It’s been an exhausting first day in LA, though you wouldn’t know it, looking at the odometer. We drove 40 miles in four hours of driving between 7:45 am and 7:00 pm, looking at apartments in Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Culver City, We found some good ones, some bad ones, and some that I can’t even remember because they were so unremarkable. The good thing is, there seem to be a lot of totally decent places to live, in our price range, and around where we think would be a good place to live based on our work locations. We’ve got more appointments tomorrow, and three more days after that to keep looking.
Yesterday was a whirlwind of a day, beginning in Holbrook, Arizona, as we emerged from our tipi at the Wigwam Motel (only to find a DeLorean next door) and headed out on I-40 west as far as we could go. We stopped off in the morning for breakfast at Kathy’s in Flagstaff – great breakfast, and what a great town. We really wished we’d had more time there, and vowed to make a return trip sometime soon. From Flagstaff, we got back on the road westward, and took a nice, scenic detour from I-40 on Highway 66, a portion of the old Route 66 that began in Seligman. We enjoyed the malts and shakes (and practical jokes/puns) at the Sno-Cap drive-in, and we spotted the 
Jeopardy bus, broken down. The old road took us past the Grand Canyon Caverns, and we all know it isn’t a road trip without caverns, so we took the tour (via the 40 year-old elevator traveling 210 feet underground). The guide, though obviously possessed of a wealth of experience, had fallen victim to “tour guide mouth,” in which a guide has led a tour for so long that his or her spiel is no longer actual, discernible words, but merely a string of sounds that occasionally resemble English. We saw the cathedral room, the mummified bobcat, the “worthless selenite teacup,” and the piles of Cuban Missile Crisis-era rations that were moved there when the cave was a candidate for a fallout shelter, and have been left because it’s not cost-effective to bring them out again. The tour was well worth it, and provided a nice break in our day of driving. Speaking of which, yesterday marked the third day in a row Aimee drove the car, which is a remarkable feat, considering that her first day driving a manual transmission car on a road with other cars was day two of the trip. She?s got the hang of it now, though driving the Golf in LA is a distant dream, or nightmare, I suppose.
Going back one more day, we spent the Fourth of July in the strange and memorable Tucumcari, New Mexico, where we stayed at the one of a kind Blue Swallow Motel, and took in Sonic blasts and the city-wide fireworks display from the parking lot of the high school. Ever since Tulsa, we’d been criss-crossing the path of Route 66 along I-40, and we made many enjoyable stops off the highway to catch the old road where it still existed ? in El Reno, Amarillo, Tucumcari, Albuquerque, Holbrook, Seligman, and other towns. Tucumcari, like many other towns, had a great collection of neon signs to enjoy, topped off by the one out in front of our motel. From Tucumcari to Holbrook, we enjoyed the breadth of the state of New Mexico, with a much-needed stop at the Frontier Restaurant, in its block-long glory, in Albuquerque.
We wished we’d had a little more time to enjoy what we saw as we drove through town, but we did take the time to check out the amazing Tinkertown outside Albuquerque, an amazing collection of hand-carved wooden figures that seemed to us like a combination of The House on the Rock, the Wonder Tower, and something else that we can’t remember – and all amazing.
We also stopped off for a quick trip to Sky City casino, where, just as she was saying how nice it would be to win some money and have a funny story about it, Aimee won $50 on her last dollar of the five we agreed to gamble when we walked in. Well done! We also took a brief trip through the Painted Desert, and wished we’d had a little more time to check out the beautiful old inn that is now a Park Service museum. In Holbrook that night, we enjoyed dinner at Romo?s, where it seemed everyone in town was also eating, and also watched a native dance demonstration in the evening. Aimee was lucky enough to be chosen by a five year-old girl without a partner during one segment of the dance, and she acquitted herself nicely. We opted for a leisurely dinner and the dance event instead of watching Cars at the local cinema, and retired early for a “night in a wigwam.”
Having totally exhausted ourselves today, we ordered pizza delivered to the hotel (a first, I’d have to say) and we’ll rest up for more appointments tomorrow.
