We are on a road trip. For many, many days, spanning many, many miles.
Many.
I don't want you to be jealous, but our first leg was over five hours and we ended up in Taft, California. What's that? You haven't heard of Taft, California? That's not really much of a surprise.
You don’t go through Taft unless you are going there on purpose, so no one ever goes there. It's the kind of town where you stay at THE hotel and eat at THE restaurant.
We stopped at the Taft hardware store to buy some duct tape and when the woman at the register asked me how I was doing, I said, "Living the dream."
She laughed out loud and said, "Yeah, right. In Taft?"
Why Taft, you might be asking, like the lady at the hardware store apparently asks herself every day? Taft exists solely because of oil. When you drive into and out of Taft, you drive past forests of oil derricks on both sides of the road. Some are pumping. Some are still. All of them are stained dark brown. The whole town is the same hue – crude oil brown.
My wife's grandfather worked the oil fields in Taft as a young married man, and my mother-in-law lived there when she was little. She wanted to see the town again.
Oh, did I not mention that my mother-in-law is with us on this long, long, long road trip? Like I said, I don't want you to be jealous.
We stopped in Taft for an overnight and went to the West Kern Oil Museum. Again, please attempt to curb your jealousy. Does the West Kern Oil Museum have an exact life size rebuilt replica of the Old Jameson #17 wooden derrick, you ask? You can bet your sweet ass it does! What color is that derrick, you ask? Crude oil brown, of course. It is located in Taft, California, after all.
I was kidding about the only one restaurant thing, though. There are actually two. We ate dinner at the other one – the Black Gold Brewing Company. They serve their own brewed beers, cook burgers, steaks, and Thai food, and sell guns and ammo. I am not making that up.
Speaking of places that are both crazy and all brown, after we’d had so much fun in Taft we couldn’t stand it anymore, we drove another five hours through the God-forsaken Mojave desert to the depression in the Nevada desert where they keep Las Vegas, for some reason.
Las Vegas happens to be on the way to all the Southwestern national parks that are the actual reason for this road trip, and when my wife was planning the route, she thought it would be cool if we took the boys to see Matt Franco, a magician that they all liked from America’s Got Talent, season 217.
So, she booked us for two nights in Vegas, but when it later came time to get the Matt Franco tickets, it turned out that we would have to choose financially between having two and a half of us go see the show and then live out the rest of our lives in Taft, or do the whole road trip and see all the parks.
So, instead of a magic show, we saw an acrobatic gymnast act and two juggling plate spinners for free at the Circus Circus midway. Both acts were really solid, but just to make sure our boys got the full flavor of Vegas, we spent an entire morning walking the length of the strip to show them why staying in school and not doing drugs is important.
I’m not sure if it was the two fights on the sidewalk, or the homeless woman bathing in a fountain at the Venetian that did it, but they all promised to stay clean and get a good education. I’ll bet Franco doesn’t offer that kind of impact from his little magic show!
We escaped Vegas with our lives and most of our dignity and drove through – you guessed it – more God-forsaken desert. But we made it to Zion National Park yesterday, and as you enter the park the landscape changes almost instantly from hellish desert to red rock canyons and rivers, like nothing you’ve ever seen. The scenery is so breathtaking it can almost make you forget you ever stayed in Taft or saw a homeless fountain bather on the strip.
Almost.
The next two weeks promise to be a whirlwind of long car rides and more amazing sites, and I’ll give you another update or two if I live through it all.
Until then, stay in school and stay off the drugs, kids.
See you soon,
-Smidge
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