Missouri To Arizona In Photos (And Back Again)

The best of the photos from last week's trip to Arizona... (Click the collage to see the album)

Adios Phoenix...For Now

There really is no rest for the wicked - we were up and at them and out of Aaron's place by 7:20am, headed back to Missouri! We're currently in Tucumcari, New Mexico for the night. It's been a fairly nice day of driving, despite the patches of rain that we've had both in Arizona and New Mexico.

Driving out through part of Tonto National Forest was awesome - as always, the scenery was breath taking - saguaros as far as the eye can see, and amazing rolling mountains. Similarly, the New Mexico landscape in and around the border is really nice (although, quite different to the Sonoran Desert). I did think to myself that the trip back is somewhat disappointing to the trip out to Arizona. Going to Arizona, everything incrementally gets better and better - until the complete overload of beauty (at least for me) of the Sonoran Desert. Going back however, you kind of blow your load (or mother nature blows her load ;-) ) in the first few hours, and it gets slightly less exciting - which means that tomorrows 11+ hours driving probably won't be quite as inspiring as todays.

We do however have the promise of a little bit of rest once we get back to Missouri (likely to only be "a little" actually) which I'm sure will keep our spirits up as we head through Texas, Oklahoma and finally get back to Missouri!

The Streets Of Guadalupe

After getting the apartment taken care of, I wanted to drive through Guadalupe before heading back to Casa Grande, partially to get my bearings on it's proximately to the apartment.
Surprisingly to me, we're north of it, rather than south of it. I've only been through it a select number of times - maybe twice in 2005, probably at least once in 2006, and then on the way home last night. Going through it again tonight really helped me get my bearings on it - as has been true of a lot of the east valley over the past week.

I was particularly on the look out for Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, which I actually missed last night. Pretty much immediately thinking about it, we were approaching it off to the right / west. Now this was a sight to behold. The church looks amazing no matter when you see it (back in 2005 I was immediately blown away by it - and only later discovered that it's the church seen in a lot of the ¡Americano! era Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers photos). But tonight, with the sun setting at dusk over South Mountain as a backdrop to the church was really a site to behold - completely amazing. A picture says a thousand words, but I don't have one to post here, since photography is forbidden (however, I may be confused about that only applying to when a religious ceremony is occurring). A completely amazing sight to see in any case!

One thing I haven't previously noticed, which I love, is that Priest Drive transforms into Avenida del Yaqui (translated - Avenue Of The Yaqui) and then right back to Priest Drive south of Guadalupe. The transition of such being exactly like Guadalupe itself - there is no subtle transition any of the 3 sides that border Tempe - it's an immediate transformation into the historic / south of the border feel town, and an immediate transformation back to the modern American feel of Tempe. It's really quite amazing to me the way Guadalupe is nestled inside Tempe, and doesn't at all feel effected by the modern suburbia around it. This is true even with the huge Arizona Mills mall directly north of it over Baseline. The idea of living somewhere with a community / town such as Guadalupe in it is really cool!

It was similarly cool that noticing that the section of Guadalupe Road in Guadalupe is signed as Calle Guadalupe (as appears to be true of all the roads in Guadalupe, looking at Google Maps), as we looped around east, heading back towards Tempe to see the extent to which Guadalupe streaches (1 square mile as it turns out) before getting on the I-10, headed for Casa Grande.

Guadalupe Cemetery

While driving around the area around the apartment complex, we stumbled upon Guadalupe Cemetery. Completely unexpectedly, as it's located in Tempe, in amongst the suburban streets north of Baseline. Neither of us any idea that it existed (it goes without saying that I didn't if Katie didn't).

We only saw it briefly from the dead end of south Beck that leads into it, but it looked like it'd be a beautiful cemetery. I have no idea whether it is open to the public / people not of the Guadalupe community, but it was pretty amazing stumbling across it.

And Scene...

Our extra day in Arizona got off to an early start, driving back up to Tempe, dropping off some of our clothes that we're not taking back, and then heading over for an 11:30 appointment at the one apartment that we singled out out of the batch we drove by last night. In short we like what we saw. Compared to the front runner yesterday, it's a bit bigger, a bit cheaper, got a bit better crime rating, and is a bit closer to downtown Tempe. A bit better on all sides basically.

