I was excited. I was finally ready to head west. My truck was loaded to the gills with my camping stuff, my dog, Sabu, my fishin pole, my guitar, and my Rand McNally road atlas. I had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. I had poured over the maps in my road atlas over the last week, and planned a route that took me by places that sounded interesting. Lubbock, Texas, famous in song and story. Tucumcari, New Mexico, from the Little Feat song, Willin’. Oraibi, New Mexico,  the oldest continuously lived in settlement in the US. Tuba City, because it had a cool name. Bitter Springs, because it seemed a sad name for a town. Finally crossing Marble Canyon over the Colorado River upstream of the Grand Canyon, and looping back south to the Cliff Dwellers Stone House, and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park. I figured it would take me two days, because Texas is a gigantic state, and from Austin, it is a long day’s drive just to get to another state if you go west.

Well, the truth is, I had seen the canyon once when I was 11 years old, from 35,000 feet in the air on the Boeing 707 jet that had just been put into service by airlines, and that was revolutionizing air travel in the United States. I was on a vacation with my family to visit my grandma in California. It was amazing to see, but from 35,000 feet, there wasn’t a lot of detail. Just that it was big, and took us half an hour until it passed out of sight behind us. Now I was gonna see it up close and personal. 

Lubbock was a small town, and the only interesting thing about it was that the trees all leaned toward the west because the wind continuously blew from the east. I could see why Mac Davis wrote a song about seeing Lubbock in his rear view mirror. It looked like a place to be getting away from.

Tucumcari turned out to be a small town at the interstate highway interchange, with a lot of truck stops and not much else. The name Tucumcari is from Comanche meaning “to lie in wait for someone approaching”. Before it became Tucumcari, it was known as Six Shooter Siding, because it was originally a railroad camp, full of saloons and outlaws.These days it was a truckers overnight stay on the long highway across the lower US. It still had a lot of saloons. I camped there for the night, and in the morning, Sabu and I headed west. Next stop, Oraibi.

To get to Oraibi, I got off the interstate and headed north, across the reservation of the Hopi and Navajo native Americans. It was my first trip across a reservation, where the white interlopers had banished the natives when they glommed on to previously occupied land. As I drove north across the dusty desert scrub land, with not much growing except creosote bushes, I couldn’t help thinking that I was driving through the most arid and useless terrain that I had ever seen. It was land that nobody would be able to make a living on. It went on forever, a flat and ugly land. 

I had big hopes that Oraibi, being 800 years old, and a continuously lived-in settlement for all those years, must be worth visiting. I eventually saw the sign for it, Oraibi, and an arrow pointing down a dirt road off to the right. As I bumped along the road, I came to a small clump of worn out shacks, with peeling paint and abandoned rusting cars in the yards. All the shacks had dish antennas on the roofs. There didn’t seem to be much to see, and no people walking around. Finally the road ended in “downtown” Oraibi, and there was a small shack with a sign, Oraibi, the Oldest Continuously Lived In Town In The United States. Just like the map in my road atlas said. I went into the tiny building, and there was turquoise jewelry for sale, and a coke machine, and a rack of postcards, saying “Oraibi, the Oldest Continuously Lived In Settlement in the United States”. I picked out a couple postcards to send to my friends. I chatted up the woman behind the counter, but she didn’t have much information to my query about why people had settled here to begin with. She thought it might be because of the well, the only source of water anywhere around. But she wasn’t sure. That was it, just shacks, and what you might loosely call, the Chamber of Commerce. I bought a coke from the machine, and thanked the lady, and Sabu and I got back in the truck and headed north again. How underwhelming.

Onward to Tuba City. That turned out to be a crossroads of two highways, where there was a dirt strip airport and a gas station. Nobody was playing the tuba. There was not a factory that produced tubas. I gassed up, and headed on to greener pastures, of which there were none in sight in the dusty yellow land that went on forever in every direction from the pavement.

I came over a rise, and there below me was Bitter Springs. There were no buildings, just an intersection of two roads. No springs that I could see, bitter or otherwise. As I drove away from the intersection, about 5 miles further on, there was a small building that was The Church Of Jesus Christ of The Latter Day Saints. I could see no fields of growing things, or any other reason for the Mormons to build a church here. Just some dirt roads going off in various directions.

Finally, a couple hours later, I saw a large bridge in the distance, and came to the Colorado River, way down in a canyon 200 feet below the bridge. I stopped on the side and got out my binoculars and looked down at the river, and saw several rafts full of intrepid rowers heading downriver. It was a pretty view, and I got out some sandwich makins from the cooler, and made a samwich for me, and one without mayonnaise for Sabu. 

Next stop, the Cliff Dwellers Stone House. It was marked on the road atlas map, so I had high hopes for something interesting. After 45 minutes I saw a dirt parking lot on the right, and a sign, “Cliff Dwellers Stone House” and an arrow pointing down a trail. There was a car parked in the dirt lot, the first functioning car I had seen since leaving the interstate to cross the rez that morning. Standing near the car were 4 elderly folks, having a heated discussion. As I sat on my tailgate, putting on my hiking boots, and giving Sabu some water, I listened to their discussion. It sounded like they were speaking in German, a language which I had some very small facility in thanks to one year of German class in my freshman year of high school and a good teacher. After a few minutes of listening, I came to realize that these old folks were arguing about who would take the group picture of them, and how there were always only 3 of them in the picture, and no pictures of all of them together.
Well, I could help with that, and I thought for a couple minutes about how to say that, in my minimal German, and got up, and Sabu and I walked over to the people. I said, probably very poorly, in German, “Hi, my name is Sam. I overheard you folks speaking German, and I speak a little German, and I understand that you would like a picture of all of you, and if you give me your camera, I will be happy to take a picture so that all of you can be in it.” 
One of the men puffed up his chest like he was the leader, and said to me in an annoyed tone, in accented English, “Ve vere not speaking Cherman! Ve vere speaking Sviss! Ve are from Svitzerland! It is not zee same. It vas Sviss, not Cherman!”
“Ok, thanks for teaching me that.” I replied in English, “You folks have a real nice day!” And I called Sabu, and set off down the trail toward the cliff dweller stone house, leaving them standing there, to take yet another picture with only 3 of them in it. The cliff dweller stone house was up to par with the rest of my day so far. It was a large flat rock leaning against a big boulder, and the open sides were filled with dry stack stones except for the door opening. There was no sign with dates or who built it, or any information at all. I looked around and tried to imagine why a cliff dweller would build his house all this way above the river. Then I walked back the trail to the parking lot. The Sviss people were not there any more.
Jeez. I was just trying to be a nice guy. See what you get for doing that?