7) Road to Nowhere

California Arizona New Mexico Texas Oklahoma Arkansas

Tennessee North Carolina

Interstate 40 spans eight states on its cross-country voyage. Starting in Barstow, California, the freeway follows the Historic U.S. 66 alignment across the Mojave Desert into the high desert around Flagstaff, south of the Grand Canyon. Entering New Mexico, the freeway intersects with Interstate 25 in Albuquerque. Continuing east, Interstate 40 enters the Great Plains in eastern New Mexico, leading into Texas. The freeway splits from Historic U.S. 66 at Oklahoma City, continuing due east while U.S. 66 heads northeast toward Chicago. Entering Arkansas, Interstate 40 serves Little Rock before crossing the Mississippi River. Crossing Tennessee, Interstate 40 serves Nashville and Knoxville. Then Interstate 40 enters the Great Smokey Mountains, leading into North Carolina.

We reached the bottom of I-5 and hung a left onto I-40, the road we would travel all the way to North Carolina. Like changing the channel on the TV, we instantly left the crazy cacophony and maddening maelstrom of Southern California I-5 road warrior landscape, and reemerged within another world entirely, in fact, in what appeared to be another century. The eerie isolation, the ghost towns, fixed in time, of the California desert.

Heat began to rise, but a different sort of heat. I was no longer sweating, but felt dry and parched, my lips cracking like the earth around me. I realized why there were few cars or even trucks on the road, they were probably waiting to travel by night, when the temperatures cooled. As the temperature increased from 110-117 degrees, I began to worry for my cats riding in their carriers in my back seat.

We had already put in a full day of travel; so decided to stop at the next motel that came along.

This 1950’s Hitchcockian masterpiece magically arose from the desert.

Nobody was there.

I parked the Plymouth in this parking lot of wayfaring strangers. Gazing out at those beautiful, but foreign, red rock mountains…wondering, where was I going? And why?