So I wanna be a librarian, right?

Only I don’t have any experience, see, and those employers are so picky about making sure you know what you’re doing.

And I’m unemployed now, right?, and I’m graduating soon which means I’m about to run out of excuses for being a poor layabout.

All of this is to explain how it is that I find myself in Tucson, Arizona at the height of summer.

So what happened was that back in the winter I saw this announcement for a fellowship opportunity through the Association of Research Libraries which — in case you’re not immersed in librariana like some of us — is a kind of big deal association of big ol’ research libraries. This program assigns students who are members of under-represented groups to a mentor at a large research university and then pays for them to spend a few months in intensive learning, while gaining practical work experience along the way — which, if you’ll recall from a few paragraphs back, is exactly what I need.

Well, I applied and was accepted and was beyond thrilled to have received such an honor. There were eight possible schools to which I could have been assigned — everything from Columbia to University of Kentucky — and I was assigned to the University of Arizona. It’s a highly prestigious post and with a cutting edge library.

But Tucson in the summer? Is this some kind of punishment for claiming Portland gets too hot for me?

And that’s why I’m here now melting in the desert’s 100+ degree days.

I don’t mean to complain though — I’m learning lots and having a good time. But I do thank my lucky stars that I’m in a *library* program and not here on a track scholarship or something.

Anyway, more about Tucson and the program later. Right now I’m going to tell you about the road trip that brought us here.

Chris and I set our from Portland early one morning with the intention of driving as much as we could in one day. We blew through Oregon and I bid my Beaver State a teary farewell. Idaho passed by in a blink (or two) and we stopped in northern Utah — Snowville to be exact — for a bit of dinner before seeing how much further we could go before drifting into a ditch.

Chris was reading reviews of the (limited) food possibilities in northern Utah and found a place called Mollie’s Cafe that more than one person called the best greasy spoon road food around. I was sold especially once I saw their attractive neon signage.

The nightly special was liver and onions which could have been an ill-advised thing to try at the beginning of a long haul road trip, but I was game. I got it and was surprised to find that the liver had been chicken-fried and drowned in brown gravy. Not what I was expecting, but it was actually pretty delicious in its way. Not that I could eat more than a quarter of what was on my plate, but I ordered liver and onions at a truckstop — all things considered, it went as well as one could expect.

disgusting and delicious

We managed to push on only an hour more and stopped off in Ogden, Utah and there’s not much to report there except that the motel had a waffle maker and we availed ourselves of free waffles before shuffling off to Moab.

Moab is a tourist town in Southern Utah that tends to attract outdoor adventurists and Utah’s hippie outcasts. There were more coffee shops — and boutique roasters — here than in the rest of Utah, I think. The main event for us here was Arches National Park, a stunning collection of natural land arches spread out over many acres of scenic Utah landscape. They really are incredible and kind of menacing in their way. I imagined what it must have felt like to be an early western explorer who came upon these things. I would have been terrified enough to turn my wagon right around and go back to Boston or whereever.

C took lots more cool pictures of the arches. Here are some from his visit here last year.

Moab is a fairly touristy town and as such there’s a lot of mediocre food. But one place that gets good reviews from people who care is a place just outside of the park called the Desert Bistro. It’s a pleasant upscale sort of place that’s trying to do a kind of nouveau southwest thing, but it’s not as awful as that sounds. The most successful thing of the night was this charming gelato caprese starter. That’s three scoops of ice cream: tomato, basil and mozzarella.

quail quesadillas

duck breast wrapped in chard and stuffed with asparagus

the resident kitty at the Desert Bistro

And remember how I said that Moab was full of Utah’s misfits? Well, I chose a place for breakfast the next day because it sounded like a serious hippie enclave and after that meal at Mollie’s I was feeling like I needed to do some nutritional penance. The place was called Love Muffins and was just as I’d hoped — a funky, semi-veg place with a real Portland vibe. I got hot toasted quinoa topped with blueberries. It was really, really good and filled me with whole grain self-righteousness. Chris got a breakfast burrito that was so good you can see how sad he was when he realized he’d reached the end of the burrito.

So the curvy rocks of Moab are cool, sure, but the main event was yet to come. We were here to see the big daddy of cool rocks, the Grand Canyon. Just eight hours of curvy driving later we were on the rim of one of the natural wonders of the world and let me tell you, if you have never been, don’t think you’ve seen this place just because you’ve seen pictures. You really need to see it in person to understand the awesomeness of this place.

Now, you should totally go to the Grand Canyon if you can and if you do go to the North Rim because South Rim is for chumpies. But listen here, if you go and you get a mite peckish (as you will) and you find yourself at the deli outside the Grand Canyon Lodge and it’s morning and that breakfast frittata on the menu sounds pretty good — let me tell you: DO. NOT.

Just don’t.

You wanna know why? I’ll tell you why:

Ok?

But the nicer restaurant inside the lodge is perfectly cromulent and while it isn’t really anything to write home about (which you could ’cause there’s a post office right there), it’s serviceable especially after a long day of hiking around one of nature’s greatest works of art.

After two days at the Canyon (which was barely enough to see even a little of it), we finished our journey south, landing in sunny Tucson. The house we’re staying in as charming as all git out. We’ve only been here a few days so there’s much to explore — and eat. More on that later.

bienvenido a mi casa!