Day 21: Road to Salome

Up early and took down our tents after a long night of tossing and turning and listening to 18 wheelers. We are almost sure we heard either a coyote or a wolf howling , which woke up every dog nearby. It was pretty neat to hear. Our goal for today was to reach Salome, which was about 21 miles away, with a stop for lunch in Vicksburg.

Nothing special about the road to Vicksburg except it is one of the straightest roads I have ever seen. You would see a cars headlights in the distance, but wouldn't see the car for 10 minutes. It just went on and on. When we finally reached Vicksburg about 11 am, the only thing that was there was a sign that said "Vicksburg" and nothing else. We were ready for some nourishment, so I asked a guy that I saw working on his truck if there was anything nearby. He said there was a restaurant in Hope, AZ which was about 3 miles up the road, so we headed there. It was one of our hottest days yet, the temperature in Hope that day was 111. We went in to the restaurant and ordered something, but it was almost too hot to eat. I did get a coke with free refills and managed to suck down about 4 of those.

Sometimes I wonder about the history of why these small places exist. The only things in Hope were a restaurant, a closed gas station, an RV park, and a small church. After lunch, we went outside and rested under a shed, on a picnic table, getting ready for the final push to Salome, still 6 miles away. Around 2:30 we bought some ice from the restaurant for our coolers, and headed out for Salome. To reach Salome, there's a climb of about 2,000 ft. through Granite Pass and we were dreading that. But, as we left Hope, the nicest breeze came up behind us and the climb was nice and gentle.

The first 4 miles on the road to Salome , we encountered the most beautiful desert we had ever seen. All the sudden, these giant cacti ( Students: What are those giant cactus with arms called like you see in the picture above?) appeared on the sides of the hill. Hundreds of them growing in the most desolate and dry conditions that you could ever imagine. If you've ever seen an old western movie, you can imagine this is where it might have been filmed. A note about the large cacti, it seems as if there are some invisible boundaries in the desert where they grow. They will be hundreds of them in an area, then you won't see any for awhile and another patch appears.

Another cool thing we saw on the road to Salome was a caravan of Volkswagon buses/vans that had been restored and were in immaculate condition. My first thought when I saw this was of my friend in Gastonia, Larry and his daughter Brooke, who had bought one to restore.

We finally reached Salome about 5:30 in the afternoon. We stopped at a general store to get a drink and inquire about a place to camp for the night. There was a guy in the store named Gabriel Palma and he said he had an RV park where we could set up our tents for no charge. Then he thought a little more and said he had a little house that was not being used that had electricity, air conditioning, and a bathroom, so we took him up on that. We took our stuff over and were getting unpacked. About 30 minutes later up came Gabriel's wife and son with 3 plates of authentic Mexican food for us. Just another act of kindness from people who have never met us before.

We ate our food, took a shower, and had a bed to sleep in, so it was a restful and comfortable night.