There is no sight more gratifying to me than the open road, for the open road allows the body to wander and the mind to wonder. It offers an escape for the imagination and a way of life governed by freedom and fueled by curiosity.
My name is Alexander, and I am a sophomore in Timothy Dwight College studying political science. Naturally, my day is complete with writing papers, reading research articles and attending lectures. And as much as I am a Yale student, I consider myself a student of the world with the open road as my classroom.
This travel column, On the Road, recounts several of my adventures on asphalt and all the lessons I have learned from the people, places and things I have encountered on all roads, from those well-traveled to those not taken.
***
A new day shone brilliantly as morning rose over Flagstaff, Arizona. The skies were clear. The day was cool. I woke up in my hotel room feeling rested and ready for the day ahead. The day before was almost derailed by car trouble. But today, the sun showed promise. Thus, we packed our bags, ate a quick breakfast and checked out of our hotel. With time to spare, we drove around downtown Flagstaff before heading to the day’s first stop, Walnut Canyon National Monument.
We arrived at the national monument shortly after it opened, and there was already a crowd. There was an elderly couple asking a ranger about cliff dwellings. Nearby was a group of veteran road-trippers organizing their belongings before setting off on a hike. The atmosphere was busy and happy. After stopping at the visitor center, we were greeted by the impressive sight of Walnut Canyon. Over the course of 60 million years, water transformed what was once a dull landscape into a canyon teeming with life. With its sandstone and limestone rocks peaking through a blanket of green firs and pines, the canyon shone brilliantly in the morning sun.
Excited to see the cliff dwellings that make Walnut Canyon famous, my parents and I descended down a set of stairs and switchbacks from the visitor center to begin the mile-long Island Rim Trail. With more than two dozen cliff dwellings, the trail gave us the opportunity to see them up close and even enter some of them.
Beginning in the 1100s, the Sinagua built dwellings into the rock and called the canyon home for a little over a century before leaving. Today, what was once a community entertained by stories by firelight rests silently under the Arizona sun. What were once bustling homes are now ruins whose crumbling facades stand in defiance of the wear and tear of time. Besides the remains of stone walls, the only other visible reminder of life at the canyon was the soot suspended above the ruins. Like black clouds resting languidly on a sky made of rock, the soot was amorphous. Despite its lack of shape and structure, the soot told a story of life and survival simply by its presence. In essence, the dwellings are a testament to the skill and ingenuity of a people who thrived in a unique environment.
After taking some time to wander around the cliff dwellings and canyon, we made our way back up to the rim and met a series of travelers along the way. As my mother and I were climbing the stairs to the visitor center, we met a road-tripper from Arkansas who was traveling from San Juan Capistrano to the Ozarks with her husband. She was of a friendly disposition and recounted stories of her outdoor adventures in the Golden State. As Californians ourselves, we extolled the natural merits of our home before moving further along on our walk. When we arrived at the center, we met another visitor. With a mid-Atlantic accent reminiscent of Katherine Hepburn, this traveler was waiting for her friends to finish their hike. Providing her with some company, she began to tell us the story of her life. Growing up in Britain, she moved to the United States and spent three decades of her life in America. As a grandmother would, she then spent the rest of our time talking about her grandchildren. After exchanging farewells, we left Walnut Canton and began our long drive east.
The San Francisco Peaks over Flagstaff receded in the distance, the color of their mountainsides diluted by the horizon. We made a small stop at a deserted gas station at Two Guns. Just off the interstate, it was an architectural artifact of Route 66. Hollowed out, it was graffitied and dilapidated in a way that evoked a sense of loss and grief. If there were an image to describe Route 66’s attempts at survival and resonance in the modern world, then it is this erstwhile service station. We drove up to it for a moment before jumping back onto the interstate. A few minutes later, we found ourselves at our second stop of the day, Meteor Crater.
50,000 years ago, shockwaves rippled through the sky as a meteor, measuring 150 feet in size, raced above the Arizona desert at a speed of 26,000 miles per hour. In just 10 seconds, it collided with the earth and formed a crater 4,000 feet wide. At 0.75 miles, the crater’s diameter is the distance someone would walk from Grace Hopper College to Kline Tower. As for its depth, the crater today measures 550 feet deep. In other words, it is deep enough to hold every tear shed by a Yale student during finals season in the last century with room to spare. However, mere measurements and comparisons on a page are not enough to describe the sight before me that afternoon.
Seeing the crater was enough to remind me of how small a person is in the grand scheme of things — of how minuscule a man could be in the face of nature’s power. It was a grand and mesmerizing sight made more fascinating by what happened after I first laid my eyes on it.
As my mother and I walked along the crater’s rim, my father shouted at us, telling us to look at the sky. He did so in a voice that oriented the gaze of visitors around us skyward. The clouds began to move over the crater in such a way that they began casting abstract shadows on its floor. It was a unique sight to behold. The crater reminded me of nature’s power. The clouds, on the other hand, reminded me, in remarkable fashion, of nature’s spontaneity.
We left the crater rim shortly after watching the clouds roll by and entered the museum to learn more about the crater, its geology and its history. The meteorite, or at least what is left of it, was on display at the museum’s entrance. We spent some time wandering through the museum’s exhibits before eating lunch at the Meteor Crater Mining Company, a small cafe attached to the museum’s gift shop. In addition to eating a few small meals, we also tried some locally made ice cream before resuming our journey east. Soon, we were in Winslow, Arizona.
A famous stop on Route 66, Winslow is not only a destination for roadtrippers, but a stop for Eagles fans also. In “Take It Easy,” the band’s first single and a hit that helped propel them to fame, a traveler says that he is “standing on a corner” in Winslow. Roughly two decades after the song’s debut, the Standing on the Corner Park was built in 1999 to commemorate the song and to embrace the town’s claim to music fame.
