Filed under: Adventures, Travel | Tags: Arizona, Bedrock City, Breakfast of Champions, Flintstones, Fred Flintstone, Grand Canyon, Grand Canyon National Park, Kurt Vonengut, United States
July 27th cont…
I woke up in the afternoon, bouncing along the Arizona highway, feeling like about ten bucks, which is much better than I’d felt in days. IT was raining for the first time since, I don’t know, Wyoming? The air was cool and I was so thankful to be out of hellish Nevada, thankful to be rid of that suffocating, slithering heat. It rained most of the way to Flagstaff, where we stopped for some barbecue in some kitschy place in the basement of a shopping center. You know the kind of place, with licence plates on the walls and a stuffed moose head above the fountain drinks.
After we ate, I stood out in the rain and listened to the hustle and bustle of Flagstaff. Music played on jukeboxes in lonely bars. Couples pranced through puddles. Water dripped from strings of white lights on closed shop windows. I stood out on a sidewalk and stared up at the dark sky, memories of the day rushing back into my mind.
We had tried to go over Hoover Dam. It was the last summer they were letting people drive across it, but there were no buses allowed due to the fear of terrorism. We had stopped at a truck stop that had a bar that served seventy-five cent beers, had a mini-bowling alley in it, and a coin operated machine that had a banjo, a piano, a guitar, and a tiny drumset inside of it, and would play whatever song you chose. I chose “Africa” by Toto, and stood there shuffling around in my flip-flops to the tune. I hadn’t talked to Tyler the entire day. I had, though, eaten at Mcdonalds.
I’d been in a daze all day, in and out of sleep. The drug-induced rest was appreciated, but it wasn’t refreshing, I needed more. I popped a few more sleeping pills once we got to the Flagstaff Wal-Mart parking lot, which was full of RVs and travel trailers.
July 28th…
From Flagstaff we drove in a succession of tourists in mini-vans, RVs, and station wagons up to the Grand Canyon. One would assume that there would be a legitimate highway system running to such a national landmark, but no, we wound up on a dusty highway that dead ended in a T with another dusty highway. At that T, was Bedrock City, the Flintstones themed camp site/restaurant our friend Leaf had given up his trip to the Grand Canyon for. He has seen Bedrock City, but he still hasn’t seen the Grand Canyon.
“Okay, anyone up for a Dino-burger? We have to stop here.” I said excitedly, possibly the first time I’d been excited since I was flying in the wind tunnel in Vegas. “We’d be letting Leaf down if we didn’t stop”.
“Yeah let’s do it,” agreed Ben. “I’m down for some greasy, dinosaur related menu-items.”
We parked in the gravel driveway, and hopped outside into the glaring sun. Inside the tourist trap of a diner, there were Flintstones magnets, sweaters, posters, stickers, t-shirts–basically any surface you could stick a Flintstones logo on– that all looked like they were from nineteen seventy-six. The blonde girl at the front counter eyed us as we walked in, but we walked right past her, and the jalapeno suckers with the worms inside them, to sit in the diner.
I had a Chickasaurus sandwich and a corn dog. Ben ordered the “Cactus Juice”, which was really just red kool-aid. There were very poorly drawn pictures of dinosaurs on the wall, it looked as if a third grader had free-handed most of them, and I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when none of my food came out shaped like a dinosaur.
An older woman with stringy hair had been waiting on us. She had failed to explain to Ben that cactus juice was kool-aid, and I wasn’t surprised when she asked us if we were going to take a tour of the park out back.
“How much is it? We’re kinda low on cash. Traveling and all,” Said Tyler.
“It’s five dollars a person, son” the lady said through her crooked teeth.
We all decided that five dollars was too much to see a bunch of sad, misshapen Flintstones characters, and we paid our bill and decided to go ahead and go to the Grand Canyon. I handed her my card and she frowned at me.
“You don’t have cash, deary? We don’t accept cards back here.”
“No ma’am, I sure don’t.” I replied, wondering why on earth any establishment in the year twenty ten would choose not to accept credit cards.
“Well, you can go up to the front and pay. Lindsey is much easier on the eyes than I am, anyway.”
