Thread: L.A. To Tucson Road trip

My I-10 adventure LA to Tucson.

We had a staggered start, principally because some of us have neither the desire nor the inclination to roll out of bed before the crack of dawn so we “can hit the road early“. Besides it’s my firm belief that if you’re driving the Wednesday before Thanksgiving,
no matter the departure time, you will run into stop-and-go traffic, zoned out drivers and bottlenecks caused by road construction on the I-10 - which is as constant at the north star.

My crew left at 9AM well behind the others. But since we we’re trailing a motor home with dogs and a SUV with three kids (lots of rest stops) we knew we’d catch up.
*An incoming call* our lead car is begging us to make a unscheduled stop.
Seems “someone who has begged to remain nameless” left a couple of their Harry Potter Lego toys on a table in the food court at the outlet mall. From the sound of things our lead driver’s sanity was hanging in the balance.
So we stopped and tackled bargain shopper traffic in a huge outlet mall to pick up “spiders” - I’m hailed a hero.
I have to say the California part of the drive wasn’t that bad. In fact except for the usual slowdowns and bottlenecks (after all, this is LA) and the creep pass the windmills outside of Palms Springs, we didn’t run into any heavy traffic.
Arizona straight ahead.

Anyone that’s ever planned a road trip knows the importance of planning your fuel stops and Californians will tell you that gas prices in “the golden state” are much higher than those in neighboring states. Therefore it’s only reasonable and prudent for Californians on interstate road trips to fill up once we’ve crossed the border. Which explains why the gas stations on the Arizona side are always swamped and why we sat in a 20-minute gas line and two Marines pushed a woman in a minivan the last few yards to a pump (seems that little red light had been on for some time).
Everybody loves a bargain and buying gas in Arizona this day saved us 60 cents a gallon.

The drive was straight and easy with lots of cactus, sage and dry creek beds. And I think I saw a covered wagon with painted on the side, but that probably was one of those desert illusions.
We were flying down the interstate until maybe 50 miles outside of Phoenix when we hit the backup caused by the single-lane traffic through the construction zone.
And as I sat there watching the steam rise above the nuclear power plant.... it occurred to me that I didn’t see the usual large body of water for the cooling towers…....
As the minutes ticked by and we inched along, the conversation somehow drifted into wagon trains crossing the Sierras, bumper stickers and why Marine Corp decals are by far the dominant sticker on car rear windows - interesting what you talk about traveling in a car for hours.
It took 90+ minutes for us to travel 30 miles - I named the cacti.

Our car rolled into Tucson first, what can I say, both drivers had a lead foot and we did have Agagog and the spiders climbing all over the luggage.