After the appointment we went over to Pete's Fish And Chips for lunch, to discuss this over food. Much to my dismay, I threw cigarette lighter in the trash. Not on purpose, of course! I took a brief walk down Apache to try and fix the situation of not being able to light a cig, but unfortunately Pete's is basically surrounded with just accommodation. However, it we had a delicous lunch, and red the Tempe Daily, which had an interesting article about Resturant Mexico's constant displacement around the downtown area. We'd just been talking about that yesterday afternoon, noticing that the building it was last in on Apache has been demolished. The site is no doubt awaiting another freakin' high rise to go up there. What the hell goes through the heads of the people in charge of this town, I don't know.

In any case, after finishing our food, we moved to the back of Pete's for a bit more quiet, and after a while moved the pow-wow to Tempe Beach Park, since the garbage smell at the rear of Pete's was getting to me - as to was the lack of nicotine, I'm sure! So we swung past the Safeway on Broadway to grab a lighter, and then over to Tempe Beach Park.

While ironically it was noisy over there since there was a construction crew putting together stages for Arizona Fall Fest, it was pretty nice being out there. We crunched the numbers, weighed crap up, played devil's advocate - and decided to go with the apartments we looked at this morning. And then went through our plan to make it happen. So following this, it was over to the Tempe library to use the internet, over to Kikos on University to send a fax, and then back out to the apartment complex to put in our applications. Basically an afternoon of criss crossing across Tempe taking care of business. We got our application in around five, which brought with it a huge sense of accomplishment. After this we spent some time driving around the surrounding areas - again - but this time with the perspective of it being our new home if the application in accepted.

Of all the major things we set out to achieve in Tempe / Phoenix, as of about 5pm tonight, we achieved them all. not bad considering that we arrived around 5pm last Thursday, and we were done by 5pm Wednesday this week!

Apartment Decisions Continue...

It's been another long day out in the Valley Of The Sun, trying to sort out living arrangements. Earlier in the day it was a case of weighing up whether we're going to live on Mill Avenue, or further south close to Elliot Road. We did some research this morning on things like crime and what not, and went back out to both apartment complexes.

The way things are shaping up, the Elliot Road location is looking much better, despite the painfulness of the better size at South Mill. And the fact that Yucca is ridiculously within walking distance of the complex on South Mill. Something that makes the decision incredibly painful.

I've been wanting to take some video driving around downtown Tempe, and we got that down this afternoon, and towards the end of that, we, without much explicit discussion expanded our apartment search to others in Tempe (a few hours earlier it was pretty much just down to the two aforementioned apartments). At some point, stuck in traffic on Apache, right in the middle of the ASU area, I had the presence of mind to tune into The Blaze in the car - ie: on a real radio! I've been listening to the station for years online, and have been meaning to do that this trip, but have consistently forgotten whenever we've been downtown. So, this afternoon I finally did it, tuned into The Blaze on a radio (and checked their old frequency - 1260AM - funnily enough, nothing appears to be broadcasting on it at the moment). It was enjoyable that at around 6:20 the played They Way We Talk (The Maine). Driving down Rural, tuned into The Blaze and hearing The Way We Talk, there is just something damn cool about that!

We found a few other complexes that may work for us, and hence we're going to delay our trip back to Missouri until Thursday (originally we were leaving tomorrow) to do some more research, and hopefully have things narrowed down tomorrow.

Today In Tempe

This morning we dropped Aaron off at Sky Harbor, then proceeded to Tempe Town Lake to take some photos of the "Healing Field" - flags displayed across Tempe Beach Park in memorial of Sept. 11. The walk around Tempe Beach Park (and over the Mill Ave. bridge to get an overall photo) was filled with conversation about the changes in Tempe over the past 3 years, all too visible in all directions at Tempe Beach Park. Which continued the whole way back to the car, and as we hit the old Ash Avenue bridge - where the last 20 minutes of conversation was so pogniant, as we were greeted by huge advertisement for the development of a "War Memorial", plans of which include screwing with the ruins of the Ash Avenue bridge. Having a memorial at Tempe Beach Park is fine, but screwing with the historic bridge? It's disgusting. The changes going on with the ascetics of this town is horrible, and whoever is responsible for it really needs their head checked. But more on that later...

