Arizona Adventure Part I

**One of the first photos I ever took. This relic dates all the way back to 2008.**

This blog’s got a lot of ground to cover. I’ve been traveling since I was a toddler, taking photos of my travels since 2008, exploring ghost towns since 2009, and traveling in my own vehicle since 2015. This post will cover what I consider to be my first “classic” adventure. You’ll see what I mean by that here soon.

All the way back in the year 2008, when Katy Perry was just getting her start on the radio and ER hadn’t quite ended yet, my family lived in Brigham City for a few months. I was, obviously, with them, being a 14-year-old, as were my two brothers. We had sold our house in Roy, which is basically turning into a bedroom community for Ogden, and were potentially looking to move to the Grand Canyon State: Arizona. Dad was looking at taking a job at a hog farm and we were all going to look for houses in the beautiful Route 66 city of Holbrook. For a little context before we start here, I was super into astronomy back in those days. I packed a couple of astronomy magazines with me on this trip because we were going to the Lowell Observatory in our spare time, which was where the (now-ex) planet Pluto was discovered. That’s what I was looking forward to the most.

Disaster struck during the first couple hours of our journey. Our car broke down on the side of Highway 6 in Spanish Fork Canyon before the sun had even come up. It was February and the spring warmth was still over a month away, so we boys got real cold real fast. While we spelled “HELP” in the fogged up windows, dad (a trained mechanic) looked at the engine and tried to figure out what was wrong with it. I think it had something to do with the timing belt, I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember it wasn’t a quick fix and we needed to get to a mechanic. We had to wait by the side of the road for someone to stop and help us out, but the problem was, we had broke down around a curve. It would be hard for someone to stop after seeing us.

You may be asking yourself, “Why wouldn’t you just call a tow truck?” Well, dear reader, that is an excellent question. Let me tell you something about my parents at the time. They were way behind on the times. Dad had a work phone, but it didn’t get reception in that canyon, and that was the only phone we had on us. The sun had risen by the time a good Samaritan FINALLY stopped and asked if we needed help. Dad rode back to the town of Spanish Fork with him and thankfully the man wasn’t a serial killer. They stopped when dad had reception to call a tow truck. After what felt like hours but couldn’t have been more than two at most, we were towed into town. I rode in the tow truck with the tow truck driver and dad, and the tow truck driver was pretty nice.

At this point, we weren’t sure if we would even be able to make it to Arizona on time. Dad’s interview was supposed to be later that day, but obviously that wasn’t going to happen. We waited several hours at a repair shop for the issue (timing belt?) to be fixed, and while we waited we kind of wandered around downtown Spanish Fork for a bit. Finally, in the early afternoon, the car was done and the total for the repairs came to an exact $666. Coincidence or an omen for what was to come? You be the judge as you read on. Dad paid the repair costs, called the hog farm to reschedule the interview, they were understanding and rescheduled it for the next day, and we were back on the road!

It was getting dark by the time we reached the tourist trap town of Moab. My brother and I, bored out of our heads, started singing a song as we crossed the mighty Colorado River. “The Colorado River, the perfect place for fishing.” We sang it in different accents and we still occasionally reference it to this day. I believe it was a weekend and there might have been something going on in town, because pretty much all of the hotels off the main highway were full. The sun had sank below the horizon and the stars were out in full force as we drove to the next town: Monticello. Luckily there was room at a hotel on the north edge of town, so this is where we stayed. I remember standing outside and gazing up at the numerous stars in wonder. It was beautiful out.

The next day, we loaded back up into the car and continued our long-delayed journey into Arizona. We got gas in Blanding and an idea popped in my head. My mother had brought her digital camera, one of those big bulky ones that had those even bigger memory cards that only held, like, a couple gigs of data, and I had the bright idea of taking that camera and SMASHING IT WITH A HAMMAH! Nah, I just wanted to take photos of our trip. I snapped that photo up there when we got gas and that is the first photo I ever took with a digital camera. From Blanding, it was another…*checks Google Maps* three hours and thirty-eight minutes to Holbrook. And the drive took us through the beautiful and iconic Monument Valley.

Monument Valley is best known as the place where most spaghetti westerns filmed various scenes with cowboys and Indians and all the other cliche western stuff. Back To The Future Part III even filmed a scene here, the one where Marty travels back to 1885 in the parking lot of an abandoned drive-in movie theater. (0-88 MPH in that short distance? Puh-lease) We didn’t actually stop as we drove through this iconic American desert landscape…but I did whip out that trusty camera that mom had lent me and snapped a bunch of photos along the way. And what a beautiful place it is. Bear in mind that I took these in a moving car, so they’re not the best quality, but I still took them and they’re still my babies! OK?!