We spent the morning in Tucson planning our Petrified Forest National Park adventure and listening to news reports of an impending blizzard. Feeling fairly invincible in our rented Toyota Prius, we loaded up the car and set out over the mountains.
Because plows and salt trucks don’t seem to be a thing in Arizona, it wasn’t long until we found ourselves involved in a mountainside game of insurance nightmare bumper cars. We passed wrecked cars littering the highway, perched precariously close to cliff faces with only intermittent guardrails. We came upon an overturned truck, with a bloody man wandering in the snow, holding a leash and calling for his dog. Thankfully, a fire truck was already on scene assisting the man. A firefighter directed me to stop, so I did. The 21 year old in a giant truck behind us was too busy rubbernecking and did not stop in time, adding us to the roster of demolition derby participants. Thankfully with the police already on scene we had several high-quality witnesses to the accident. After a quick police report, the cop looked at our smashed taillight and caved in wheel well and deemed us roadworthy, sending us back into the blizzard. We made the 2 hour white-knuckled, snail-paced crawl down the mountain to the nearest town, with emotional support from deep breaths (Ed) and a lot of tears (Karen). Instead of continuing to drive the 3 more hours to Flagstaff, we decided to spend the night at the first sign of civilization we encountered – the Holiday Inn Express in Show Low, Arizona.
The weather cleared up overnight, and Avis advised us that to get a replacement rental car we’d still need to drive our wrecked car the 3 more hours to Flagstaff. With renewed optimism after a good night’s sleep, Ed donned my lady-gloves and used an empty jar of peanuts as an ice scraper to get the Prius road-ready. Our optimism was short lived, however, as the first direction from the GPS before even pulling out of the hotel parking lot was, “in 300 feet, accident on roadway”.
Against all odds, we successfully drove the 121 miles to Flagstaff with our hazards on, taillight dangling by its wires and flapping in the wind, the faint hum of plastic grinding on tires, and the steering wheel at a constant 40 degree angle just to drive straight to compensate for our obliterated wheel alignment. Somehow we drove this dumpster fire of a car successfully to Flagstaff. Avis swapped us out to a new rental and our Southwest adventures continued!