From there we spent some time at Fiesta Mall, then headed over to Four Peaks for lunch. Actually we'd tried Pete's Fish and Chips, which was closed on Sunday, and it turned out nice, because sitting at Four Peeks on the warm Sunday afternoon eating 8th Street chicken tenders and researching apartments was perfect. Before leaving we briefly went inside to use the restroom, which was cool that I got to see where the door from Four Peaks to Uranus Recordings once was.

After lunch we drove back out to Mesa to look at some apartments we'd shortlisted. We'd tried earlier in the day to use the downtown wireless to check on shows happening tonight, which was a total bust, and since we were both tired, we headed back towards Casa Grande and dusk. The desert south of Phoenix was absolutely beautiful with the sun setting behind us over South Mountain.

Ironically, on getting back here I discovered that Last Exit's lineup had canceled and Los Guys were playing a free show tonight! Could have been brought to our attention hours ago! But given our tiredness and the fact that they probably wouldn't go on until late, it was probably for the best that we didn't know about it.

Houses, Houses and Houses

Surprisingly, given the last 2 days of driving, and the rather late night last night, there wasn't much issue waking up early this morning. In no short part due to the drive of getting things worked out.

We were out of here by 10, headed back to Phoenix. Our first stop, after Quicktrip for sodas, was to pick up the latest Phoenix New Times, to get our nightly calendar for the week that we're here sorted out. With that under controll we made a start on checking out the few houses that we've been looking at online. The first, stop was the one in Mesa that we saw a while ago, but has since been sold. The location didn't seem as great as it seemed on the map, but everything about the place, including the neighborhood looked like it unfortunate that it sold.

From there, it was back west to south Phoenix by South Mountain, to the territorial style place that I love on the outside, but the floor plan didn't seem idea. It too seemed a bit further out than I expected, and it seemed like the land looked a lot bigger in the photos. It was definitely obvious that the views from the roof balconies it had would be amazing though. Forgetting about the view of South Mountain, it looked like you'd have a complete view of the valley given the incline it was on.

From there we circled around South Mountain to the larger, but less cool looking place in Awatukee. The location of this one, particular after driving there, seemed so perfect. However, on taking a look at the outside of the house, the condition of it certainly came into question. A while ago I questioned whether it wasn't a party house, and looking at it in real life, that idea seems more likely. While we'd probably still give it a look, from the outset it looked like more work than it's worth, given that peaking in the windows we immediately saw holes in the walls.

From there we went over to our 1pm meeting with a realtor, which all went smoothly.

With that out of the way around 3, we headed up towards the last house on our list, in north Phoenix. The further north we got, and particular after we passed Camelback Mountain, the frequency of "wow, this place is too far" really increased. Particularly once we finally got to where the house was. However, after a few minutes from looking at the house from the outside, all that gibber jabber started to dissipate! Because this place was gorgeous and I think we were both even more impressed with it than we had been with the photos online. And awesome territorial style house, with the perfect desert landscaped garden boot. In hindsight I can't believe I didn't take any photos of the place.

After spending a good deal of time salivating over the place, we headed back south, swung by the storage facility and dropped off some other stuff Katie had left at Aaron's while in Australia. Since we had a bit of time to kill before meeting Aaron at yucky we went down to Zia Records. Funnily enough, was the cheapest visit to Zia Records I've ever had - invariably because there is so fewer CD's that I need these days. Obviously we were headed straight to the "Local" section at the back of the store. The only thing I found that we absolutely needed to pick up was Domo's Baby Mercury, which was pretty sweet to find, because I stupidly wouldn't have thought to look for it. Other than that we found Gloritone's Cup Runnith Over. Walking out of Zia's with only two CD's is such a rarity. And as it turned out, with our Zia card (which was still valid and had points), we got the Domo CD for half price. Thank you Zia!

We then went for a drive down Mill, since we'd spent 'rush hour' in Zia, with the plan to head to TGI Friday's for dinner - which, considering that we hadn't eaten all day (it's been that busy!) sounded like sound a fantastic idea! Driving over the Mill bridge, I noticed Tempe Beach Park filled with flags, which made me realize that it's of course September 11. So we circled around, since it seemed like such a good photo. That turned into a whole unsuccessful debarkle, and we aborted, deciding to come back later as the flags will still be up until Monday. So with that unintentially substantial diversion, we headed out to Mesa for some grub.