The park was small and, as its name suggests, was on one corner of an intersection in downtown Winslow. It was a sleepy afternoon. It was one of those afternoons where all you needed was a bottle of Coke, a comfortable chair and a gentle breeze to consider the day pleasant. There were a handful of tourists there, all of them taking turns taking photos next to a historic mural, statue and Ford flatbed at the park. A giant Route 66 shield was painted on the road at the intersection. Its white and black paint, while dull and faint, remained stubbornly etched on the asphalt. After taking our own share of photos, my parents and I walked to another stop in town.
Just a few feet from the park was our second stop, Winslow’s “World’s Smallest Church.” Such a superlative is claimed by many; there are churches in Iowa, New York and Georgia that claim to be the smallest. Regardless of where the jury stands on the matter, the Winslow church was a curious attraction to see. The structure, made of wood, was an abutment to a far larger building behind it. Its base was roughly seven by four feet. As for its height, it could accommodate the average human. The walls of the church sported a palette of colors, from white to pastel shades of green, pink and blue. The windows on its side walls were merely decorative, and its open facade held two wreaths — made of miniature American flags — suspended by a wooden frame. The church’s interior, like its exterior, was humble. There were two chairs for parishioners. The altar was bare save for a yellowed and crinkled Bible. Hung above it was a cross. After offering a small and quiet prayer, we left Winslow and continued our drive.
As we journeyed along the interstate, we made a brief stop to see the iconic Jackrabbit Sign on Route 66. It was a warm yellow, and the black jackrabbit pointed its head toward the board’s message: “Here It Is.” No journey on the Mother Road is complete without stopping here. For me, however, there was a personal connection to this destination. As a young boy, I was very much a “Cars” fan. I watched the film religiously, and it was in viewing it frequently that I developed a lifelong love for road-tripping and a fascination for Route 66. The Jackrabbit Sign, which appeared in the film, let me experience a part of my childhood again. For a moment, I thought of all the afternoons I spent playing with cars on the floor of my room or of the evenings I spent cheering for Lightning McQueen on a television screen. For a moment, I forgot about the world and remembered memories of a simple and sentimental youth. I smiled at the sign and kept doing so as it receded from my rearview window.
The road since Flagstaff had been remarkably flat. The land was dotted by desert brush. The horizon was hazy, being filled with dust rising and floating across the sky. Dust devils danced across the desert. Some of them were confident enough to cross the interstate. Others shied away and formed and faded in the distance. Our neighbors on the road remained the same: trucks, recreational vehicles and sports utility vehicles packed to the brim. Into the distance, parallel to the interstate, were trains pulling dozens of cars in a slow but sure trek toward their destinations across the desert. This was the road and its characters before we arrived at Petrified Forest National Park.
Conveniently bisected by Interstate 40, Petrified Forest National Park offers vista points and short trails along a main auto trail that stretches throughout the entire park. It was our final stop for the day before reaching our hotel in Gallup. After buying some postcards and receiving several reminders to hydrate, we entered the park and began the auto trail. In the northern half of the park above Interstate 40, we made a few stops to gaze at the Painted Desert’s rich palette of colors. Further along, we came across a 1932 Studebaker on the side of the road. A remnant of Route 66’s former path across the park, it was battered and rusty. A shell of its former self, it reminded me of a shipwreck I saw near Point Reyes months earlier. Both had stories to tell, and both were fading closer and closer to ruin and obscurity.
After leaving the Studebaker, we made it to the southern half of the auto trail where we saw the Tepees, two mudstone hills along the road. The Tepees, like all the other formations we saw in the northern section of the park, had bands of differently-colored rock. Sedimentary in style, they resembled slices of tiramisu with each layer being different and unique in shape, color and composition. Petrified Forest is, without a doubt, a geology aficionado’s dream.
Shortly after, we found ourselves at the Blue Mesa. Whereas the badlands in the northern half of the park were of a warm palette of red and orange, the hills here were of a cooler countenance. Their colors were impressive to behold, from bands of lavender skirting around the hills to rocks with striking shades of blue and indigo. As the clouds moved across the sky above the park, so did the dials of the clock. With the afternoon fading and evening approaching we bade farewell to Petrified Forest.
It was evening by the time we got to Gallup. We dropped off our bags at our hotel and ate dinner at a Dickey’s Barbeque Pit nearby. By the time we left the restaurant, the mountains around Gallup grew more radiant and reflected the red and orange glow of the setting sun. We got to our room and settled in for the night. Out of my window, cars and trucks roared across the interstate. The road grew darker. Their lights grew brighter. I stared at them for quite some time. From my window, I watched pickup trucks sail across the road while trucks heaved along on their journey. The hum of cars grew and faded in an instant, and what was a rushing interstate just hours ago turned into a road as drowsy as my eyes.
We all have forms of meditation before we go to sleep. Some look at shadows. Some stare at stars. I watch cars. It has been a habit of mine for as long as I can remember and one I take with me wherever I go. Looking at each car, I would think about all the places it had seen, the roads it had traveled and the people it had carried. I would then ascribe a story to its driver. The stories would be anything I could think of at the moment: someone was off to work on the midnight shift, leaving a failed relationship, or running to the store to buy a loaf of bread. When my imagination had run the gamut, I would just count headlights. And that is exactly what I did on this night. I settled into my bed and began to tally the lights passing through Gallup. I counted three. Moments later, I saw five. After, I saw seven. Suddenly, I lost count and saw nothing but darkness.