Excellent Adventure

Minot ND

Nearly everbody I know has decided that 8 months of bone chilling weather a year is enough. 12 years in the deep freeze, time to thaw out. Blah blah blah, were moving to phoenix Az. I'm the last to leave, but am driving down to visit my fiancee and help some people unload thier truck. My Friend Josh decides to ride down with me. We arrange our vacation time, point the ole tiburon south and were are under way.

Heading south

The first few hours are fairly uneventful, Cd player blasting music thanks to what we knew at the time as napster ( moment of silence please to pay respect ). Then as we head west out of Bismark, the fog hits. Not just a polite little fog to greet the morning, but a thick, dense wall of cloud sitting on the ground fog. North Dakota mornings are chilly regardless of the season. This is august, so its not too bad, but not warm enough for air conditioning, yet if dont have it running full throttle, the windows fog up to the point of not being able to see anything. So here we are, 30 miles an hour on a 4 lane, Silver chair at 120 decibles, Air conditioner fighting back the window mist, chuckaluging coke classic to avoid drowsiness.

Desolate country

Wanna see something so un-interesting it will bring tears to your eyes? Drive thru north and south dakota. Except for the black hills, there is nothing else. Miles and miles of... miles and miles. And it goes on and on and on. " Hey look!... A cow! Thats was cool! Im going back to sleep. Gee thanks Josh, as I fumble around for another cd and some pretzles or something to keep me awake.

Rocky Mountians

My eyes are as big as dinner plates, bloodshot and stuck open. Ive been driving for 6-8 hours now. Then I see it, extreme distant west and south. I punch Josh in the ribs to wake him up, do you see that? What he asks, there in the distance. Is that a mountian? Yeah I think so. Grab the map, lets see where we are. Hmm.... about 2 hours north of Denver. the rocky mountians make it all worth it. Jagged peaks, snow covered at the top. Compared to ND, this was Heaven. Denver, yikes! More traffic than a north dakota person has ever seen in his life. Everybody is going 100 miles an hour. Its like keep up or get run over.. Ok tibby, Dont fail me now. No, we will find a hotel in a southern suberb, lets just get thru this. So we make it to just south of denver our first day, not bad. Hey, is there a wendy's near the hotel?

Mile Marker 87

Day 2.. we continue south and then west thru colorado and into New mexico. There are a few places in New Mexico that are so flat, you can see the curvature of the earth! About half way thru the state, we get back into the mountians, and we get a brilliant idea... Lets go hiking. Right over there, that looks like a pretty good place. So we pull off onto a frontage road and head out. There is a mountian a few hundred yards form the hiway. Not too high, 7 or 8 hundred feet maybe. The tempature is probably mid to upper 80's. 2 pale skin north dakota boys heading towards the hills. No water, no plan, we just go boonie stomping to the top of the hill at Mile marker 87. Not bad at first, we dont realize the elevation is 5 or 6 thousand feet to begin with. The sun is pretty intense as it is august after all. We make it to the top. There is a metal cross at the top, it was our goal to touch it, and head back down. Light headed, nausea and sunburned to a crisp, we head back down to the car. Hey, where is the car? Wait, see that reflection way down there? Oh ok... I notice a pick up truck keeps driving past my car, back and forth 3 or 4 times in the past hour while we make our way back down.

No! Everything is NOT ok

We get back down to the road... We were overheated and thirsty enough to drink the air out of my tires. Here comes that pick up again. They stop and i'm thinking, well how nice, they are concerned and stop to offer help. A women gets out and I meet her halfway between our vehicles, and say, Hey everythings ok. By that I mean, we are not broke down, we are not hurt, everything is ok. She replies angrily - NO! Everything is NOT ok!, This is private property and I should call the police and have you arrested for trespassing. Im Like, Hey relax, we were just hiking, and now we are leaving. We didnt see any signs posted and we apologize. We went to a local Wal-mart to get water ( lots of it ) then on to mcdonalds to eat and reflect. I never mentioned to the women about all the beer cans, bottles and other debris up on her precious mountian. In fact there is a dirt road leading up from a residential area that she was apparently unaware of. It looked like quite a party area for the locals.

On to Phoenix

Tired and sunburned we head on to phoenix. We still have quite a few hours to go. The temp is warm, but since we are in the car we are unaware of what was going on out side. The last time we were outside was elevation 4 or 5 thousand feet. Night falls, we finally get to the Phoenix metroplex. Ive never been to Phoenix, and I wasn't aware of how spread out it was. You can drive for an hour and full speed and still be within the city limits. We plugging along and see a temperature / thermometer. Its says 10:30PM -then it changes to 106 degrees. SHUT UP we both say at the same time and open the windows and stick our arm out side. And Woa, it was like putting you hand into an oven! Ive never felt it this hot before, and was dry like a sauna!

Part 2