Road Trip: Day Seventeen

So…which way did Brian and I go for the evening? Did we go to Tuscon, or up to Sedona? We decided to…GO TO SEDONA!! I think we made the right choice. Sedona was only 2.5 hours north of Phoenix, so that would make for a nice, easy day of driving. We would also get the bonus of seeing something cool and take some cool pics, rather than drive through desolate Texas dirt and wonder if there’d be a gas station in the next hour or so (kinda like Roswell). We left Phoenix and headed north.

Drivelapse from Phoenix, AZ to Sedona, AZ in a 2011 Mustang GT using a GoPro HERO2 in the waterproof housing.

And…drove into torrential rain. For those of you counting, this is probably the 5th rain storm we’ve encountered while driving. I have been referring to them as the “free car washes,” as we have not cleaned the car since I had it detailed a week before we started this journey. We have about 5,000 miles on the car and plenty of dead bugs in the grille to prove it. We’ve been really lucky so far on this trip in that the weather, in this case rain, has not affected us and our sight-seeing. We checked into The Views Inn, and since the weather wasn’t really conducive to sight-seeing we stayed in for the night and finished our leftover pizza from lunch.

We got up today with the intentions of getting an early start and on the road to see Sedona. We had a terrible “breakfast” at the motel, then drove around a bit taking some photos. Sedona is really quite beautiful. It’s not all dirt and rocks. It’s grass, trees, dirt and rocks. Sedona is known for the “energy vortexes,” I wanted to try to find one. Maybe stand in one for a few minutes and see if a space portal or something opened up. Well, we couldn’t find them. So, we left.

I didn’t really know where we were headed for the night. I knew it was on Route 66, and it was dark when we pulled into town, but I could tell right away this was something kinda special. The town is called Tucumcari, in New Mexico. The main street is lined with more awesome architecture than you can shake a stick at. Most of it is closed and abandoned…gas stations, motels, restaurants. But they still stand proudly and reflect on days of a different time. It’s kinda like a time warp. Almost all the places that are open have some classic cars parked in the parking lot. The neon signs light up beautifully. I would say that this town was the most pleasant to drive through, even though it was pretty small. Just so many things to look at! We had another 8 hour day of driving ahead of us to make it to Texas, so it’s time to hit the hay!