Thursday, June 12, 2014

Thursday. The Road.

By 0730, I was at Four Corners, the junction where four states--Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado--come together. The only food that I could find there came off the back of a food truck run bY an Englishman who came here from Britain thirteen years ago. When I asked him how he wound up running a food truck on an Indian reservation, he just said that it was a long story. He makes one heck of a good breakfast burrito though, and only four dollars.

Drove up to the Four Corners Monument, thinking that it was National Park Service, but I was wrong. It's a Navaho operation, so of course it's locked until eight and there's a fee. Still, there's a huge line of people waiting to get in so there must be something there. I took the bait and loitered for a bit so I could see for myself what the big deal was. Know what the big deal is? It's a huge flea market where the Indians flock in to sell turquoise and other trinkets and knick-knacks. All the people in line? Indians waiting to get in and set up. So I just stood on the marker in the middle that designates the exact place that the states meet, and then I left.

Next stop: Shiprock, NM. Town of a decent size named for a huge rock formation that sits out on the plain all by itself just southwest of town. Imposing rock that makes for a nice view, but otherwise, the town is just reservation poverty--trailers and tiny pre-fab houses in poor to worse shape.

Oh, and a word about driving on reservation land: you can be sailing along just nice and smooth, doing 70-80 or so (I prefer "or so" myself), when all of a sudden you come up on an old Indian just coasting along at around 40mph or so. They don't care that they're on a highway; they're just poking, a rear-ender waiting to happen. I must have dodged a dozen of them today. Darndest thing.

3 comments:

  1. just coasting along at around 40mph

    More fun at night with no working tail lights as you come up on them.

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  2. If you hit one of their sheep goats cows or horses and kill it you are liable for payment for six generations of the animal's descendents. This is tribal law, so if you hit one keep driving!

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  3. Slower-paced life. I'd poke along at forty if I lived out there, too.

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