From Los Angeles to Phoenix in three days in 1989


I've driven between Los Angeles and Phoenix more times than I can count. And to me, it's dull, dull, dull. I've tried many ways of trying to make it interesting, listening to audiobooks, you name it. I just hated it, and I'm glad to think that I'll never do it again. There's a nice company called "Southwest Airlines" that gets me back and forth now, and all I have to do is eat peanuts and look out the window.

But a lot of people do the drive. And the most common thing I hear them say is how quickly they did it. Six hours seems to be about average, and I'm pretty sure some of my "speed demon" friends who never stop for anything but gas have done better than that. And that makes me think of my personal record, which was three days in 1989.

I like cars, and driving, but I hated just sitting in a box for hours on end, holding onto a steering wheel. Back when I was a kid I dreamed of adventuring when I got a car, the way I saw people on TV did it. But the reality was just sitting in a box, stopping at a gas station, and then seeing how quickly I could get from one point to another. So I stopped doing that, and instead started adventuring, which I hope to be doing until I'm too old to risk walking outside.

I left the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles on a Friday afternoon, and made it as far as San Bernardino that evening. My girlfriend at the time was working there temporarily, and the company had put her up at a nice hotel. So it was late Saturday morning by the time I got back on the road again.

Driving towards Palm Springs, I decided to actually go see it. The freeway bypasses Palm Springs, so you have to take an exit, and I took the first one I saw. And I saw a sign that said I could take a tram up to the top of the mountain, so I did. I've had a lot of people ask me why I would take a tram up to the top of a mountain, and my only answer is, "Why wouldn't you?", and then of course, it just goes back and forth. I also noodled around Palm Springs for a while. I think I was looking for dress shirts, so I looked for a Ross or a Marshalls. I probably ate at KFC.

Palm Spring is kinda pricey, so I headed east to see if I could find a cheap motel, which I did, in Indio. As I recall, it was VERY cheap (I suppose the word "seedy" springs to mind) and when I woke up there was no hot water in the shower, so I just went and jumped into the pool. I must have had my swimming trunks, or I may have jumped in in my bluejeans. I don't recall. Anyway, it didn't bother me.

I rolled into Phoenix on Sunday, and knocked on the door of a friend that I used to know, to see if I could crash. He and his new wife answered the door, and I was told in no uncertain terms that my behavior was unacceptable, and that I should have called ahead. So I wandered off looking for another friend, which I found, and I crashed there for the night. I don't recall the trip home, so it probably took me less than a day.

And that's my record-breaking trip to Phoenix!

Image at the top of this post: the Mighty Mustang in 1989. All that V-8 power, and it ran great, and it still took me three days to go from Los Angeles to Phoenix.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. If you like Phoenix history and would like to help support my efforts to preserve and share precious digital historic images, please consider becoming a patron. Thank you!

Become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more