#5BDA Homeward Bound

I like the desolation of New Mexico but in November of 2014 I was running low on funds and New Mexico was not really the thriving economy where you try to get work.  The way I saw it I had a few options:

• Go back to Michigan
• Go to a big city nearish like Phoenix or maybe even Dallas
• Go back to Salt Lake and see how long it takes me to wear out my welcome from Michael Offutt

Ultimately since Phoenix had been pretty nice, I went back there, to the same extended stay motel in Scottsdale.  Though I probably should have found a cheaper one.  I started applying for jobs and got a few interviews, though mostly at temp agencies who then suddenly didn't have jobs--for me at least.  It was a preview of the same bullshit I'd have to go through after I went back to Michigan.

After a fairly depressing birthday and Thanksgiving, I decided to just go back home once I had my latest severance check.

And so in early December I set out on the road again.  I had a couple of options on how to get there.  I could have taken I-10 through southern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, etc or I could take I-40 through northern Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee.  I opted for the latter and took a short trip to Flagstaff to start it off.

It's colder in Flagstaff but not really cold.  It was more gloomy than anything.  It was only a couple of hours up there so I had time to wander around there and get lunch at the Sizzler and then go to the motel for the night.

The next day it was back to Albuquerque.  The drive there was pretty shitty as it rained pretty much the entire way.  Not a lot of good landscape pictures then.

The next morning when I was getting gas and breakfast I stumbled across the car wash from Breaking Bad, which was neat.

I drove back through Tucumcari, into northern Texas.  I stopped at a really shitty Knights Inn in Amarillo.  Hotwire had called it 2-stars but I'd say it was 0 stars.  Incidentally that's why I hate Hotwire.  I mean if 2 stars is a place with cracked windows and a mattress leaning against the window of one room what the hell is 1 star?  To cap it off I went to Whataburger and got a sandwich they drenched in mustard for whatever reason.  Yuck.

I was more than glad to leave Texas the next morning, into Oklahoma.  Around the time I crossed the border, though, the weather turned foul.  It wasn't raining but it was foggy pretty much from the border all the way into Oklahoma City.  So while I was in OKC I didn't really SEE much of it thanks to the fog.  I did hang out at a Panera Bread and Arby's doing some writing, so that was good.

Instead of Hotwire I used Orbitz and yet the motel in OKC wasn't much better.  They couldn't even find my reservation at first, the ice machines were broken, and someone had scribbled long division all over the bathroom counter.  Another "2 star" motel.  Ugh.

The next day I went to some town in Arkansas.  I got there early and bought a pizza from the local Pizza Hut to eat part of in a park while I waited to check in to a Super 8 that had been recently renovated and so felt like a 4 star motel compared to those last two dumps.  As you can see in the pictures there's not much to do there, especially on a Sunday.

Then it was off to Memphis.  I'm not a huge Elvis fan but I do like a lot of his songs and so I thought since I was going that way I might as well stop at Graceland.  I hung out in a nearby McDonald's for a little while that convinced me this was not the best neighborhood anymore.

Since it was December the King's house was all decorated for Christmas.  I got my tickets and then went over to the house in one of the tours.  You get to walk around the ground floor while John Stamos narrates the tour in your ear.

There was a pointless trip to the archives and then it was over to the garden with the actual grave for him and his mother.  I didn't have any offerings to put on the grave or anything stupid like that.

After that it was back across the street to the gift shop.  And they had a couple of private planes you could walk through, though everything was sealed off by plastic so you could only look but not touch.  It also made it hard to get decent pictures.

There was also a garage with a whole bunch of cars and stuff that he owned.  Probably not as big as Jay Leno's collection but much bigger than my collection of 1.

The most disappointing part of the trip was lunch.  I ordered a catfish sandwich and it was literally just a bun and a fish patty.  It tasted OK but still, kind of lame for what I paid.

That was it for Graceland.  It was probably around 3 by then so I thought I'd go to my motel and then maybe go back to do more later.  Except I didn't realize that Jackson, Tennessee is about 80 miles east of Memphis.  About the time I realized that I was halfway there so there seemed no point in turning back.  But it meant I didn't get to go Walking in Memphis on Beale Street like the song.

The motel in Jackson was pretty nice.  It was a Howard Johnson that looked fairly new.  A lot better than the old, broken down ones in Amarillo and OKC.

The last leg of the trip to Michigan wasn't a lot of fun.  Going from Jackson to Knoxville turned into a slog after lunch outside Nashville as the weather turned bad.  It was actually snowing!  Just flurries really but still.  Yuck.  I stayed the night in a Motel 6 that was adequate.

Then it was through the rest of Tennessee into Kentucky, where I was too early to get lunch at the original KFC but got lunch at A KFC so that's something.  I stopped in Dayton, but there wasn't time to go to the Air Force Museum or anything like that.  I've been there three or four times though.  The motel was a Red Roof Inn being renovated so it was not the best.  The next morning a couple of people got pissed at me because they had parked on the curb by the office and I asked if they could move so I could get my car out.

There was construction pretty much the whole way from Dayton to Roseville, MI on I-75.  And it was gloomy and sometimes raining so I didn't really get any good pictures or anything.

I went to a Super 8 in Roseville about a mile or two from where I used to live.  While there I got some shit out of my storage unit like some movies and my Blu-Ray player.  It turned out later I should have got some other shit out of there like towels and pots and pans.

I went across the state to a cheap extended stay motel in Kalamazoo.  They only had two locations:  one in K-Zoo and one in Grand Rapids.  I've been to Grand Rapids but I hadn't been to K-Zoo so I thought that would be more interesting.  The motel was fairly new but the first time I flushed the toilet the handle came off so they had to put a new one on.  They hardly give you any towels and unless you want to wash them yourself they don't change them often so I bought a couple extra ones for cheap at the local Walmart.  And a saucepan to cook hot dogs in because they didn't provide any dishes.

The worst part though was there were fleas or something in the room because around my ankles were itchy and there were little bites.  Maybe it was bed bugs.  I don't really know but once I left it stopped so it was clearly something there.

There's some stuff to do in K-Zoo but not tons.  I went to the Air Zoo, which has some neat planes like an SR-71 Blackbird and F-14 Tomcat.  Plus older ones and some space stuff.

I also did some writing and some XMas shopping since I had decided to be home for Christmas like the song says.

The last leg of the trip was on a drizzly Christmas Eve up to Saginaw.  I stayed at the Fairfield Inn only about 3 or 4 miles from my brother's house so if anyone had been looking they could have seen me.  But they weren't so they didn't.

In my head I had this great idea inspired by an old commercial that I'd just show up at home on Christmas morning before everyone got up and so I'd be waiting by the tree as a big surprise.  Just one problem--they changed the locks on me!  So instead of my big surprise I had to wait in the driveway.  So much for Christmas miracles.

And there you go, I had come full circle--and then some.