Okay ... that's a lie. Actually, no one asked any such thing. As a matter of fact, only 3 people asked me how my vacation was, and you could tell by the way they asked it that they didn't want to me to expound any further than "fine", or "great". That's the thing about vacation stories. No one really wants to hear about them. Well, maybe if there was significant property damage or multiple deaths involved, but otherwise no. And unless you're just a hopeless moron, you already know that no one cares about your stupid vacation, so you just say it was "fine" or "great".
But one of the great things about having your very own blog is that you can tell all of the fucking vacation stories that you want and no one can do a single god damn thing about it. Oh, they can choose not to read it, but really, what do I care? I've got an outlet to tell my stories and I don't have to be concerned whether or not I'm boring someone to the point of turning them into a mound of salt. So fuck it ... this is a vacation story, and if you don't like it, go find another blog about someone who had an embarrassing incident with a tube of Vagisil or some shit like that.
Anyway ... one of the misconceptions I had about our trip was that we would find all sorts of kitchy, off-beat places to eat, just like that spikey-haired troll who does that drive-ins, whistlestops and dumps, or whatever the fuck it's called on the Food Network. Well, as they say ... Was I ever wrong! I mean, I guess we could have done something like that if we didn't care about doing anything else and we had two months instead of two weeks to do it in. But basically, if you don't end up eating at some chain restaurant while you're on the road, you are likely to starve to death while you search for that "perfect" spot to dine.
Here's an incomplete list of the places we had lunch and dinner: Applebee's, Arbys, Carl's Jr., Dominos, Perkins, Red Robin, Tortilla Flats and Wendys. All fine dining establishments, right? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA ... HAH! In addition to those, we ate at a couple of restaurants that I suspected were regional chains, even though I had never heard of them.
Actually, there were days when we weren't even lucky enough to find places to eat at noon. Fortunately, we usually kept leftovers from the night before in our cooler and ate them on those occasions, except one. One day we found ourselves in the mountains of Northern New Mexico and couldn't even find a fucking gas station to buy a bag of Doritos and a soda, so we ended up eating Wheat Thins and juice boxes from a bag we kept in the car for snacks. How sad.
And forget about breakfast. We always ate at the motel's free 6 am slop call, where there were muffins, cereal and maybe waffles. We can't blame anyone for that though, because it was our call. By the way, if you see an ad for a motel chain on TV and one of their "perks" is a free breakfast, don't be impressed. They all do it. If they don't, you'd better reconsider, because you have just checked into Hell.
In all fairness, we did eat at two nice places. One in Flagstaff and one in Las Vegas. And I'll give props to Jan for finding those. And also, to be fair, I'll give myself the "Taste For Shit" award by picking two perfectly awful diners in California and Utah.
On every day of our trip, Jan would say the same thing: "Let's find someplace nice for dinner tonight". After a few days, this became a running joke, and we would both burst out in laughter when she said it.
Because sometimes, there just ain't no good place to eat.
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