“Oh, nonsense,” I lied, and walked to the front, eying Pebbles dolls and Dinosaur model kits. The blonde behind the front counter looked bored, her hair tied up in a pony tail, her eyes half closed as Ben and I approached her.
“Hi, uh, I’m supposed to pay for this up here? The lady in the diner said you were prettier than she was, so here I am,” I said, handing her my ticket.
Ben stepped up to the counter. “Is there like, a discount for the theme park back there?”
“You want to go back there?” the blonde girl said, thumbing over her shoulder.
“Yeah, we’ve heard great things,” I said with a smile. “Isn’t there like, an attractive dude discount?”
“Where are you guys from?” she asked. “you look so familiar.”
“Oh you wouldn’t know us, we’re from Houston,” replied Ben.
“No shit? I used to live there!”
“What are you doing here then? At bedrock city? In the middle of the desert?” I asked her, signing my receipt and pushing it across the counter to her.
“It’s a long story. I’m here with my boyfriend. His grandparents own this place.”
“How prestigious,” Said Ben. “How much are these?” he held up a sucker with a dried scorpion inside.
“A dollar. Look if you guys wanna go back there, you can go for free. It’s not a big deal.”
Ben licked on his sucker, and the four of us wandered around the “park”, which was really just a sad field, dying grass and red dirt, concrete replicas of Barney and Fred’s houses, a post office, a big brontosaurus slide, and a train (golf cart) that went through a big volcano. We went from sad attraction to sad attraction like children, snapping pictures with the concrete Fred and dancing with the concrete Wilma.
A concrete pteradactyl baby hatched from a concrete egg, Ben sprawled out in Fred and Wilma’s bed, dark glasses over his eyes, Pual and I were hauled off to jail by a painted plywood version of Sgt. Rubble, Tyler slid down the Bronto-slide, laughing like a child. The blonde girl came out to check on us. She offered us a ride on the golf cart-train, which went inside the volcano. Once inside we saw wondrous sights like a pterodactyl flying around a paper mache volcano which spat out a trash bag lava explosion. It was all very epic, and after the train ride was over, we decided maybe it was time to see the Grand Canyon.
I might have been disappointed with Bedrock City if I had paid the five bucks, but for a free walk around a field with poorly constructed Flintstones houses and sad Fred and Barneys hanging out like religious statues, it was an alright deal.
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We drove on to the Grand Canyon. The sky was still dark from the rain, but by the time we got there the clouds had opened up just enough to not regret the eighty mile drive off our route home. What can you even say about the Grand Canyon? What words are there? It’s damn grand, I suppose. But you’ve been there, right? Your parents took you when you were eight, and you didn’t appreciate it because it was hot and really, it was just a big hole in the ground.
And if you haven’t been there yet, do not fret, reader. You’ll rent an RV when you’re seventy and see it as part of your last ditch-bucket list sadness and say “They were right, it is damn grand.”
The four of us climbed out on every rocky peninsula that jutted out into the canyon and just basked in the exorbitant amount of space that fell below us. I tip-toed with a certain sense of vertigo in my gut, like rotting fruit, out on a rocky catwalk to sit up on a balancing rock that peered over into the abyss. I just stared out into the canyon, in amazement that wonders like this even exist.
Ben, Tyler, and Pual peed out into the canyon, and we tried to shove a boulder the size of a volkswagen beetle over the edge with no luck. How have I gone this long without seeing this magnificent crack in the earth? Birds glided on winds far below us, descending eons of tans reds yellows purples golds, geologic masterpiece down down down to the tiny, mighty, rushing Colorado river.
I wanted to follow those birds into eternity, into creation, into antiquity, but we didn’t have the time. I’d have to come back here one day, with a date, and hike down there and look up at creation from the rock bottom of everything and say, “It is good, it is grand”.
But for now, we only had time to glance over the rim. Another day, Grand Canyon.
We stopped in what passed for a town outside of the park and had supper. I drank a two dollar hobo beer and took a few sleeping pills to ensure a good night sleep. I started to read “Breakfast of Champions”, but put it down out of feelings of incompetence and insecurity. I should just throw this god damned journal away with Vonnegut writing like that.
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