My Life in a Car: Roadtrip across the US, Day 1

I like to travel, to think about travel, and to plan travel. That's why I'm here. So I figure I'll just jump right into it.

A month ago I packed up all my belongings--mostly photo albums, boxes of photos, and a few hundred articles of clothing--and my boyfriend into a Honda Accord and moved across the country. The poor car.

It took about 4 hours more than expected to pack the car to full and possibly overflowing capacity, so we got off to a bit of a later start than expected. Good news, especially for the boy, was that meant that in Victorville, we got to stop for a late lunch at In-N-Out Burger, our last In-N-Out before moving to a land without it.

To make the 3,000 mile trek, we had with us, of course, a traveling companion

and stellar directions

 

(in retrospect, yes, I should've packed the printer after printing out the directions...). So we were ready to head through the Southwest.

What has always fascinated me about the beauty of the American Southwest--and I do find it to be one of the most beautiful places on Earth--is how it is so stunning and yet at the same time, so unnoticeable. We drove through scenery like this

and this

and yet only stopped for the requisite gas and rest stop breaks. Sure, that was partly to do with the fact that we were worried about our sedan full of belongings, and that we had a limited time schedule--not to mention budget-- but still, I've always found that to be one of the great mysterious contradictions of this part of the country.

This first, somewhat uneventful (if you count gas stations as ancient as this uneventful)

 

day we made it almost all the way through Arizona. (Now if you're wondering why we didn't stop at the Grand Canyon, we did--a year previous. But on our current timeline, only certain attractions could make the cut and the Grand Canyon didn't--because Graceland did).

Specifically, we made it to the city of Holbrook, AZ before calling it quits, checking into a Motel 6 (yes, we travel in style), securing our bikes and roof bag in the hotel room, and dining at the only open restaurant in town, Denny's (though on the plus side, it was a Denny's that served beer).

The highlight of the day? The billboards that taunted me for miles outside of Lake Havasu claiming a "Naked Pirate Beach Bar!" (exclamation point included) was just around the corner. (My camera-out-the-window-snapshot skills were not fast enough to catch said billboards.) Sadly, though, they were either a giant tease or we missed the correct exit, so we never made it to the "Naked Pirate Beach Bar!" I can only imagine what wonders awaited us...