Return to the Heartland: Day 2

Arizona will forever be known to me as The Anal Nazi State.

A few miles west of Kayenta I was pulled over by what I think was a Yavapai County trooper. (I was technically in Coconino County, so I’m unsure why he was not out of his jurisdiction.) He followed me for miles and I was staying a few mph below the 65 speed limit. “He ain’t got shit on me,” I thought. Wrong.

I pulled over and he tapped on the passenger side window. I rolled it down and gave him my license and registration. He asked me where I was headed (“Iowa”), then, “Are you pretty tired?”

What the fuck?

“No,” I said.

“The reason I ask that is because on that last curve I noticed your tires on this side drifted onto the white line on the shoulder. Touching that white line is a violation of Arizona traffic rules.”

You have to be fucking kidding me! I got pulled over just for driving on the white line marking the right shoulder.

Thankfully I got off with a warning, but it ruined the rest of the day. I was über vigilant, keeping an eye pealed for more troopers and made sure I didn’t touch the forbidden white line.

Seriously: what kind of shit is that? The taxes in Arizona must be insanely low if the county pigs have to resort to pulling over out-of-state drivers for the pettiest shit to raise funds. Needless to say I breathed a sigh of relief when I crossed the state line into New Mexico, then another a mile later when I entered Colorado. (We intended to stop at the Four Corners monument, but it was closed due to construction.) There was one state between me and the Copper State Nazis.

Day 2 was beautiful, hot, and depressing. The Grand Canyon was majestic, as was the surrounding pine forest. I love the smell of pine forests. We then descended onto US 89, the central crease of Arizona. There were painted hills and very eccentric geography, but it was scenic in that arid way only bikers and Brits love. (For some reason I kept singing “In a Big Country” by Big Country in my head.) After my white line violation near Kayenta, we headed north into Utah for literally a few steps to see Monument Valley (the visitor’s center was at the end of a road that crossed the line back into Arizona, which I wasn’t thrilled about). Then we drove for what seemed forever to the Four Corners and then on to tonight’s pit stop: Cortez, Colorado. We ate at the Main Street Brewery and I had a garden burger and a Slow Pitch, an amber ale. (It had creamy, sweet caramel malts and only sparse hops. It was very tasty. After two days on the road it went straight to my head.)

Ah, Colorado — my birth state. Though I consider my “native” roots in Iowa, I have a special place in my heart for the Centennial State. Since my parents left LA a few months before I was born, I always felt they gypped me out of having a cool native state; California was, I felt, way cooler than Colorado. However, that all changed when I passed through on my move to the west coast four years ago. I hadn’t been back in Colorado for 11 years and was awestruck by the Rockies and Glenwood Canyon. Colorado, I have to say, is a pretty awesome place to have been born in.