T-boned by this freight train and that if I’m hit, I am certainly going to die in the wreckage. As he is sliding at the speed of sound, I hit the gas after contemplating putting it in reverse but decided I may not be able to do it quick enough, and if the transmission hesitates even a second I’m still going to be hit. As the car accelerates quickly, I have to maneuver over gravel under the right tires and try not to lose traction as, again, I know we are close to being hit.
I am nearly around the corner and thinking about driving down the embankment to save us from being jackhammered as I see his bumper in my peripheral vision with the rearview mirror reflecting his red tow truck and the white smoke billowing out of his locked and skidding tires. We miss sliding into the ditch with the tires holding traction and we continue accelerating down the road as fast as we can. The tow truck, at one point, could not have been more than a few inches away from us.
A quarter-mile down the road, gasping for air and nearly in tears, we pull into a driveway to catch our breath and check our underwear. Just as we exit the van, the old guy in the tow truck passes us with a brief, casual wave and a cigarette dangling from his lips as though this was routine in the course of his daily routine. Mom suppresses the need to flip the man a bird and we get back in the van and try to calmly drive away.
I require an hour or two before feeling like things have calmed down and that my adrenaline won’t trigger some kind of heart condition. I’m done with Kansas and am now ready to leave the state.
I should point out that this tow truck, but especially the Lincoln Town Car, was especially traumatic to mom as just two months ago, on May 5th, while leaving the freeway in Phoenix, mom rolled her own white Lincoln Town Car that required her to be airlifted to the hospital. Maybe that close call with the possibility of a deadly outcome was what motivated her to want to see the city of her birth one more time. Then here we are out in the middle of Nowhere, Kansas, and the haunting image of the killer Town Car was trying to collect the soul that had been spared fairly recently.
Slow down, take deep breaths, and things will be fine.
I do love Kansas. When Caroline and I first passed through this state five years ago we were enchanted with the places we saw. The Great Plains have a different kind of beauty than the heavily wooded eastern U.S. or the mountainous western states, but the charm is undeniable.
I feel that there’s much to explore out here, but with over 600 miles we’re trying to cover today, we don’t have the time to collect place names or linger to admire the finer details.
Why were the lights flashing here? There was no train. I waited as I really wanted to see one lumber by out here on the Great Plains, but there was nothing.
No, Mom, we are not stopping for ice cream, pie, walleye, pizza, a bakery, a fruit stand, or a winery. I’m stopping to look at the horses because one of them is telepathically signaling me to rescue it from the other horses that are forcing it to herd with them when it just wants to be free.
Passing over the Cimarron River, we are close to leaving Kansas.
Can someone, anyone, tell me why it is hotter out here on the plains than it is in the deserts of Arizona? At a gas station, the sign says it’s 108 degrees, but the attendant said someone reported an asphalt temperature of 136 degrees down on the interstate. The humidity is starting to fade the further west we go, but this is still an overwhelming scorcher of a day.
The sights of roadside America leave indelible impressions in my mind, but with photos, I can share the things I’ve seen in my past with my future self and, of course, with Caroline, who wasn’t able to travel with us. Lucky her.
Sunflowers are the plants of smiles. Who can look at a field of these yellow and black plants and fail to find a moment of happiness? Or maybe I’m just projecting this as knowing we are about to enter Texas; I know I’m only a couple of states away from getting back to Arizona and into the arms of my wife.
Leaving Oklahoma using small back roads, we do not find anything that hints at an upcoming spot for dinner. The first couple of towns in Texas are not delivering any promise either. Then, about to enter Canadian, Texas, we see a billboard directing our attention to the Cattlemen’s Exchange Steak and BBQ Restaurant. This place is drawing us in.
The Cattle Exchange Restaurant in Canadian, Texas, has by far the BEST steak I have ever had in my life! EVER! They have the best bread pudding, too. Their salsa is homemade and GREAT! Their bread is unbelievable! But that RIBEYE STEAK is the thing you (and with that, I mean: I) will come back to Canadian, Texas, for.
Forget Morton’s, Fleming’s, Ruth’s Chris, and any other contender. The Cattle Exchange in the little town of Canadian in the Texas Panhandle has set the bar for the best mesquite broiled steak in the Universe. And best bread pudding. The ranch dressing is no slouch, either. – Yeah, I was impressed. If you don’t someday make your way to this little corner of the panhandle of Texas for this wonderful treat, you are truly missing out on life.
Leaving Canadian we drive by some well-kept, beautiful old homes and a meticulously renovated old theater. Outside of town, the landscape is lusciously green. Mom exalts high praise on the state she was afraid was too boring and ugly for her tastes, a newfound appreciation has been found.
