Saving Your A**

Before I tell you if we had to push our car around the bend to the gas station, let me tell you about the lady I met at the snow cap restaurant in my previous blog. Yes, I forgot. But she's not someone I can forget to tell you about.

First of all, she had some really cool bling jeans on. Second, long, shiny, dark hair. And beyond appearances, we got talking about my camera (one of the fastest ways to my heart besides Jesus, and picking up interesting things off the ground) and I learned that she loves snowcap food that she would drive three whole hours from her home to come and pick it up!

(The grill is over 60 years old and, yes, they do hold birthday parties for it.)

Today she happened to be in the area, though. She suggested lots of things for the two of us to see but emphasized one: at a lodge in Peachman (the only town with road access to the Grand Canyon), there is Native American art done by a man related to her - and her kids are artistic, too! We're totally friends. Heather and I went to see and it was just like she described. It looked like charcoal on wood, human-animal forms which were beautiful.

On to The Gas Dilemma.  According to the book, Oatman is coming up. Oatman is touristy. Oatman will have gas.

Oatman does not have gas.

A girl about our age sucks a lollipop behind the counter at the Oatman hotel and comes up front when we ask her if there are any rooms. She tells us it's not really a hotel. Then a guy in a yellow T-shirt approaches, hears our dilemma and suggests someone who might rent us a cabin or a camper...or he thinks the mayor does a "bed and barbeque." And as for gas...

People must have their own gas fountain out here because they get blank looks when we ask about the nearest station. Or else they siphon tourist tanks.

There's a bright yellow sign boasting "public restrooms" down the road. We follow it and find a store called "Saving Your Ass" with a sexy looking burro out front and a sign saying "I found my ass in oatman." Well, nature called, so I passed through the short shorts and corsets and into the store. In front of a wall of tee's I secretly laughed at but would never wear were standing our saviors: Dwayne and Nancy. Dwayne told us two routes to get gas.  One for faster, one for cheaper. If the "empty" light isn't on, he gave us comfort that we would be alright. He gave us time estimates, pointed to places on maps until they made sense, probably gave us brochures, and didn't pressure us to buy anything. He is also a firefighter, a nice one. His partners in awesomeness Chandler and Amanda.

"This is the wild west, so you see that tree? That's the public restroom."
"Okay, but I really hope you're joking."
He was joking.

And you know what? He had sugar skull art in the back. Canvas prints, poster prints, and postcard-sized prints I could stick on my car if I wanted to. Guess how I supported Saving Your Ass in return for its saving our asses? I bought nine postcards for quite a deal. Minimal bargaining and eyelash fluttering may have gone down.

Bottom line? If you're going to stop at Oatman, stop when the light is hitting the wild-west storefronts just right, take some pictures, pet the burros walking the streets, and stop and chat with Dwayne and Nancy (and maybe put a dollar in the fireman's boot on the counter). But make sure you stop and get gas WAY before you reach the squiggly line on the map.

It was scary but at last we saw the lights of a station.

A girl in a hoodie who looked like she owned the place sort of crunched her eyebrows and said "sure, whatever" when I asked if she was the proprietor and if we could use her microwave. 

We drove and drove, crossed a river, saw a welcome sign, and made it to a hotel in Needles, CALIFORNIA!!!!

Heather and I always had this thing about hotels with exterior doors, thinking of them as shady places where people go to have affairs and buy and sell drugs, but unknowingly reserved this room with (gasp) an exterior door. Guess what - it was fine. Orange on the outside, blues and greens on the inside, the most beautiful morning and the most perfectly formed waffle I have had since I started 66.