Day 9: Victorian Spa

Even in the middle of the night, with packs of dogs still howling, I couldn't figure out if they were circling the camp or just throwing their voices. These and other deliriums were on my mind each time I woke up, hot and stuffy in the tent. I don't think the dog slept at all - ears were up the whole time, waiting for invasion.

***

Morning came without a change in temperature and I packed up and headed down to Hot Springs, not even bothering to cook breakfast.

Signs on the edge of Hot Springs welcome you to the "Boyhood Home of Bill Clinton." I don't really know what his biography is, but I wondered what brought him and his mother and his brother here. Maybe it was work, maybe it was just getting the hell out of Hope which apparently is no bigger than a blinking light at an intersection. And maybe it was a leg up, but before I reached the Historical Downtown Area, I passed more old buildings with signs for businesses that didn't exist anymore than working ones.

Still, it's a pretty spot. Surrounded by mountains, near the big vacation destination Lake Ouachita (very popular with boaters and fishermen), it has a faded, even dilapidated quaintness that reminded me of other former Victorian hot spots like Asbury Park, Cape May, Atlantic City. It's probably in better shape than either of those, because the National Park Service runs much of the show here, for good and bad. Good, because at least there's a continuous source of revenue for upkeep, bad because it's the Park Service and it's notoriously stiff sense of appeal.

Day 8, pt 2: Fecudating Southern Riverbed

It is not a desolate place, as you might think, Oklahoma. I'm told by the faceless contributors of Wikipedia there are no less than 10 distinct ecological zones from border to border, more per square mile, than even California. From my driver seat, it's grasslands and prairie in the west and heading east the earth rises and wrinkles some with tree-stuffed gulleys and creeks and eventually small mountain ranges that spread into and take over much of Arkansas.

***

You don't hear much about manufacturing in the south and maybe that's axiomatic, but Ft. Smith Arkansas is and was an exception, suffering the same rust belt obsolescences as say Lowell, Mass or Bethlehem, PA. Stout six or seven story brick buildings with broken windows, a tired empty Main Street, shuttered bars.

The Arkansas river separates it from Oklahoma which on the one hand made it a launch for traveling and trading westward, but psychologically made it a frontier town, on the safe side of Indian Territory. So while cotton, peanuts and light manufacturing kept it busy, settlers and outlaws wandering to and from Oklahoma apparently made it so rambunctious that it is now famous for its hanging judge Isaac Parker, who made good on his name by hanging roughly 80 men during his terms and as many as six in one day. And as a military fort, it was a way station for the Seminoles, Choctaw, and Cherokee on their forced march into OK. Karma can really catch up to you, even 100 years later.

Day 8, pt1: Oklahoma Civic Lesson

Inside the Oklahoma state building: art.

Incidentally, Route 66 is no longer a continuous ribbon of highway. There are big brown signs, known to all motorists as an indicator of a culture point of interest, that will lead you off I-40 and onto Historic Route 66 throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. Unlike the interstate which pounds itself into the earth and lets nothing except enormous geographical features get in its way, Route 66 rolls like a carpet across every rise and dip in this imperfect landscape. If a creek suddenly bends because it always has since the Pleistocene, Route 66 will bend too, abruptly.

No one's really seen to keep it up. The tar is cracking in places. And sometimes it just ends. I was flying down one portion in Texas when all of a sudden the tarmac ended and I was rumbling across white chalky gravel, kicking up a huge cloud, stones rattling underneath. When I couldn't see where the road picked up again and so backed up and retraced the 8 miles to get back on the interstate.

Sometimes, thinking you're about to go off the steady truck laden interstate and enter a rambling time vortex of hot rods, you find yourself on a cracking blacktop less than a 100 yards from the interstate. You can wind up spotting the ABF truck that cut you off 5 miles ago or pace alongside the same red Jeep Cherokee, this time with prairie grass between you. Other times you suddenly veer off south rather than bulldoze through a looming hill and then you are in the dusty backroads of Route 66. Cracked motel windows, empty two tank filling stations, roadside restaraunts and tire repair shops now weathered, pealing and forsaken. A glance into a yellowing diner window will reveal a scene that looks like everyone suddenly evacuated because someone yelled Fire! and never came back.

Day 7: Heat, Hot, Hat

I drove across The Land of Enchantment following big, mighty I-40 withs it's dilapidated winding running mate Route 66 alongside. The pine poked mountains and chapparal encrusted hills diminish mile by mile until the Land of Enchantment gives way to the grasslands and barely registering swells of west Texas. Even though the chilly temperature last night chased me out of the mountains, driving in the flatlands is something else. All day long the temperature has been swaying between 97, 96, 99. Whenever I pull over and climb out of the car, gusts of hot air push me back a little. I have to lean in slightly just to walk forward.

...

I'm in the top hat of Texas. I don't think anyone calls it that. I think most people just refer to it as the Oklahoma panhandle, even though the panhandle is really attached to Oklahoma, leaving Texas with a top hat. No Texan in his right mind would ever be caught in a top hat, but I don't care. If congress really had the foresight in the 1800s, they would have put the pan upside down, the handle sticking out, and supply geography students with the perfect depiction of the Texas state hat, the baseball cap instead. I'm just saying.

Day 6: Putting on miles

I figured out why the Rodeway Inn right downtown in Flagstaff was only $49.00 when the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad freight trains clanged and roared every twenty minutes some 150 yards or so from my window.

I spent a little time in town the next morning, a friendly sunny place in the high ponderosa pine mountains of Arizona. Compact streets and tall old west brick buildings, lots of bars. Some of the hippies who were hip to the timely tip of taking Route 66 seemed to have and opened camping supply stores and coffee shops. Old tie-dyes walked among young blue button downs on their way to city hall, a couple blocks away. I grabbed some coffee at a small cafe with a couple of tables outside, read the paper, let a small cool breeze push my napkin around the table.

Even though midmorning was slipping into late morning, I decided to drive down to Sedona. The high plateau that Flagstaff sits on almost abruptly ends about 20 miles south. The road reaches the edge of a tall forested gorge before switching down about another 7 miles to Oak Creek Canyon. The further south you go, the more desert starts making itself felt as the dry red spire buttes of Sedona begin poking out of the ponderosa.

Day 5: I leave Universal in smokey ruins

I absolutely had to leave today, Sunday. My sister Leslie and her family made plans to drive from upper Maryland down to my folks in Virginia (a two hour drive) this coming weekend. I'm supposed to join them there on Friday night, 5 days hence, covering about 3000 miles.

I hadn't shopped for food and the likelihood of farmer's markets dotting I-40 was remote at best. Heading down to the car, an overcast sky suggested a pleasant marine layer break from days of sunshine but the air was acrid with burnt plastic and rubber. Typical LA, I snorted. Driving up Laurel Canyon, strategizing an assault on Trader Joes, I crossed Riverside and happened to notice the two block wide column of twisting gray and white smoke venting upwards, a couple of miles away. (Not that I took this picture, let alone was even up at 4:30 am, but what an impressively destructive fire).

The smell and the smoke of copies of "Dracula (1931)", "Around the Equator in Roller Skates (1932)", newsreels from 1945 and "The Deer Hunter (1978)" not to mention the Marvellettes' recording of "Please Mr. Postman" drifted overhead while I bought pork chops, steakburgers, olive oil, eggs, breakfast cereal and kefir, packages of lettuce and arugala, dog food to last 10 days, soap, two bottles of Spanish wine, cheese (Port Salut and a wedge of Asiago), and salami.