As I mentioned in my previous post, this past Wednesday marked the one-year anniversary of Chris and my pulling into this crazy desert town! What follows is my best recollection of this trip. But first, to get you up to speed, Chris is the guy who I moved out here with. I went to dealer's school in Detroit in the 9 months or so leading up to the trip and met Chris in the craps class. It soon became apparent that both of us were to relocate to Vegas, so we joined forces and set out to leave our mark on the other side of the USA! Sorry for the lack of actual pictures of this trip. I had not purchased my camera phone yet and the last thing on our minds was cataloging the trip for future tellings.
Day One - Crossing the Mighty Mississippi (1/11/07)
Chris was leaving from his place near Detroit on this day and driving down I-75 to meet me in Bowling Green, Ohio. I was leaving from Sandusky (about an hour east of Bowling Green) to meet him. Bowling Green was not only a logical meeting point for us, but it also happened to be the place where I had lived for most of the previous five years. Because it would be the last time I'd see the place for a very long time, I talked Chris into grabbing lunch at one of my favorite local hangouts, Myles Pizza.
Myles has what I consider to be the best pizza in town, but it's kind of a "love it or hate it" pizza. I opted for my old standby, sausage and sauerkraut. It would be our last meal this side of the Mississippi.
After finishing up lunch, I bid farewell to ole BG and off we went, with our little two-car caravan, each car packed to the gills with everything that we could possibly fit in them! Once we got on the road, the hours seemed to pass by pretty quickly. Chris and I were communicating with a couple handy walkie-talkies (did I hear a niner in there?) and the trip was pretty uneventful. However, once we approached St. Louis, the rain started to come down in sheets! Being January, we decided to take the "southern route" to Vegas as opposed to the route taking us through Colorado, Utah, etc. We figured there'd be much less of a chance of running into bad weather that way. Holy crap on a stick would that decision come back to haunt us!
We crossed through St. Louis and over the river under cover of darkness, still getting blasted by an unceasing rain. Just a little note, this was the first time I had ever driven as far west as the other side of the Mississippi, so I was now in unchartered territory. Chris and I made it about another hour south of St. Louis on I-44 before finally calling it a night. The rain was getting to me and I was finally starting to hit the wall, so we bunkered down at a Super 8 in the middle of nowhere. What we didn't realize was all of the rain we were encountering was simply the leading edge of an extremely nasty storm front, which we would run smack into the next day.
Day Two - Deathstorm 2007 (1/12/07)
When we awakened, the rain from the night before was now replaced with sleet and freezing rain. It was now sinking in that we probably chose the wrong route across country. We turned on the weather channel in the room and got the grim news. The entire I-44 corridor from our current spot all the way to Tulsa was getting slammed by an ice storm that most called a once-in-every-25-years occurrence. Our options were to stay put and wait it out, backtrack and try the more northern route through Colorado, or plow ahead. While looking down at the highway and seeing that it was still pretty clear, we decided to stay the course and hope for the best. Heh, idiots!
Passing by Springfield, the conditions worsened, but we were still able to go at a pretty good clip. Then things just turned from bad to worse. The lanes were now showing signs of black ice, and the highway was getting to the point where only one lane was without standing snow or ice. Then the sightings of stranded vehicles began to appear. First one, then another, and then it became one every five minutes or so. My car is a smaller 4-cylinder Chevy Cavalier, and Chris' wasn't much bigger. And we both pretty much had our entire lives packed into them. When I spotted an SUV in a ditch, I knew we were in trouble. I radioed to Chris that we should make a rest stop. So we pulled off the next exit to gas up and talk some strategy. Problem......the gas stations were "closed due to ice storm"! Uh oh. It was then decided that we would trudge forward only far enough to find the first open hotel and wait this thing out. So we got back on the highway and finally pulled into a Days Inn in Joplin, Missouri. Yep, for all of the driving we had done that day, we were still in the same state that we woke up in that morning.
Day Three - The Waiting Game (1/13/07)
On Saturday the 13th, Chris and I awoke to a frigid, freezing nightmare. It was at this time that we heard on the weather channel that the governors of both Oklahoma and Missouri had declared a state of emergency. Bush would later declare the area that we were stuck in a federal disaster area. In total over about a 10 day period, 85 people would die from this storm as it cut its swath from the great plains all the way to New England, and we just haplessly wandered straight into this monster! To give you an idea of the storm, here are a couple of pictures taken from google images of the Tulsa area.
