Man, that heat between Phoenix and LA... After I graduated from high school, circa '71 I hitched out to Colorado and hooked up with some friends for a VW microbus trip to the Grand Canyon. Two of us split off from the rest and hitched out to Santa Cruz, to see some other friends. En route we got picked up by a teenage couple driving a big car with Michigan plates and no air conditioning. There was another dude in the back, who looked strung out on something. Somewhere around Needles, AZ, we got pulled over by a state trooper for no apparent reason. The cop confiscates all of our drivers licenses and takes them back to his car to call them in/check for outstanding warrants. We're boiling in the 120 degree heat. After about 10 minutes the cop comes back and informs us that he can't get a radio signal here, and instructs us to wait. He takes off. The time clock keeps ticking and the heat is relentless. Eventually the the kids whose car we're in, confides to us that he and his girlfriend are only 16 years old, and stole the car we're sitting in from the girl's mother. Uh-oh... Everybody's nervous now. The kid's just about made up his mind to run for it, when the 'junkie' speaks up for the first time, instructing the kid to stay cool, and tells us his theory that that cop is somewhere up on the hill behind us, just waiting for us to do something dumb like run, so he can run us all in. Sounded like a reasonable theory, so the kid cools his jets. The cop returns after almost an hour and tells us he never could get anyone on the radio and we're free to go. I don't know which version of what the cop was up to was true, but we were dying in that heat that day. I love road trips. You've always got stories to tell.

I'm sorry I missed this last night, Staley. Awesome reminiscing you've got going on there.

Back in 2000 I crossed the country in a hurry in an '85 Chrysler New Yorker (powder blue with dark blue velour interior -- my ex called it The Pimp-Mobile) and not only did it have no A/C but it also had no radio. For four days I sang to myself with the windows rolled down -- everything from Carly Simon to A/C to Broadway musicals. Couldn't remember have the lyrics but that didn't stop me, I just made new ones up.

Got a speeding ticket at 6AM in Oklahoma City from a very nice young officer who thought I'd stolen my car, so that proves that there is something to do in Oklahoma.

Finally, Days Inn is comparable to Best Western, and Motel 6 is cheaper but pretty crappy.

Very nice post. I'm now a grandpa who drives truck. And I remember well taking each of the kids along for trips when they were younger - and they each like recounting the experiences they had and the memories. You covered many of them here. Others were more personal, such as Rachel's recollection of me singing along with the whole "Stop Making Sense" cassette by Talking Heads, or Gene's telling of the time I got a cop mad at me at a portable weigh station in Montana. (Seems the cop didn't like being described to a teenaged youth as "little more than a mobster with a badge, robbing money from guys who actually work for a living.")

Maybe I'll contribute a post or two of my experiences in a career spent traveling all 48 Continental United States. As you so nicely describe in your post, life on the road is not without its adventures

Rec'd!

Great splices of life on the road.

The white pills were vitamins? What were the red ones, M&M's?