We woke up to a clear and sunny day in Seligman. In the
parking lot and around the grounds of the Deluxe Inn, a few stray cats roam.
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t get them to come and say “hi” to me. The
best I could do was get within sniffing distance of the smallest before it
climbed the side of the motel and disappeared into the roof.
We ate, yesterday morning, at the Roadkill Café. Their breakfast
sandwiches were enormous and pretty damned tasty, according to Mom and Merle. I
had the chorizo plate, which I turned into a chorizo burrito that Mom said
looked like a baby (Amy, if you’re reading, I ate a baby…well, half of it).
With no sightseeing planned for the day, and only about 6.5
hours left in the trip, we decided to take the scenic route to get a taste of
the desert climate. Mom wanted to see cacti and not the kind you see in folks’
yards back home. I was definitely up for it, because I wanted to see a
roadrunner (added that one to the list a little late in the trip). We decided
to drive down to Yuma and then across to San Diego.
Cacti were something the landscape had aplenty. There were
all kinds of smaller varieties and bushes at first, like the buckhorn cholla, prickly
pear and pencil cholla, but we didn’t spot a saguaro until we were well into
our drive. Mom had Merle pull over a couple of times to get pictures of the
ones that “looked like they were supposed to look” (with arms and such). We did
learn that a saguaro doesn’t grow an arm until it’s about 60-years-old.
Though we saw many, many cacti, we sadly didn’t see a
roadrunner. However, we saw quite a few dust devils, which I counted as a
tornado, per Mom’s suggestion, so as to tick that off my checklist. We also saw
a bunch of lemon trees and a lot of cotton in Yuma. Seriously, for all of my
Carolina people, Yuma was overrun with those little white balls. The Yuma Project,
which takes advantage of year-round farming conditions and water from the
Colorado River, makes this possible in Arizona’s desert climate.
Speaking of the desert climate, upon entering California, we
finally hit that sandy-dunes-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see desert climate—no more
saguaro cacti and no more tumble weed, just sand. Here, it was the hottest we’ve
experienced as well, at 113 degrees. We also saw the border fence that
separates the US and Mexico, and Mom said of that, “Well, we got a fence. What
the hell is Trump fussing about then?”
We reached San Diego at around 6pm—just in time for ice
cream cookie sandwiches at The Baked Bear and a walk on the beach at sunset.
Mom said that as big as the ice cream sandwich was, we all needed to be running
along the beach, but then she can’t run. “I can’t run because of my hip…unless
something is after me,” she said.
We finished our trip with dinner at Coyote Café in Old Town,
San Diego, and what a wonderful trip it was. We started about 200 miles from
the east coast and ended dipping our feet in the Pacific Ocean. We drove across
farmlands, grasslands, deserts, up mountains, and through cities. We reached a
height of 14,115 feet and washed our feet in the ocean. We froze through 37
degree weather on Pike’s Peak and fried in the 113 degree heat of Arizona. By
the end of the trip, we were finishing each other’s thoughts, and at times we
didn’t need words to communicate:
“What kind of trees are those?”
“Looks like a cedar. I see little
balls...”
“…like the ones…”
“…we saw up on…”
“Yeah.”
“Yup.”
Altogether, I can’t think of a better was to start this new
chapter of my life. I’m sure San Diego has a lot of good times in store and
wonderful people for me to meet, but getting here is something I’ll remember
through them all—it’s one of those little jewels life has given me, and I’ll
always cherish it.
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