road trip: summer flashback

part 1: petrified

It begins in Arizona. With dinosaurs.

Holbrook, Arizona. Fun Fact: The city of Holbrook is built on a vast floodplain that was inhabited by dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes 250 million years ago.

I’d been on a cross-country road trip before, when I was young and the family moved from California to Maine. Me and our dog, Jack, in the backseat of the’57 Mercedes. I was fascinated by dinosaurs on that road trip, too, forcing my father to stop exclusively at Sinclair gas stations, giant green brontosaurus statues beckoning. I wondered if they liked being stuck in one place. I wanted to release them so they could roam freely.

Forty-four years later, I took that road trip again.

And again, I was moving to Maine. Sort of.