There wasn't much we could do this day. We passed our time by watching the NFL playoffs and walking back and forth to the gas station next to the hotel. At one point I visited my car to warm it up and chisel off the 1/4 inch ice that had completely enveloped it. I was a little worried about someone breaking into it since I had about 2 grand worth of electronic equipment in the back seat and every single piece of clothing I owned. But if a thief were to break into it, he'd definitely have his work cut out for him!!
So that night, Chris and I spent our time watching TV, eating gas station microwavable pizza and drinking a 12-pack of Keystone Light, wondering if we'd ever get out of Missouri.
Day Four - Cabin Fever (1/14/07)
On the fourth day of our trip, the conditions were no better. Portions of I-44 and I-40 (which we needed to pick up in Oklahoma City) were basically impassable. We knew we'd be stuck in Joplin at least one more day, and we were getting pretty annoyed at this point. Remember, we were on a life-changing cross country trip to fabulous Las Vegas, and freakin' stuck in the back-country of Missouri. I had to call our apartment complex and tell them we'd be a day or two late with the move-in. However, we were counting our blessings due to the fact that we had beer, pizza and football again today. We also just happened to be in the merely 10% of Joplin that actually had power. All throughout the day, very weary and worn out locals were flooding into the hotel looking for a place to stay and a hot shower, only to be turned away. There was no room at the inn.
Day Five - Plains turn into the Rockies (1/15/07)
On the morning of the fifth day, we awoke to sunshine, glorious sunshine! If we had been really safe, I guess we could have been justified in staying one more day to wait for the roads to be completely cleared. However, both Chris and I were completely sick of this hotel and needed to get on the road. Even inching away at 35mph getting half-way through Oklahoma would have been some sort of progress. However, the risk in that was the fact that we knew Tulsa was hit extremely hard by the storm, and Oklahoma City wasn't much better. So if we had run into some difficulty, we may have found ourselves cowering in the corner of a Red Cross shelter somewhere, since I'm sure any hotels with power were booked at that point.
It turned out we had nothing to worry about. Even though the highway had seen its better days, we could tell that I-44 was the number one priority of the road crews who did a GREAT job of keeping it cleared. Chris and I somehow managed to take a wrong turn just outside of Tulsa and had to ask for directions into town. But when we finally got going and picked up I-40 in Oklahoma City, it was pretty clear sailing through the rest of Oklahoma, Texas and eastern New Mexico. Our total drive time for this day was somewhere around 15-16 hours and we actually made it all the way past Albuquerque! The little high mountain town that we finally called it a night in was Grants, New Mexico, which is somewhat well-known mostly for its place on historic route 66. Apparently, the town also boasts a women's correctional institute, and old uranium mine and a branch of the University of New Mexico. Chris and I noticed none of that though, but did notice it had a Wal*Mart!
We opted for another Super 8 that night right off the highway and checked in, completely worn out from the road. The temperature at this higher altitude was zero when we checked in, and I think it got down as low as -7 that night. If I had ANY energy whatsoever, I would have tried to unpack the electronics and give them a warm place to stay for the night, but that just wasn't happening. Chris and I were thankful that we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel and that we'd possibly be in Vegas the next day. Uh, that didn't quite happen though.
Day Six - Catching a "Break" (1/16/07)
The next morning, Chris and I woke up, ate a little continental breakfast, and hopped in the car excited to finally make that push into Vegas by night's end! As we pulled out of the parking lot, Chris immediately got on the radio and said that "something is definitely wrong with my brakes"! Oh boy. His brakes were pretty much going to the floorboard, so we turned right around and back into the Super 8 parking lot. After talking to the front desk person, we were directed to an auto-repair shop in town. So we limped our way through this small mountain-desert town at around 5mph and finally pulled into S & S Automotive at 909 E. High St.
Now mind you, we are just a couple of naive guys from the midwest finding ourselves at a very small, nondescript car repair shop in the middle of nowhere located in the mountains of New Mexico. My thoughts were of that scene in the original Vacation movie when Chevy Chase was at the mercy of that desert car mechanic, who was also a thief, and who was also a sheriff's deputy! I kid you not, when we were walking toward the door of the office, the very first tumbleweed that I had ever personally seen drifted by right in front of us. I wondered if that was the desert equivalent to a black cat!