On getting there, we discovered that not only is our favorite Fuddruckers gone (which I knew about), so too is the TGI Fridays close by! Damn you global financial crisis, and damn you Buller for being so out of date! ;-) So from Mesa, we ended up traveling all the way back west to Arizona Mills and finally got to fix our hunger at the Five And Dinner. It was the first chance that I've had to properly scan the New Times listings for shows. Although I'd been planning to do that on the road, there has been no time to do that, with too much other stuff to take in.

After dinner we ending up killing some more time at Arizona Mills, before Aaron was at Yucca wondering where the hell we were...

Hello Tempe Arizona

We hit Phoenix around 4:45pm, coming through Glendale, and the traffic on the 17 was nice pretty much the whole way around downtown Phoenix, and we were on schedule to meet our appointment at the storage facility at 5pm. And then we hit the Phoenix traffic close to the 60....and there went our whole being on time thing.

Nether the less we got there before 5:30pm, got our storage space, and unloaded the car. Unloading the car made me realize just how much stuff we managed to bring in this load - it was quite impressive! The clothes bag we brought for the roof rack worked wonderfully. Given all thee rain we drove through at various places along the way, spending the extra money on the $50 one felt really good. After unloading everything and loading it into the storage unit, we both felt pretty wiped - and I felt reasonably sick - just the two days of driving, Tempe's heat and the work of unloading the car. While being feeling sick, feeling that way with a vibrant sunset over Tempe, and saguaros all around wasn't that bad. It was rewarding that the sick feel was due to the effort to make it to Tempe, which we'd pulled off successfully. We decided that our plan from here was to get some food and head to Casa Grande.

Burger King was close by. In the process of getting there, we crossed over Southern and noticed that Yucca have a new cool sign on the side of the building. While I didn't feel hungry - actually, the thought of food made me feel sicker, after having some huge gulps of the Coke, I started to feel better and was glad that I got some food.

Soon later we made it to Casa Grande, and to Aaron's. who is graciously putting us up for the week. It's been fun shooting the shit about music with him, and sort of unfortunate that after tomorrow he's leaving for Folsome and so we won't have much time to hang with him until we return.

Stephen Ashbrook @ Martini Ranch

The other week we chatted with Stephen Ashbrook about Martini Ranch and that he'd been playing out there sometime soon. We just got into Tempe last night, and as it turns out, Stephen is playing at Martini Ranch tomorrow night! Not sure yet whether he's solo or with the full band, but it looks like we should go, although there are a lot of things going on tomorrow night.

Onwards To Arizona

Texas, New Mexico and The Grand Canyon State

Our aim was to hit the road at 7am this morning, much like yesterday we didn't quite hit that, but weren't too far off our target. If we'd skipped breakfast, we probably would have been closer, but when are we ones to pass up a free continental breakfast? Never, that is the answer. We were both impressed with the Texas shaped waffles on offer at the Baymont Inn. It turned out to be a really nice place to stay, especially given the super cheap price we paid - and all of our clothes were still on the roof of Pepe when we went out to load up the car. Sweet! So we were back out on there road by 7:40am.

The drive through Texas was much like that of yesterday - quite flat! A little way out of Amarillo there was a lot of fog, however that lifted as the morning wore on. As we approached the border, the landscape changed a little, beginning to look a bit more like the landscape of New mexico that I remember from a few years ago. Which was further true once we crossed over the New Mexico border. Gaining the extra hour was quite appreciated too! We stopped for gas, not that far over the border. Getting out of the car for a smoke, things felt closer to home - just the landscape, the large mountain behind the gas station, everything looking a bit more Mexican / native American.

The drive through New Mexico was really nice, and really much more scenic than yesterday's drive. Once we hit Albequeque things started to became a lot more familiar, as the route to Arizona from there is basically what we took in 2006. A little after midday we stopped for gas again at a look out over the Continental Divide, which was really cool. The mountains were quite beautiful, in the typical New Mexico way.

Hitting the Arizona border was pretty exciting for obvious reasons. It was cool that the highway leading up was familar with the red cliffs to the south of the highway. Just like every other border crossing in the past two days, the change in landscape was obvious around the border. While northern Arizona doesn't quite have the same landscape as southern Arizona / the Sonoran desert, it did feel quite at home.

