Eternal sunshine of a spotless city

Deep orange-red light illuminates rocks, gravel and cacti –welcome to Phoenix, the capital of the sunset state!

After seeing Soleri’s vision of an ecological city (Arcosanti) that uses only a minimum of space, Phoenix seems like a total waste of space to me, spread out as it is.

Been stuck here for a while, feeling like Honey bunny waiting for her hero to return. Only that the motel I’m staying at isn’t from a Tarantino but from this movie: “Away we go” (Seriously!!) But no worries, it’s not as bad as the movie. It’s just that my neighbors seem to permanently live here so that I as a temporary kind of stand out. And why does everyone here know where I’m from even before I exchanged a word with them? Maybe I should integrate myself better, joining them for their afternoon beer and BBQ sessions in the parking lot. Oh well.

This city is first and foremost: clean. No graffiti, no trash, no homeless, no punks, no old people. Where did they put all that? At least for the old people I know: They all live in Sun City, a suburb of Phoenix, enclosed by a wall. Same yard, same house, same orange tree, same car, same age. 

After being here for a couple of days this city is really starting to scare me: It’s the friendliest people I ever met living here. AND you can ride downtown shuttle buses for free, take the cheap light rail, all the information boards throughout downtown are bilingual in English and Spanish and/or Braille. There are volunteers walking around downtown answering any questions and handing out free water bottles. What’s wrong with this city?

I think I’ll explore the suburbs today, need some reality check. And there are still my new friends at the motel...

Grand and Small Canyons

So that’s what everyone comes here for: staring into a giant gigantic hole. From different angles (18, to be exact). Do you know this feeling - once you concentrate on a particular thing you all of a sudden start seeing it all over? To be honest, after stuffing all the holes in Wilma with construction foam we couldn’t help but keep on calculating how much foam it would take to fill in this gigantic Canyon while biking along the south rim under somewhat harsh conditions...

Until we chose to have a look at it from above in a helicopter. Man, was I happy we hadn’t put the construction foam in! We flew along the most impressive rock formations, listening to the pilot’s equally impressive choice of music – “I’m learning to fly” and “Knocking on heavens door”, although “Free falling” might have been a little tough on the guy behind me, who wanted to return home just after we had taken off. Unlike this happy fellow...

On the road....

...and Wilma felt young again

Lone Pine, Death Valley, Vegas, Arizona

Recognize this landscape?

Me neither.

 

But if you are into Westerns you might know this guy from his movies that were shot here.

 

Talking about shooting...

Well, what can we do, all the Westerns we had seen so far were shot in Italy!

But still, what a beautiful scenery! The same is true for  Death Valley, our next stop.

Hundreds of miles of rocks and nothingness and then this:

Wilma going wild in Vegas

Water shortage? Rising energy prizes? Real estate crisis? No need to worry as long as there is Vegas, the seemingly endless source of more of whatsoever. f.e. jellybeans...

Totally glitter-world overwhelmed we want back to rocks and nothingness!! Arizona, here we come!

Passing the source behind all this lavishness in Vegas...

Hoover Dam

After even thinking about boycotting Arizona due to it’s innovative ideas of how to spot immigrants I was surprised by the socialist attitude we were welcomed with: asking for a grocery store some guy offered us his food stamps. Arizonian kindness or the way we look?

Another 80 miles without spotting any grocery store and we started to believe that people in Arizona simply don’t buy any groceries. They don’t need to, since there’s McDonalds and Taco Bell all over. But what about the food stamps? Do they trade them in for burgers? 

By the way: Wilma is doing great!

Think you’re reading a travel blog? Think twice. It’s the Wilma blog, so more stories about her:

Today I was ready to sell her. What am I talking about - selling! I was ready to give her away for free to whoever would be crazy enough to take her. This stubborn lady doesn’t run out of ideas of how to keep the adventure going (rather than herself).  So after a beautiful drive along the Kern River, which is south of Sequoia National Park, we drove up and down the slopes of the Rocky Mountains heading for the Sequoia Trail. Until Wilma started stuttering. Lucky us, this country is full of auto repair shops. And then the good news: It’s only the fuel filter , $ 5.33 !!! Our cheapest repair so far. I immediately felt slightly guilty towards Wilma, abandoning her for a clogged nose!

And did we end up seeing giant trees? Well, the good thing about traveling off season is not only that you have all the otherwise busy places to yourself, you also safe a lot of gas since many trails are closed in winter. So please keep your fingers crossed that Death Valley is going to be open tomorrow!

No matter what, we stick together...

 

Yosemite

Actually I didn’t want to mention that on our 3^rd day of traveling we still hadn’t left the Bay Area (the picture on Wednesday was taken in Oakland, next to BART), still hadn’t taken any shower and still had Internet connection. I wanted to conceal from you the leaking gas pipe, the only half existing black water hose and the cracks in the front roof.

But now that I can brag about the beauty of Yosemite and Wilma’s excellent manners under harsh conditions, there’s no need to hide the truth: I’ve learned a lot about RVs these days!

Pullermännchen

Wilma is back to life, so let’s finally hit the road! Our first night outside of the rv repair parking lot - can you guess where that is?

 It’s quiet outside, our friends long gone, the adventure has started: Wilma the Wohnmobil on a trip across the US, including: The Lazerksooman, formerly known as Chris, determined to spread the Lazerkasoo all over the country and me, Jutta, or, as the Americans say, Dschudda, determined to survive.

If we looked out of the window right know, which we don’t, we’d see nothing, since it’s night and dark. If we did that tomorrow morning, we’d still see nothing. Wonderful vast country America! No, just kidding. Wonderful parking lot in front of the RV repair shop!

Wilma, the beautiful old lady that is giving us a cozy shelter right now, needs some spa time for herself - the last days were kinda stressful for her. So let’s summarize what has happened so far, because the adventure actually had started a long time ago.

Back to December 2010. We had Wilma for a couple of weeks and she seemed to be doing fine. Ok, the fridge turned out to be not working and who needs a heater anyway? But a clutch seemed kind of essential, so we replaced that after being towed by triple A.

And than, January 1^st. Isn’t there a saying in German at each New Years Eve: Have a good slide into the New Year? Well Wilma, obviously unaware of metaphorical speaking, slid all the way down a very sloppy slope (backwards!!) until she finally hit a car, shifted into first gear -what a happy New Year!

So here we are, not far from what used to be our home, waiting for Wilma to retain her old beauty and for the adventures to proceed!