At first, because of scheduled events on my calendar, I said no to a road trip out West with three high school friends (code names Madame X, Ms. Right, and Miss Gretel). Then I thought, if not now, when? I’m only getting creakier and crankier. But I’m a difficult traveling companion. I like silence and alone time, so I get my own room.
“I’ve talked to Triple A, who plotted our route,” Madame X told me before the trip.
“We are four college-educated women,” I said. “We don’t need no stinking Triple A to tell us how to get to the Grand Canyon.”
On the first leg of the trip, following Route 66 when we could, Miss Gretel and I were in the backseat. We talked of time zones and how Arizona wasn’t on daylight savings time and where Mountain Time began. Somehow, will all the springing forward and falling back, we reasoned that when we were in Arizona, we’d be on our own Central time again.
On the outside of the backseat window a mysterious W appeared. We thought it meant we were going West. Shortly thereafter as we barreled down the interstate doing 80, we saw a group of four women sitting in a circle of camp chairs on the grass beside the road, ten miles from nowhere. Two cars were parked on the shoulder, a football-field distance away. Another mystery. We decided it was a witches’ coven meeting for morning coffee, but we could be wrong.
Our first night on the road was just outside of Amarillo. No real excitement. As we ate the complimentary breakfast, a man was wheeled out on a stretcher to an ambulance, followed by the sheriff. Hmmm.
Once we were underway, I admitted I couldn’t figure out how to use the shampoo and conditioner attached to the shower wall. I struggled with it for a few frustrating minutes, pushing on this, pulling on that, but I carry shampoo with me, so no big deal. The others burst into laughter. They’d had the same experience, except in anger Ms. Right squeezed the container and it worked. Madame X said it was clearly labeled, “Squeeze gently.” But really, who wears reading glasses into the shower to see the small print?
With all our gas/bathroom/drink stops through spiritual New Mexico, we backseat riders were aggravated with the child locks, always waiting for the driver to let us out. At one stop, we tried to disengage the lock on the doorframe with a dime and then with a paperclip. Neither worked. Much later, Madame X was riding in the backseat and unlocked her door using the manual lock at the rear of the side window that has probably been in cars since the Ford Model A. I’d never noticed it.
The Painted Desert looked like a watercolor. At the nearby Petrified Forest, a young 30-something couple was standing in front of the overlook’s information sign. The good-looking fellow told us more about what we were seeing. He had a wonderful radio voice, and Madame X told him so. The rest of us flattered him, too, and he was lapping it up. Finally, his wife took his arm and said, “Remember, you are married!” We all laughed hysterically, as did other tourists around us since we could have been his grandmothers—youngish grandmothers—but the wife marched him away. Mimicking the raunchy Hot in Cleveland TV show, we wondered if we were Hot in Arizona. Or were we The Golden Girls?
That night, we stayed in Winslow, Arizona, and discovered that Miss Gretel, seven weeks out from hip replacement, had left her two pillows back at the motel in Texas. I loaned her a couple from my room, where I awakened the next morning at 4:00 and couldn’t get back to sleep. I checked my phone and saw my son Morgan had already played Wordle. Why was he up so early? Was something wrong? A 40-watt lightbulb went on over my head, and I googled time in Joplin and learned that it was 6:00 back home. How had we figured the time zone so poorly?
No Eagles fan could leave Winslow without standing on the corner for photo ops with the statues of Glenn Frey and the balladeer with his guitar. Strangers were kind to play photographer for each other at “Take it Easy” corner. We happened there early when the place had been spiffed up for the TV camera crew interviewing the mayor. Wandering in the background, we were surely the stars on the Phoenix news that night.
Before leaving for the Grand Canyon, we stopped at Sonic for diet Cokes. The gal who brought out the order said, “There’s a rope dragging from your car.” I got down on my knees, staining my jeans with old oil, and looked underneath. Sure enough, there was a braided rope tied in what looked like a sailor’s knot. As we pondered where it came from and what to do about it, a couple men from Sonic came out to take a look. One guy lay in a contorted position under the SUV and untied the rope. Another mystery. And another stranger who was so very kind to us.
At the Grand Canyon, we discovered after a thorough search of the cargo area that Miss Gretel had left her cane back at a restaurant in Winslow. Was she leaving a trail of belongings so we could find our way home?
Near sunset, we were following GPS to a budget hotel in Flagstaff, when Ms. Right, riding shotgun, wrongly directed us toward Sedona. We were on a treacherous switchback road that was a fortuitous mistake of breathtaking scenery, and we looked for a place to stay in the upscale town. Unwilling to pay up to $400 for a room, we returned to Flagstaff and found a cheap motel.
If I knew more about forensics, I’d swear on a witness stand that it was blood splatter on the sink side of my bathroom door. In their room on a nearby wing of the place, my friends heard vulgar tirades and fighting through thin walls. A body hit the wall in the next room, which shook their beds. The fight moved out on the balcony and lasted about ten minutes.
After surviving the night, we had a lovely omelet breakfast at a local café. We had left it when Miss Gretel said she was missing her bank envelope of money. Wending our way through city switchbacks of one-way streets, we returned to the café and she found her envelope in the café booth. Whew!
Heading toward Albuquerque, we searched for a specific type of moccasins Madame X and Ms. Right had their hearts set on, stopping at one shack-looking place that we’d thought too rough-looking the first time we’d passed this way. Of course, after the night before, we could handle anything.
Again, we searched for a hotel. Twice we were told there was no room at the inn. At the third no-vacancy hotel, Miss Gretel asked a desk clerk what was going on. It was powwow weekend, so we kept driving to Santa Fe, our destination for the next day. Bargaining the price down with every discount we could, we had a luxurious night compared to the night before.
On our way home, we retrieved Miss Gretel’s cane in Arizona and her pillows in Texas.
What did I learn on this trip with three old friends? It’s best reflected in a sign I saw in a Santa Fe store: “All who wander are not lost.” Or on a rusting pickup’s bumper sticker: “What if the Hokey Pokey IS what it’s all about?