It was funny the number of Stephen Ashbrook related things we saw along the 40 - the first being the Meteor Crater - which at the show Stephen told a story about he and his band took a road trip diversion to check it out, was appalled by the $13 entry fee, which doesn't get onto the crater, and opted for going through a hole in the fence and sitting up on the crater, before long with the fuss at the bottom waiting for them. The prelude being that they got away with a warning, and paying the $13, since they'd gotten to see the crater!

Then we passed a souvenir place called "Geronimo". The change in temperatures was definitely noticeable, and confirmed that we were in Arizona! Of course, not that long out of Flagstaff the temperature dramatically dropped, with a huge dark cloud over Flagstaff. Driving through Flagstaff the heavens opened, and it continued to pour rain as we were heading south out of Flagstaff, really slowing us down. Which was slightly annoying, since we were starting to race against the clock to get to Tempe by 5pm to unload the car at the storage unit.

It was pretty exciting for me as the landscape changed again, from the pine tree / Colorado like look around Flagstaff changed more and more to the desert, and eventually the first saguaro cacti emerged on the landscape. We had to make a stop in Black Canyon City for gas - the small town looked really nice, though we didn't have much time to take it in, as it was about 4:30. I'd definitely be somewhere that we'd like to come back to some time, maybe when we're not racing against the clock. After filling up, we kept on trucking, Katie relying on me to get her back to the I-17, rather than Buller.

Time To Roll

One day of traveling down, we're here in Amarillo, TX. Virtually half way between Warsaw, MO and Phoenix, AZ.

Last night was a late one, slightly reminiscent of packing, but a hell of a lot stressful and painful. Hell, we actually got more than an hour's sleep, so it was only slightly reminiscent of that experience. Really the only thing that made putting together our new first load of stuff was getting some web development work finished before leaving.

All in all, while we were planning to be gone by 7am, the extra packing that we didn't get on the road by 8am, but all things considered, that wasn't too bad.

Just shy of Springfield in Bolivar we stopped for some supplies and extra straps for the roof rack, which also put us behind a bit. Pretty much just getting them on. Otherwise it's been a very smooth and good trip, aside from the pissing rain from Springfield until a little after we crossed the Oklahoma border.

Somewhere along the way it was strange to realize that despite the fact that we are literally road tripping half way across the USA, Oklahoma is technically my only new state (out of Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona). With that said, previously I've only spent a few hours in Fort Worth at the airport for a layover.

Oklahoma was nice to travel through, and it still amazes me how US states are physically distinguishable. Oklahoma, while neighbouring looked vasted different to Missouri, reminding my somewhat of New Mexico - moreso with red dirt rather than red rock, but still. And again, the landscape changed soon after crossing the Texas border. Not to far across the border it became apparent to me that the Texas landscape reminded me of that of rural Australia. The most noticeable thing about the Texas (northern Texas at least) landscape - holy crap it's flat! I've seen flat plains before in different places, but northern Texas really takes the whole flat plains to an impressive extreme!

All in all, we arrived at the hotel just after 7:30pm, which was not bad, all things considered. Katie Pricelined the room, which we got for $41, which is pretty sweet, since it's a fairly nice place. Priceline has treated us fairly good thus far actually. thank you William Shatner! ;-)

So after a rest tonight, it's another early start, the final 11 and a half hours to Phoenix / Tempe.

The Trek To Arizona Begins

Tomorrow morning we set out on our first (of two) trips out to Arizona.

I'd be remiss to not quote Marc Norman at this point...

"My life is packed in a suitcase
This room isn't my home
22 hours from Phoenix
And vacant roads I don't know"

Particular since we actually are about 22 hours Phoenix. And since they won't be roads I don't know the on the second trip...

We'll be out there for about a week, returning to Warsaw for a bit longer, and then moving our asses back out to the Sonoran desert for the final time.

3 Ways You Know You're In America

Three ways you know you're in America:

1. You can get Marlboro Lights - none of this Marlboro Gold crap that came in internationally 3 years ago! And with the white filters! Woo!
2. A carton of Marlboro Lights is $40.49 (AU$51.06) - verses ~AU$89 in Australia
3. You can hear the Gin Blossoms in Countrymart in the middle of Missouri within 3 days of touching down. Hearing Long Time Gone on the radio was just plain bizarre (cool bizarre). I know it was a single, but it never seemed like a real single!