Day 2.3: Phoenix, AZ to El Paso, TX

We got up at 7am and spent some time reorganizing things in the car. We said goodbye to Mike and drove to Butterfield’s, where we met Shira, who Abe first met in USY and Arielle knew from a summer on staff at Camp Ramah in New England. Abe enjoyed his banana pancakes and home fries, and Arielle loved her garden skillet and wildberry bliss pancakes while we heard about Shira’s life as a traveling nurse.

We stopped one last time at Coffee Bean and to get gas before leaving Phoenix so that we could avoid the near-disaster of running low the day before. We drove a few hours and crossed into New Mexico, navigating enormous tumbleweeds flying at us all across the freeway.

We stopped at Kranberry’s Chatterbox, a small restaurant in Lordsburg, where Arielle heated up leftovers from that morning and Abe got grilled cod with fried zucchini (decent but unspectacular). Arielle was thrilled to be able to get gas across the street for less than $2, a sight she wasn’t sure she had ever before seen. We continued on our drive, crossing into Texas, and got to El Paso around 5pm, where we were perplexed that Waze seemed to send us off the 10 freeway only to get right back on, before realizing that it was actually putting us on another very helpful and completely abandoned off ramp that enabled us to miss a lot of traffic. We also noticed that we were extremely close to Mexico, with Juarez just on the other side of the freeway.

We pulled in to the Holiday Inn Express El Paso - Central and checked in to our very nice room. We had a nice phone call with our friend Dave and spent a few minutes catching up on emails and blog posts. We drove about five minutes to Crave, a restaurant recommended by our El Paso local friend Blair. Arielle wanted to get the cauliflower tacos but they were out of cauliflower, which our waitress said was crazy because they had sent her to buy cauliflower on the way to work that morning, so she got the Impossible Burger instead, which was delicious. Abe ordered the harvest bowl, without the lemon thyme vinaigrette of course, and found it a bitter. Finding what he thought was cinnamon butter that had come with Arielle’s delicious sweet potato fries to be very tasty, he proceeded to add generous portions to his bowl, only to later find out that it was homemade marshmallow sauce (which Arielle got to go). It certainly did go well with the vegetables and added garlic mushrooms, which still makes little sense.

We thought that we would stroll down Cincinnati St because it looked cool and lit up, but mostly closed shops and frigid temperatures truncated the length of our walk. Most of the remainder of the night was spent struggling to connect to the hotel wi-fi, which never worked, and FaceTiming with our friends Teri and Aaron. Exhausted, we fell asleep early.

Approximate number of miles covered: 458

Day 2.2: Phoenix, AZ

We got more sleep than we had since before going to Utah, getting up around 10am and heading straight to the fitness center for half an hour on the treadmill (Abe) and elliptical (Arielle). We spent the day catching up on work and preparing for the next few days. We left in the late afternoon to stop at Coffee Bean, the LA-based chain with very few locations outside of its signature city. Abe was thrilled that they still had ice blended pumpkin chai and that they used the app! Our next stop was at Costco, where Arielle returned the large PC she has been using for the past month or two for a slightly smaller PC she will now try. We found a Thai restaurant called Takeda that was highly rated on TripAdvisor and which Mike had remembered liking. Abe followed the advice on the sign when they walked in, which said to ask about the charred vegetables, which were delicious with tofu. Arielle’s pad Thai was decent but considerably less exciting.

Our last stop of the night was at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus, where Arielle ran a program with Hebrew High teens around death and loss. It went great! We drove back to Mike’s and hung out for a bit before heading to bed and planning to get on an earlier schedule.

Approximate number of miles covered: 34

Day 2.1: Los Angeles, CA to Phoenix, AZ

We did a much better job getting out this time than when we first left back in August, loading a good portion of the car the night before and even getting our trunk to close on the first try! The backseat is a bit messier, but we have an upgraded cooler bag, a neater snack box, and an optimistic attitude. Our first stop was in Claremont, CA, where Arielle had to get her favorite frozen yogurt, 21 Choices. She got the Oreo Cookie Magic, and Gladys hooked it up. Abe got the BBQ Brick Chicken from Gus’ BBQ next door, and we prepared for our travels to the Midwest and South by confirming that all vegetable sides came cooked in either bacon or ham, so we chose French fries and sweet potato fries, which were both delicious.

We weren’t paying particularly close attention to how we were doing on gas and saw our empty light come on just as we passed the last gas for 30 miles. We sweated but made it after nearly running out of gas for the first time. We made great time getting to Phoenix, passing some nice views of wind turbines and sunsets along the way.

Upon arriving in Phoenix, we went straight to the lovely home of Mike, Arielle’s friend from USY, who we saw in Los Angeles just a short time ago on his last visit. We walked together down the street to La Grande Orange, where Abe enjoyed a margherita pizza and Arielle loved the roasted corn and goat cheese pizza. Mike liked his rocket man pizza but it was way too spicy for us to try.

We walked home and spent a while relaxing and chatting before heading to bed.

Approximate number of miles covered: 396