drivetofive

Odometer:  499,417

For kicks one time, I “borrowed” a Pizza Hut sign to install on top of my car.  I don’t think I’d ever subject my Acura to pizza-delivery status, but the thought of getting paid to put miles on my car was definitely appealing, as was the thought of smelling pepperoni while driving down the road.

Today I took a quick but refreshing Sunday morning drive to enjoy some views along Arizona Hwy 87 toward the town of Payson.  These pictures were taken at the turnoff to Sycamore Creek Campground.

Then the car got a much needed bath and detail.  I’m a believer in Meguiar’s products and I treated the car to the “step 3” carnauba liquid wax by hand after a thorough wash.  For (most of) the paint being 18 years old, it still cleans up pretty nicely.  My car was manufactured in October 1993 so I guess that means it’s finally an adult this month.  Celebrate!

The reflection here is of my friend Matt’s Maxima in the garage where he was working on an oil change.  Pretty shiny paint for being original to this old Acura.

On the interior, I turned to Griot’s Garage for my preferred leather conditioner called Leather Care.  It looks good, smells good, and works great.  The seats on my car were recovered in 2003 with a kit from Katzkin.  The original leather covers in the car were actually at the time still in decent enough condition to sell.  I’ve been really happy with this aftermarket two-tone setup and it’s held up amazingly.

One thing that I love about Arizona is its landscape diversity.  In some parts of the state, the terrain looks like what I’ve posted above from today’s drive, but just a few hours away you can find yourself in an environment that looks totally out of this world.  If I were to pick my absolute favorite landscape scenery in the entire country, it would be found this place.  At 337,000 miles, in July 2008 I took a road trip there.

These particular views are only accessible via a 17-mile dirt road. The cost was $5 to enter the Navajo National tribal park (it’s all on Indian land). Most visitors opt to pay to have the Indians take them on a guided tour (the road is not recommended for cars on a lot of websites I checked) but of course I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to do a little 4×4 action in the coupe.

I even had my brother’s marketing guy throw together a 24×36 poster of the Legend recently, and the main picture was one that I captured in Monument Valley.  This is a 10MB image that should be suitable for download if any of you would like to do the same!

Also noteworthy:  Monument Valley is not far from four corners, which is the only place in the country where you can stand in 4 different states at once.  I did that in a June, 2005 “Utah Tour” trip with about 176,000 miles on the Legend.

Also stopped to see Hole In the Rock, a complete 5,000-square-foot home that was carved out of a sandstone mountain.  I took a tour for $5 — well worth it if you’re ever in the area!

And finally I buzzed over past Mancos, Colorado at a gift shop near Mesa Verde National Park where telephone poles have been driven into the ground sideways and painted like giant arrows.

Closing in on my goal – and enjoying every mile in the meantime!  Thanks for coming along for the ride.

This entry was posted on October 30, 2011 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Arizona, Legend, Road Trip, Utah. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.