Day One
Tucson, Arizona


We are finally headed east. First we went west!

Our trip actually began yesterday when we drove our original rental 70 miles west from Riverside to Los Angeles. As we did not expect to drive home, I rented a Nissan from “Cheapo Car  Rental.” It was a fine car but we could not take it out of state.

So we lumped the rig back to LAX where we hoped to get a long distance rental from a more reputable company.

Hoped! No such luck. A midsize from LAX to Boston was about $1,000 without insurance. The same car, from the same company at Palm Springs Airport was $476. So we jumped in a Lyft car back to Riverside and today kind nephew Andy drove us to Palm Springs where we picked up another Nissan.

The airport was pretty empty. The smiling Hertz agent was unoccupied and happy to help. She explained the cost differential. Everyone is leaving Palm Springs, she said, no one is flying in. Their business is off by half, down to 175 customers a day. The are swamped with cars and have no where to put them. They are happy to ship cars east at a cut-rate price.

We needed more provisions so we went to Trader Joes. It was unnerving. The place was mobbed. No-one wore gloves and social distancing was nowhere to be found. There was not a single bottle of still water in the store.  So we went with bubbles. Back in the car, we slathered on the home made sanitizer.

Oh, based  on the number of cannabis billboards and signs we saw, Palm Springs is the marijuana and CBD capital of California

Finally we hit I-10 east, hoping to make one more stop to play tennis at courts we knew about in Indio. No luck there either. The courts were full, doubles all around. Well at least there is social distancing in doubles tennis.

So we headed back to I-10 stopping one more time just above the southwest corner of Joshua Tree National Park at the General George Patton museum and rest stop. We hoped to get some ice.

There was no ice, just incredible parking lot traffic, Patton fans all around!

The Interstate was busy but western driving is so chill: 75 mph mile after mile, ruler straight roads, sandy hills and slate grey mountains on the horizon in every direction. There were lots of big rigs, every other one from Amazon or Walmart, but inexplicably they bother me less here.

We lunched by the side of the road west of Phoenix, skirted the city on I-8 and stopped in Tucson at the Mccoy Hotel, actually a funky 1960s style motel with an incredibly high 4.7 Expedia rating. Predictably the place is packed. It is nice enough but overpriced.

But what  about coronavirus? It seems like business as usual in Arizona. A waitress in a busy Mexican restaurant told us schools are open, everyone is going to work and restaurants are full. People are aware, she said, but the threat seems remote. There are only a handful of cases here.

We went back to our room and washed our hands. Then we washed them again. We decided no more restaurants.

Tomorrow we are going hiking.

Then we will drive. Hopefully east!