The call of the open road has never diminished. And it’s a call that I may ignore for a while, but then I just have to call back. So while I was in the States this year I dialled up a deep cherry red Jeep Cherokee Trailhawk. Since I have neither job nor the pressure of time, I gave in to a long-nurtured desire to do an extended American week-long road trip all by myself, with a few brief interludes of people from another lifetime.
The ‘as the crow flies’ route from West Hollywood, California, to Dallax, Texas, (chosen because it helps to end a trip with family) would have been to go down the I-10 and the I-20 (the east-west interstate highway). But, if I wanted to follow the metaphorical crow I would have done so in an aeroplane.
Old friends
I plotted my route on the move, making social and sightseeing stops along the way. From West Hollywood I drove to Laguna Niguel in Orange County, California. This 100km drive took me about 90 minutes because it went through Los Angeles, Anahiem and Santa Ana, all full of traffic and grids. But it was great to be at the wheel.
In Orange County I looked up an old friend whom I’d grown up with, 20 years ago. She showed me around sun-kissed beaches of Orange County (where bikinis have less surface area than a table napkin) and took me to trendy cafes.
The highlights: a killer bloody Mary at Beach Comber, Crystal Cove and the grungy Huntington Beach.
Bags in boot I headed towards Cave Creek, Arizona, almost 650 km away. The Cherokee’s boot is designed to swallow up camping equipment and my solitary bag got lost in its recesses. My drive took me east on the I-10 through the coastal greenery of California and then into the desert landscape of Arizona.
Another friend from my growing-up years joined me on my journey, together with her husband. We headed north, to Utah.
This route, a combination of the I-17 and the US-89 goes through prime canyon country including Sedona that is believed to have vortexes that radiate the earth’s energy. Even with the three of us, the Cherokee didn’t feel crowded. All of us had different temperature thresholds and it was a good thing that each of the 4 seats has individual air-con controls.
Our destination was Panguitch, Utah, 685 km or so from Cave Creek. First settled in March 1864 by the Mormons, this town became famous for brick-making, where workers were paid in bricks to enable families to build homes. The Mormons also practised polygamy and today Panguitch’s tastiest brew is called the Polygamy Porter, with an obvious tagline: Why just have one?
While my friends slept the next morning I headed out at 4:30 a.m. to the Bryce Canyon National Park just 40km away. It was so cold that I had to turn on the seat heating and the steering-wheel heating too. On that drive twice the Jeep’s High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights caught deer crossing the road and gave me enough time to avoid hitting the animal. My early start was well worth the effort, because I was rewarded with a spectacular sunrise over the park’s characteristic hoodoos as the totem-pole-shaped formations are called. Later that day, we explored the park and even drove a bit of Highway 12 Scenic Byway that is Utah’s most diverse and stunning route. The Jeep’s ‘snow’ mode came in good use at sections where the road was still snowbound.
The American southwest
I parted ways with the couple he next morning and drove down US-89 and 191 to Gallup 725 km away, through arid country, dotted with canyons, the Navajo Nation reservation. For the first time in months I listened to my playlists without interruption. As my iPod coincidentally played ‘Old Turkey Buzzard’, I looked out for the bird, only to see them soaring high above. The Jeep Cherokee’s superb high-fidelity system and its adaptive cruise control made this drive spa-like therapeutic.
El Morro in New Mexico, a short 90-km-drive away, is where I headed the next morning. This 200-foot sandstone outcropping in the desert is seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but the sweet waterhole at its base made it a necessary traveller stop for millennia. As they passed, travellers inscribed their presence on the rock: thousands of inscriptions from First Nations’ petroglyphs dating to the 1200s to those by the Spanish conquistadores in the 1600s and finally the American pioneers of the 1800s. Today though it is protected and marking the stone is illegal.
My last night in New Mexico was at Santa Fe, 290 km away. On the way I stopped at the eerily fascinating Rattle Snake Museumin Albuquerque. The cool climes of the higher reaches were now a thing of the past. In Albequerque it was burning hot, so while I had my lunch at a café near where my Jeep was parked I remotely turned the engine on via my key fob. This way a cool cabin was waiting to welcome me when I was done with lunch.
The home run
At Santa Fe I learnt about El Santuario De Chimayo 43 km north. Called the Lourdes of America, this chapel was built in 1816 and is said to have miraculous healing properties. Lourdes in France is on a grander scale, but the vibe of piety and look of hope and faith on the faces of pilgrims is the same.I met snow again in fresh pine forests on the high road to Taos that was thrillingly twisty and the Jeep with its precise steering and the four-cylinder engine was a delight to throw around.
I entered Texas at Amarillo over 480 km away. This is the home of the Big Texan Steak Ranch; the star is a 72 oz. steak that is free if you can finish it with all the trappings. The other name for it is shortcut to a heart attack! So I stuck to a 12oz steak and then drove to the Hardeman Safety Stop near Quanah 235 km away. Here, I put my bag on the front seat and folded down the rear seats of the Jeep freeing up a whopping 1,554.5 litres of space and spread out my sleeping bag and slept in the car like a baby. A 5 a.m. start got me to Flower Mound near Dallas the next morning by 8 a.m. My drive had come to an end and I was as fresh as a daisy.