Ironically, what greeted us as soon as we walked in the office was one of three office cats, who pretty much had their run of the place. An older lady, who we can assume was the owner of the shop, sat behind the desk and we told her what our problem was. This is when we seemed to catch our first real break of the trip, as my fears of being taken to the cleaners were relieved. It turned out that the town near Detroit that Chris was moving from just happened to be where this lady grew up!! Holy cow, talk about a small world. Chris and the lady seemed to hit it off pretty well, so I knew at that point we'd be treated pretty fairly by these folks. I also seem to recall that she told us our situation isn't really out of the ordinary. She gets troubled travelers in there a lot from the interstate.
After taking a look at the car, it seemed to be a pretty simple fix. So Chris and I walked over to a little local diner on the actual route 66 to grab a bite while they worked on the car. When we got back, it was ready and the total bill came to around $75! Yep, that's it! Just $75! We couldn't believe our luck and thanked the owner for helping out these two wayward souls. Back in the cars we got and pulled out, still holding out hope of making it to Vegas real late that night. But as soon as we were about to pull onto the highway entrance ramp, Chris got back on the radio and said "brakes just went back to the floor"! UGH!!! At this point it seemed like there was a higher power deciding that we just weren't supposed to be making the move to Vegas. Hell, maybe I should have just set up shop in good ol' Grants, New Mexico, passing the days growing chilis and hunting rattlesnakes.
So back to the shop we drove (again, at 5 mph) and into the parking lot we went. It turned out that Chris needed his entire left-rear brake line replaced, which was a problem. The owner lady looked at her watch, saw that it was afternoon, and proceeded to take a full swig out of a bottle of vodka she kept in her desk drawer. She then made calls to find the parts needed for Chris' car, and was not successful. I can't remember the model of the Ford Chris drove, but it had not been manufactured in a few years. I didn't know what was worse, the thought of being stranded in Joplin, Missouri for 3 days or the thought of spending 3 more days in the mountains of New Mexico!
Next came our second break of the day. When the crazy cat lady's calls didn't produce results, one of the mechanics hopped in his car and made a trip to the local junk yard. About 45 minutes later, he walked back in....parts in hand! They weren't from the same year of car as Chris', but they'd get us to Vegas, which is all we cared about!
So finally, as the day began to grow dark, we bid farewell to S&S automotive and Grants, New Mexico. By the way, the total bill for the repair remained the $75 we paid earlier. Talk about going well beyond what we could have ever expected from these nice folks! If you're ever passing through New Mexico and are in need of emergency car repair, you now know where to go!
Once we got on the road, we began chasing the sun toward the horizon. The scenic desert views of western New Mexico and Arizona were absolutely beautiful! Although we probably enjoyed 3 or 4 hours of remaining daylight, it would have been nice to see the entire Arizona landscape during the day.
For anyone who has made the drive westbound past Flagstaff, you know it was damn lucky that Chris' brakes didn't fail at that point instead of when they did! That could have been big trouble.
We did make pretty good headway considering we spent the better part of 8 hours stuck in Grants. However, we obviously didn't try to push it all the way to Nevada as we decided to hole up at yet another Super 8 in Kingman, Arizona.
Day Seven - The Final Push (1/17/07)
Thankfully, the final day of our travels was without much stress. We got up later than normal that morning, the trip having sapped us of energy, and got back on the road toward the promised land! We opted for the route through Laughlin and up route 95 so we'd avoid the security and hassle of going over Hoover Dam. If I recall, we rounded the mountains and spotted the Strip off in the distance early in the afternoon, and soon we were pulling into our apartment complex near Summerlin. After signing the lease and getting the cars unpacked, what was the first thing on our to-do list? You guessed it, off to the casino we went! :-)
Actually, this day just happened to be a day when there was a small T2V message board meet down at the Wynn. So Chris and I got ourselves pulled together and went down to meet Mikey and the gang in the little lounge there at the Wynn. One thing I haven't mentioned is that Chris had NEVER been to Vegas before in his life, so his very first taste of a Vegas casino was the Wynn! Talk about setting the bar high.
So that's it. I'm sure there are some readers out there with much more interesting cross-country tales. Even though there were a couple of road blocks, I know it definitely could have been a lot worse. I just hope I don't have to make that drive again anytime soon!
