Road Trip to Arizona

We recently went on a road trip down to Arizona, putting over 3,300 miles on our old 2007 van.

We did everything we could to prepare the old girl. We put new brakes on her, checked the tires, and had our mechanic give her a good look-over for the long trip. And it ran like a top, getting us home safe and sound.

It was quite a trip. We especially enjoyed driving I-15 in Utah. If you ever get a chance to go through Utah, do it. It’s is a beautiful state.

I’m a water guy. I’ve always lived by the ocean. So I never thought you could find beauty in a desert, but oh my goodness, it’s gorgeous. And another cool thing is that on some highways in Utah and in Idaho too, it is 80 miles an hour on the freeway. Yeah, 80.

Now don’t tell anybody, but you remember the part in Back to the Future where Marty says, “let’s see if this thing can do 90”? Well, in remembrance to that classic movie, I just had to do it. Not for very long though, because A: didn’t want to get a ticket, and B: I didn’t want to hurt my car.

There was plenty of room, cars way off in the distance and cars way behind me. So for less than an eighth of a mile I got my van up to 90 miles an hour. I was surprised the old girl could do it. Don’t blame me though, it all Steven Spielberg‘s fault.

When I got home to my state, where the speed limit is 70 miles an hour, it took a little while to get used to not going 80. I found myself speeding a little bit, not intentionally, but you know, it felt kind of normal to be going 80.

Anyway, it was an interesting trip. While driving through Utah, we were laughing and crying and laughing to old songs and old memories, having a great time. Then my wife got a phone call that her uncle had passed away.

So that put a kink on things. And then further on down the road she discovered that an old boyfriend, who was a really nice guy, had also passed away.

Then, when we get down to Arizona to our friend’s house, they told us a man that I went to school with when we were kids had passed away.

So, yeah, it was kind of a triple whammy on our trip.

On our way to Arizona we stopped in Las Vegas. I’m not much of a city guy, either is my wife actually, but she wanted to see Las Vegas, and she wanted to go to a Wayne Newton show. I wanted to see Terry Fader (the puppet guy).

But the first day in our hotel I got sick. It wasn’t the leukemia, it was another issue I have that I don’t talk about much, but it laid me down for an extra day until I could drive. So we didn’t get to go to any of the shows.

We did go to one place in Las Vegas though, and I would highly recommend this if you get tired of going to the fancy shows and stuff. There is an aquarium in the Mandalay Bay Hotel called the Shark Reef. Definitely go and see that.

You walk through one of those tunnels where the sharks swim above you. There’s all sorts of aquariums with fish and different species of shark.Then they take you to another room and hand you virtual reality goggles. The VR show takes you scuba diving among sharks, and the seats vibrate when something happens. So a shark comes swimming over your shoulder and the seat shakes as if he’s rubbing up against you.

And then we headed on down to Arizona, and had a good time with our friends. There were some issues up home we had to get back to so our trip didn’t last as long as we wanted it to. But we had a good time, Even with the ups and downs, it was a good roadtrip.

[photo courtesy LasVegas.com]