On February 28th we rolled on all 12 wheels into Holbrook, AZ.
Why Holbrook, AZ you may be asking yourself? What’s the scoop? Is it amazing and great there? Is there a lot of amazing stuff to do?
No.
It’d be more effective to just ask yourself, ‘why do Jake & Liz go anywhere these days?’
Correct! You’re right! Great job! Yes! Holbrook does have a diesel shop!
Jake swears that this time it was ‘planned’ maintenance. At this point, I’m almost of the impression that Jake just really likes hanging out at repair shops. Except I know he hates it because he spends the whole day pacing and verbalizing random Dyna facts in between spying on the repair guys doing their work.
Regardless of whether or not Jake is harboring a secret repair shop obsession, we headed to Holbrook, AZ, which is home to a chassis shop with decent reviews. Jake swears that we have known about a transmission fluid leak coming out Dyna’s rear axle for over a year now. He promises that he told me about this. I would swear that he didn’t, but I am a very forgetful person when it comes to things I don’t want to hear. It’s a pretty convenient secret talent typically.
So, Holbrook, AZ. We hoped to pop into the shop, get the leak patched up and roll out. Except, come on. That’s a dream that wasn’t about to come true. Repair shops. That’s about all the explanation you need.
We set-up at the OK RV park up the road from the chassis shop, and waited a few days for them to call us to let us know they got parts in. At this point I should tell you that Jake had most of the parts needed with us, having pre-ordered them so that all the guys would need to do is pop Dyna up on some jacks and pop em in. But, surprise! More parts needed.
The OK RV park is aptly named. It’s super OK. The most OK ever. The community room is locked and when you look in the windows there are just busted chairs hanging out everywhere in there. On the flip side, Pizza Hut delivers to the OK. So, I’d say it all evened out.
While we waited for parts to come in, we headed up the road and checked out Petrified Forest National Park / Painted Desert. It’s a pretty popular National Park as it is right off the highway and provides for quick access. And honestly, there isn’t more than a day to be spent in the park – which is not a typical attribute of the National Parks we’ve visited previously. But there aren’t many hikes open throughout the park, and it seems like they really gear it towards folks driving the 28 miles from one entrance to the other. We did that – and went on the longest hike we could find, which basically involved wandering through high desert terrain until you find Devil’s ‘Bridge’. Spoiler: the bridge is a petrified tree that fell over a wash and sorta formed a bridge.
The petrified trees/wood was pretty neat. It looks like a tree, but is heavy like a rock. Both Jake and I attempted to lift some logs several times, because they look liftable. They are not liftable. For us, it became ‘once you’ve seen / attempted to lift one petrified log, you’ve seen / attempted to lift most petrified logs’. The really old wood was strewn amongst an area deemed The Painted Desert. It kind of looks like maybe an age-of-the-dinosaurs incarnation of Bob Ross painted the place. A dinosaur-times-incarnation of Bob Ross who had never seen a tree. No happy trees out here. Some happy shrubbery. And some happy dead wood. That’s all though. But yeah, it does kind of look painted. It was nice, and we liked its look, but we’re just not geological geeks. But I can imagine that if you are a geo geek, this place would be orgasmic.
Other than providing access to the Petrified National Forest / Painted Desert and a chassis shop, Holbrook was the opposite of poppin’ off. It is a quirky little place, but there just isn’t much to do. It’s definetely one of those towns that seems to be just hanging on. Holbrook seems to want to keep some of it’s Route 66 history vibes alive, but isn’t quite ready to commit. So they seem to hang on as a fuel stop for folks passing through on 1-40 or swinging through the National Park.
Since there wasn’t much to do other than look at the deteriorating facades of Holbrook’s once thriving community, we did a lot of that. Walking or running through town and looking at stuff. Jake was really excited that there was a speed limit radar sign that picked up our speed while we were walking. Like really excited. More excited than appropriate. Between this and his whole ‘repair shop fascination’ I am beginning to question his mental stability (I jest, I jest). We were apparently walking 3 miles an hour, which I find respectable personally.
I need to talk to you all about something very serious now. It’s called Trypophobia. How do you know if you have it? Look at the following picture. A picture of something so disgusting and horrible that I am apologizing in advance that I am making you look at it.
If the looking at the above photo makes you want to barf and/or crawl out of your skin, please, come sit with me and let’s chat. Because the above photo is repulsive. If you agree, you may also have some degree of Trypophobia. And I’m sorry. But know that you don’t suffer alone. I am typing this and thinking about barfing / scrubbing my soul when I get done. BARF.
The photo is of a piece of rock that the various rock shops in and near Holbrook have desecrated to make shitty things out of rock. Rock shops and gas stations are pretty much the only shops that are open in Holbrook. After seeing this atrocity I was pretty done with the rock shops. GROSS.
To wash that horror from your brains, I’d like to mention one of my favorite traveling life activities: facetiming with my nephew (and brother). Dexter is always interested in some portion of what we’re up to, but never in the things we think he’s going to be interested in specifically. I thought he would think that the dilapidated dinosaur statues strewn about the town of Holbrook would capture his attention. Nope. He was, however, concerned that there might be scorpions around. When we mentioned we were in the desert again, he was sure to lecture on the dangers imposed by scorpions. He also discussed possible ways to kill them, and let us know that he’d be happy to come out to Dyna and take care of the (apparently prevalent) problem for us. With his Nerf gun.
And because Dyna is Dyna, and Holbrook tends to be pretty windy this time of year, we had to emergency order a new AC shroud for the roof. We watched the (very old) one fly off one evening while eating dinner. Which was a nuisance, and we had to duct tape it back in until Amazon could save us by delivering a new one. We almost kept the old one duct taped to the roof after Lucy claimed the new one as her very own cat castle. After much deliberation we decided to evict Lucy and install the new shroud. We’ll probably regret that decision.
On Thursday afternoon, after spending 7 more days than anticipated in Holbrook, the chassis shop lifted their bay doors and told us we were good to go. And with that, we sped away from the interesting little city of Holbrook for greener pastures. With Lucy tucked into her real cat igloo (guys, she has a cat igloo! She doesn’t need an AC shroud!) we pointed Dyna and her hopefully non-leaking transmission towards Winslow, AZ. Cue that Eagles song guys. I have a feeling it’s going to be playing on repeat all the way there.