After waking up to our hotel room smelling strongly of garlic bread, we decided that was our sign to get out of El Paso! So the journey across the boring southern part of New Mexico and then up through Arizona to Phoenix began.
After entering the Arizona border and passing The Thing we were coming over a hill and noticed Benton, Arizona up ahead about 3 miles, but closer ahead of us was traffic at a complete stand still. Both the
westbound lanes of I-10 heading into Benton were completely stopped. So we pulled up behind the pickup truck ahead of us, the semi-truck beside us, and shifted into park. Shortly there after we noticed everyone else around us getting out of their cars, getting food and drinks out of their coolers, getting on cell phones, etc. After about 10 minutes of not moving, we decided to turn off the car like everyone else. We decided to join the "party" and got out of the car. We learned that the family "parked" in front of us was from Odessa and they had two dogs they let out to play, along with three kids. Behind us was a gentleman who was Arizona born and raised, but has a brother who lives in Houston, so he as
ked what part of Texas we were from. We took some pictures of all the traffic completely stopped and all the people out wondering around by their cars, but I will have to upload them and post them later on. It was interesting being stopped and parked on an interstate.
Turns out there had been a terrible single car accident with the car rolling. A helicopter had to air-lift some people to the hospital apparently, and one individual was dead on the scene. Once they finally started letting the traffic get by on the far shoulder, you could see the highway patrol holding up the white sheet to block the view of the body on the ground. Yikes...
After entering the Arizona border and passing The Thing we were coming over a hill and noticed Benton, Arizona up ahead about 3 miles, but closer ahead of us was traffic at a complete stand still. Both the
westbound lanes of I-10 heading into Benton were completely stopped. So we pulled up behind the pickup truck ahead of us, the semi-truck beside us, and shifted into park. Shortly there after we noticed everyone else around us getting out of their cars, getting food and drinks out of their coolers, getting on cell phones, etc. After about 10 minutes of not moving, we decided to turn off the car like everyone else. We decided to join the "party" and got out of the car. We learned that the family "parked" in front of us was from Odessa and they had two dogs they let out to play, along with three kids. Behind us was a gentleman who was Arizona born and raised, but has a brother who lives in Houston, so he as
ked what part of Texas we were from. We took some pictures of all the traffic completely stopped and all the people out wondering around by their cars, but I will have to upload them and post them later on. It was interesting being stopped and parked on an interstate.Turns out there had been a terrible single car accident with the car rolling. A helicopter had to air-lift some people to the hospital apparently, and one individual was dead on the scene. Once they finally started letting the traffic get by on the far shoulder, you could see the highway patrol holding up the white sheet to block the view of the body on the ground. Yikes...
So after a 45 minute delay, we eventually got into Phoenix this even around 6 PM (mountain time zone). We were pleased with the neighborhood and environment our hotel this year was in -- it was cheaper than the one last year, though nicer, AND it's directly across the street from a sports card shop -- PERFECT for being here in town to get autographs...HA!; however, when we got to the hotel, they informed us that they did not have our room clean yet. Rather surprised seeings how it was 6 PM, but whatever. So they allowed us to go ahead and go move our luggage into the room and then we'd go get dinner and come back and it should be clean. So, after moving our stuff in we traveled up and down the neighboring streets to see what restaurants and fast food places are around. We ended up getting Chili's for dinner and then returned to the hotel 1.5 hours late to find our room still hadn't been cleaned.So now we are in another room, which HAS been cleaned. Now we are are ready for bed at 11:35 PM, mountain time.
The cool thing is we will be going to sleep in the mountain time zone, but waking up in the pacific time zone -- thank you day light savings time...HA! It's because Arizona does not follow day light savings, so when the other states are all springing forward an hour tonight, we in Arizona jump time zones! Pretty neat how that works ,huh?! ;)
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