“Pack up all my cares and woes, here I go, swingin’ low, bye bye blackbird!”---Mort Dixon
We’re Off To The Coxville Zoo
“Get your kicks on Route 66!”---Bobby Troup
It’s Vacation Time, amigos, time to dust off the rear-view-mirror dice and stick your plastic Jesus on the dashboard, we’re goin’ motivatin’ over the hill, looking for Maybelline in her Coup de Ville. We’ll get our kicks on Route 66 all the way to the Santa Monica Pier and we won’t miss a single landmark, like it or not.
But where to start? The spool unwinds from The City of Big Shoulders, not exactly a bastion of kitsch. Let’s begin further down the road with the Gemini Giant in Wilmington, Illinois, where a 28-foot-tall character in a passe spacesuit recalls the days of The Launching Pad Drive-in. Then it’s off to the rural delights of Henry’s Rabbit Ranch in Staunton, Illinois, where the longeared critters do harey tricks like picking your pocket. Don’t get too smitten with the bunnies, however, lest you run out of time to investigate the World’s Largest Ketchup Bottle, 70 feet tall, in Collinsville. In case you’re wondering, the thing can hold 100,000 gallons of ketchup and sits atop 100-feet-tall steel legs. The massive bottle cap has a diameter of eight feet. Sorry, kids, it’s empty these days, so no food fights.
If you want to rock around the clock, stop in Cuba, Missouri and climb up into The World’s Largest Rocking Chair, then move on to Catoosa, Oklahoma for a picnic with the Giant Blue Whale. The 93-year old Milk Bottle Grocery Store Is hanging on in Oklahoma City and Waylan’s Ku-Ku Hamburgers is still in Miami, Oklahoma. We’re not sure whether those hamburgers are soft in the head or you’re a little Ku-Ku for eating them.
Cadillac Ranch
“I’m gonna pack my pa and I’m gonna pack my aunt. I’m gonna take them down to the Cadillac Ranch.”---Bruce Springsteen
In 1974, Stanley Marsh and The Ant Farm, a group of hippie artists, decided it would be a good idea to install a little roadside art in Amarillo, Texas, not otherwise known for its artistic institutions. The gang decided to position 10 Cadillacs vertically into the dirt of an empty field, easily visible from Route 66. The angled cars range from a 1949 Cadillac Club Sedan to a 1963 Cadillac Sedan deVille. Alas, over the years, souvenir-hunters have stripped pieces off the cars to retain as keepsakes and graffiti artists have left their marks. There is a parody of Cadillac Ranch called the VW Slug Bug Ranch just down the road. Don’t get excited.
Groom, Texas, wherever that is, has its own Leaning Tower of Texas, the creation of businessman Ralph Britten, who originally sought to lure drivers off the road and into his truck stop and restaurant. Britten actually bought the dang water tower elsewhere and hauled it to Groom, no mean feat, then purposely installed it at an angle of 80 degrees. Unsophisticated Texans who never heard of Pisa (the vast majority) kept calling police, thinking the varmint was about to fall over. The business burned down years ago but the Tower leans on.
You can book a teepee at the Wigwam Hotel in Holbrook, Arizona or be Standin’ on the Corner in Winslow with the Eagles. Don’t forget to stop at the sign of the fiberglass bunny to take a peek at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post in Joseph City or check out the objets d’arte at Meteor City. The meat loaf is de rigueur at the Valentine Diner in the town of the same name, and make sure you leave room for some Heartbreak Pie, which lets you forget your troubles, c’mon get happy. All this and you haven’t even reached Santa Monica yet, where Bubba Gump is waiting with a big pot of Shrimp Grahdoo. C’mon travelers, shake a leg, time’s a wastin’. Even if you’re late, though, they always leave the light on for you at the Surf City Motel 6.
