Day 4: Santa Rosa, New Mexico, to Fountain Hills, Arizona
Distance: 509 miles
Route: I-40 west to Holbrook; SR-77 south to SR-277 to Heber; SR-260 to Payson; Beeline Highway south to Fountain Hills
Highlights: In Eureka, Missouri, I left Derek and Wendy White’s home with the passenger side sliding door to the Dodge Caravan completely open. On the west side of Albuquerque, I pulled out of The 66 Pit Stop (Home of the Laguna Burger) and onto I-40 with the minivan gas cap dangling, waving to me in the side view mirror.
Shit happens when you are flying solo for 1,900 miles. Eyes glaze. The world is reduced to a series of white dashed and yellow solid lines. And rumble strips. Thank god for the noisy rumble strips, which Wikipedia says were first used on New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway in 1952.
I found that in Santa Rosa, shit really does happen. I woke early, determined for a 7 am departure so I would have time to explore the Petrified Forest National Park along the way. The temperature (at 4,616 feet) had fallen to the low 20s overnight, and there was a thick icy sheet over the entire minivan. I turn on the defrost – front and back – full blast, step out into the parking lot and shut the door.
Shut the door? With the keys in the ignition? And the car running? AND THE DOOR LOCKED? FUCK! Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK! (Language!) I am pissed. How could I be so dumb? But this lockout – not just a lockout, but with the car running! – did offer an excellent teaching moment. Here’s what happens next:
- I immediately call the car rental company, Budget. They have a roadside assistance number.
- After a few prompts, I get through to a human at customer service. She attempts to unlock the minivan remotely, which is possible on this model vehicle. That’s a fail.
- Budget then calls a local service provider. Estimated time for support to arrive: 1 hour. They will call me when close.
- Since the minivan already has been running for 30 minutes, having to wait another hour is a little disconcerting. So, I call my State Farm rep in Chicago, to check my coverage and see if their roadside assistance service can get here any faster.
- State Farm is on it. YES, roadside assistance coverage on my car carries over to the rental. YES, they can connect me to their roadside assistance service, which they do.
- The State Farm roadside assistance person says it will cost $280 for the service. Since I’ve already got the Budget service on its way, I say “please hold,” and I call State Farm back to ask if I need to pay for the service, get a receipt, file a claim and ask for reimbursement? They say, “Yes,” at which point there’s another call.
- It’s Big Rig Truck Service, and they are down the road at La Quinta. I’m not sure how “EconoLodge parking lot” became “La Quinta,” but it’s just two minutes away. Santa Rosa is not a big town. All the hotels are on Route 66. They arrive.
This is where the learning really begins. The man from Big Rig – unfortunately, I never got his name – pulls out a slim jim. You know, that long thin sheet of metal they slip between the window and the door to trip the lock.
He looks like he knows what he’s doing. Lots of people in New Mexico look like they know what they are doing when it comes to breaking into cars. But after a few seconds he says the minivan’s door is too wide. The slim jim does not have enough inward motion to catch the door workings that would trip the lock.
Plan B was pure inspiration. He takes a small plastic window ice scraper and carefully wedges it into the very top right corner of the driver door. With the wedge in place, the door bends out just far enough to insert a more rigid metal rod. Once the rod is inside the door, it takes just a few seconds to navigate to the unlock button, push and voila!
And, by the way, if you’re interested, the minivan was fully defrosted.
UPDATE: Apparently, this method (or a variation) is well known. And a cursory search on YouTube reveals dozens of “unlock your car door in 30 seconds” videos. There are even some inflatable versions of the wedge, including the Super Air Jack. But what’s the point? All the stuff you need most likely is locked inside the car.
So, with my self-inflicted delayed departure, did I get to see the petrified forest? Well, at 3:15 pm, I hustle into the visitor center to see some petrified wood souvenirs. I ask a ranger what should I not miss inside the park (Blue Mesa). And I did a double-take at a tour bus full of Mennonites, whose expressions sort of remind me of petrified wood.
Only three more hours to Fountain Hills.
NEXT: I’m not going to write extensively about Phoenix –maybe a few posts on Facebook – as I’m not doing anything I didn’t do on the 2019 trip. Next in this space will be Tucson, then probably these destinations on the return trip: Sedona, Arizona; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Dodge City and Pittsburg, Kansas.