We breeze by Amarillo and stop in Vega at the Bonanza Motel, where, for $45, we have a room on Saturday night that isn’t the backdrop for some horror plot. Tomorrow, we will be home.
Mother and Son Going to Buffalo, NY – Day 14
Our goal today is to go far. Finding a balance between taking small roads to avoid large cities and their inherent congestion and making quick time seems mostly impossible. We get out of French Lick and head over to Montgomery, Indiana, before stopping for breakfast at a little Amish-influenced place. By setting ourselves in motion, it feels like progress is being made right away. Before we know it we are crossing into Illinois and are almost halfway across the Midwest.
U.S. Route 50 takes us straight through farmland, allowing us to travel nearly at the speed of the freeway but without the semi-trucks and endless franchises that define America’s main arterial roads. I prefer to lose 30 miles per hour for the calm tranquility of passing fields of corn that are so close I can reach out and touch them or maybe just stop and photograph a field of it as a reminder that I’ve been here.
There’s a lot of corn grown in this state, but by the time we reached Odin, Illinois, where we picked up some fresh tomatoes being sold next to the road, it was time to step south in order to give a wide berth to St. Louis and avoid even a hint of the suburbs. Great, now we have tomatoes, but not a grain of salt. We need a store or a fast-food restaurant.
In Pinckneyville, Illinois, we spot a McDonald’s and score a few salt packets so we can start enjoying the tomatoes. A place across the street offering oil changes allows us to have some basic maintenance done on Mom’s van, which has already been driven more than 4,500 miles on this trip. The guy’s hopefully removed some of the ticks out of the car when they vacuumed it. We don’t know for certain that there were any ticks in the car, but Mom was worried after all my stops to take photos.
About to leave Modoc, Illinois, across the Mississippi River by a small ferry for $8, heading into Saint Genevieve, Missouri.
At 100 degrees on the river with what feels like an equal amount of humidity, we might as well be in the river. Except, the last place I want to be right now while riding a ferry across the mighty Mississippi River is on a capsizing boat taking us to nice dry land on the other side in a different state.
Collecting more ticks, so my neurotic mother is more occupied with pestilence instead of food.
The torment that must exist in my mom as she vacillates between imagined variants of the plague and the overwhelming desire for calories to regulate her serotonin would push lesser people into therapy. Again, we are at the point where it’s too hot to do anything but seeing the Charleville Vineyard here in Ste. Genevieve, she’s all of a sudden energized into buying more wine. If you’ve been keeping track, you wouldn’t be wrong in assuming we have quite a few cases of wine stowed here in the van.
While you’d never guess it from the picture I captured at a moment with no one else in sight, the Old Brick House was packed, so we went over to the Anvil Restaurant, which was the second recommendation. The Anvil has been open since 1855 and has the best onion rings mom and I have ever had. I had a chicken fried steak that was the daily special, while mom opted for a burger.
Looking at the path our road trip took, I’m left wondering years later what exactly was the motivation for the drive south only to turn north again, but that’s what we are doing today instead of holding a steady westerly direction. Here we are on one of those northern legs about to cross the Missouri River.
Of course, there’s more corn out here; it’s the Midwest, right?
Crossing the Missouri River, we arrive in the unincorporated area known as Dutzow. It’s the Blumenhof Vineyard & Winery that drags us out of the car. Mom purchases even more wine. Further west on the river is the city of Hermann, Missouri. Why are we here? Lunch, shoes, ice cream? Nope, more wine. Back in Dutzow, the proprietor told Mom of the Hermannhof Winery. Mom goes berserk and is about to leave with two full cases. One half a case is for Caroline, but after sampling their sparkling grape juice, we left with a case of it too.
Back across the Missouri River on a road that will keep us the closest to the river until we have to turn south again.
Our turn south was happening in Jefferson City, Missouri, which also serves as the location to have dinner. We’re not done driving yet, as we are determined to cover more ground today before exhaustion sets in.
Highway 54 takes us past the over-commercialized Lake of the Ozarks area, but not before we stop for a Custard at Andy’s in Osage Beach. We make it as far as Weaubleau, Missouri before I’m just too tired to continue on. The Weaubleau Motel offers small cabins for only $40, including tax and cash only. The pillows are sofa pillows, the shower has a sizable colony of spiders in residence, and the place is at least 20 degrees hotter than outside. The last temperature we saw 45 minutes before checking in was 91 degrees; this room is well over 105. The air conditioner makes a valiant attempt to cool things, but after 30 minutes, it’s still ridiculously hot. Only $40, hmmm, maybe not the best bargain, but then again, I was about to pass out on the road.