The Big Ditch
Look—you’re 75 years old, can still walk, have the means to travel and your face isn’t on any Arizona wanted posters---you just can’t linger any longer. The Grand Canyon is waiting---miffed, mind you for this incorrigible lack of respect, but waiting none the less. Here’s what you do:
First, decide on whether this will be a three or four day trip to the Canyon or part of a greater adventure. If you’re out there, there’s a lot of adjacent real estate to admire. Quirky Sedona, capital of metaphysical delights, lurks nearby to the south. The North Rim is a mere skip and a jump from Antelope Canyon, Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon’s hoodoo armies. The entire Arizona-Utah state line is a naturist’s playground.
Plan A: Fly into Flagstaff, rent a car and drive to Williams, Arizona, about an hour south of The Big Ditch. They actually have motels there for $65 a night and you don’t have to worry about burglars under the bed or roach eggs in the coffee. Williams is the starting point for the Grand Canyon Railway, which travels to and from the gulch each day. If this seems like a good idea, you might want to check the schedule. It took Hannibal less time to cross the Alps with his elephant brigade than it does for this train to reach the Canyon (2:15). A fit person could run there faster. True they have amusing cowboys aboard to titillate the grandkids, but the cowboys are much more fun shooting one another in the streets of Williams during the staged gunfights each night at 7 p.m. Drive, it takes an hour.
Plan B: Fly into Las Vegas, take in a show and make the five-hour drive East. You’ll pass Hoover Dam and stop to take a look on the way. The roads are uncluttered and the time passes quickly. You can stop at Kingman to reacquaint yourself with Route 66 before moving on. The relatively new Grand Canyon Skywalk is on the way to Williams and definitely worth a stop. On the glass walkway, you’re suspended high over the Canyon floor, which is visible through the transparent floor. Exercise extreme care here lest Grandma lose her cookies staring down into the abyss.
Plan C: Aviate into Sin City, check out wooly old Frontier street, watching your pockets as you go. Rent a car and drive to Zion National Park, a mere two hours north and east. If you are stout of heart and not too old, negotiate the Zion Narrows or at least enter from the finish line and wade in a little way to take a look. Drive to nearby Bryce Canyon to converse with the brilliant hoodoos during a modest hike. Head for the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, which doesn’t have a lot of bells and whistles but is just as pretty and equally deep.
Take your pick, you can’t lose. The Big Ditch will be grateful, the surrounding merchants will be happy and you can tell all your friends you had a life-altering experience. It’s a lie, of course, but it’s sort of an obligation, so don’t be a wise guy.
Take A Hike
Unless you are compromised, a big sissy or both, you will want to descend into the Grand Canyon to get a better feel for the place. If not, there is a perimeter trail and a visitor’s center where you can while away the hours while all your friends are having fun.
There are a lot of trails in the Canyon but the two most used are the Bright Angel Trail, which is fairly broad for the most part and the South Kaibab Trail, which is narrower, more colorful and steeper. Unlike most hiking areas where you climb the mountain and come back down when you’re tired, this time you are ascending as your stamina decreases. In days of yore, when the national parks were better funded, there was always a park ranger two hours into the Bright Angel walk to advise rookie hikers it might be a good idea to turn around, but these days you’re on your own. Of course you could always ride a mule to the bottom.
The mule train is a package deal which includes two ranger guides and a night at the Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon, plus two big meals. You’ll need them after sweating off five pounds in the Summer sun on the way down. Temperatures at our 6:30 start in July were mid-sixties at the top and 104 degrees at the bottom. There is also the matter of a mildly swaying suspension bridge across the Colorado River, so make sure your mule is okay with it before departing. At age 76, I was content with the ride for 4 hours but the last 90 minutes I was looking for Doug’s Dairy Twirl. I should mention that the saddle was as hard as granite because the outfitter thought we would all enjoy travelling “the cowboy way” and no softening devices like blankets were allowed. When I returned home, my massage therapist asked me if I’d been asswhipped by the Korowai tribesmen of New Guinea.
