Arizona road trip!

By David Allen on May 5, 2011 5:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) |

My recent few days in the Phoenix area encompassed more than posing with a Daily Bulletin under a Baseline sign. Among the sights:

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The men's room at the retro Joe's Farm Grill in Gilbert has a GI Joe theme and features a TV over the urinal. Here's a writeup. I believe the video is the movie "Team America World Police."

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I also saw an Arizona Diamondbacks game at Phoenix's Chase Field. A friend and I traveled there via (be still my heart) light rail.

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This Dairy Queen (629 E. Main St., Mesa) caught my eye during a drive past. I went back one night for 1) the neon cone and 2) a Dilly bar.

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I have a soft spot for the Cracker Barrel chain of restaurants, which have a theme that might be described as "corporate folksy."

Rocking chairs out front, a gift shop of nostalgia items, a dining room with farm implements on the walls and pretty good food. There are no Cracker Barrels in California but I stopped at the westernmost one, west of Phoenix, on my drive back. A cactus in front of a rural-themed restaurant? Whatever works.

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That evening I had dinner at the Wheel Inn in Cabazon, a very good diner, and despite the strong winds and threatening weather (a far cry from the sun in Arizona) took a photo of Claude Bell's famed Cabazon dinosaurs.

4 Comments

James Rodriguez said:

Dave, at the Shell Gas station on Baseline and Cherry Ave. Fontana, they have tv screens on the pumps that turn on only when you insert your card or press a button, I guess to save energy. Was the urinal TV always on or was it activated by...well never mind.

James, Fontana

[Good question. The TV was always on. -- DA]

May 6, 2011 1:37 AM

Bob House said:

You are now officially a better Arizona sightseer than me -- and I live in the God-forsaken state.

I could have sworn the Cabazon dinosaurs were started in the 50s -- my family drove by there many times on the way to visit relatives in El Centro. Speaking of that area, I had my two children convinced for several years when they were young that the giant propellers of the wind-energy farms were the source of the earth's rotation.

[Heh. Sometimes you drive past those propellers and none of them are spinning, which wouldn't bode well for the Earth's rotation. -- DA]

May 6, 2011 2:55 PM

Bob House said:

Thus, the need for leap years in my fictional cosmology.

May 6, 2011 4:46 PM

Kate said:

I love all the little things you noticed! Especially the dinosaurs. :-)

May 21, 2011 3:37 PM