If, for some reason, you would like to make this journey, we’d advise October. In any case, arrangements must be made 12 months in advance, you must weigh under 200 pounds and speak good English, the better to understand and obey quick commands. Like, say, when your mule gets a severe case of Trail Drift and you’re looking at 400 feet of nothing. Clearly acting against the rules, Siobhan kept her mule close to the mountain side of the trail rather than letting her have carte blanche, as per instructions. Obviously this sort of conduct deserves a stinging rebuke, but the trailhands are forgiving with the possibility of large tips lurking the next day.
When and if you reach the bottom, you are incommunicado with the world. Siobhan’s brother Stuart tried, but we were unreachable, leading our friends back home to imagine horrible possibilities like sudden mule blindness and sinkholes on the trail. Once at the bottom, we were assigned a primitive cabin with air-conditioning which only worked after two a.m. My new bride worried unnecessarily about my making the return trip and asked rangers about the possibility of helicopter transportation. This perfectly reasonable request was answered with impolite snickering and something about bones poking through skin. The return trip, however, turned out to be a piece of cake with clouds and very light rain.
We got in our car and drove directly to the kindly Amara Spa in lovely Sedona. We did not pass Go or collect $200. The massagers were waiting with scented oils, misty salons, plush bathrobes and champagne lite. It goes without saying that intrepid explorers who ascend mountains under perilous conditions deserve the laying on of sympathetic hands, new age music and celebratory nectars. The mules settle for extra hay, oreos and a day off, but they’re not complaining. All the customers weighed under 175 today and two of them were kids.
Sedona & The Vortexes (This is grammatically correct in Sedona, Gina.)
If you’re taking a day trip to Sedona before heading to the Vegas airport, best keep your two-figure room in Williams. Sedona is known for its lovely scenery, its mystics and an assortment of vortexes scattered about the town but not for its bargain prices. There are no homeless people in Sedona, no beggars at the stoplights, no grannies pushing shopping carts heaped with all their earthlies. Nobody has any spare change left to dole out because it costs so much to live there.
You’ll want to go on the Vortex Tour even if you don’t believe. It’s like not believing in Santa when you’re but a wee child---what’s to be gained by naysaying? There are seven vortexes in the area, seven main energy centers where the local energy interacts with the subtle body energy belonging to each visitor. When this happens, the possibilities are limitless. Your earache might be immediately cured or you might turn into The Incredible Hulk. The major vortexes are located at Airport Mesa, Cathedral Rock, Bell Rock and Boynton Canyon. Cathedral rock is the strongest magnetic force in the entire Sedona area, generating a subtle but powerful and deep experience, or so they say. “Deep meditation here connects you to the Earth’s energy as well as the communication with your guides, sanctioning deep knowledge within you.”
Okay, I’m not sure it’s working for me. That could be because it’s so subtle a rookie vortex beneficiary can scarcely feel the nuance, so I’m willing to let it sit and fester for awhile before giving up on my possible new deep knowledge. Siobhan, on the other hand, was immediately taken with her vortex experience in the middle of a busy avenue downtown. “I’m feeling it,” she declared amidst the busy traffic, “I think my wave is cresting!” Just then a bohemian in a badly decorated Volkswagen van missed her posterior by the width of a mauve nose. “Get out of the street, you maniac!” I yelled. “In a minute your whole body will be cresting.”
At the Airport Vortex we met a sixtyish couple who were True Believers. “George can’t make it across the street at home in Bastrop,” his wife alleged. “He has COPD, emphysema, bronchitis and he don’t breathe so good. But out here in the vortexes, he’s like an olympic athlete, chuggin’ around all over the place!” George smiled in agreement. Call it the placebo effect, call it the extraordinary Arizona air, call them crazy. “We can even…you know…have SEX out here,” George said with a twinkle. Okay, then. We have only one question:
“What the hell are you doing still living in Bastrop?”
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
