Day 26: Gotta get out of this place

Since Tucson was only a cou­ple hours away, I took my time get­ting out of the hotel. I had a cou­ple of stops I wanted to make (Bevmo again for more beer I can’t get at home, and some­where for lunch), and when I pulled into the park­ing space at Bevmo, I hit the curb and tore a chunk out of my tire. Fortunately, I was near a tire shop, and blew almost the rest of my Vegas win­nings on a new set of Goodyears.

45 min­utes later, I was back in busi­ness and look­ing for food. Roadfood.com has been hit-or-miss on this trip, but I knew one place upon which we’d agree: Ted’s Hot Dogs. A small chain, pri­mar­ily located in New York, Ted’s has charcoal-grilled hot dogs, ham­burg­ers and the like, and they’re pretty fan­tas­tic. I picked up a pint of their hot sauce, a sweet, tangy con­coc­tion that’s a lot like a tomato salsa in its con­sis­tency but totally hot-dog-appropriate in fla­vor. The visit was worth the effort if for only one rea­son: I dis­cov­ered that Ted’s sup­plier for hot dogs is Sahlen’s Meats from Buffalo, New York, who also hap­pens to sup­ply Mrs. Curl, my first stop on the trip and a lot closer than either New York or Tempe.

The inter­state to Tucson isn’t as inter­est­ing a drive as the one between Flagstaff and Phoenix, so I pressed on and made it to my hotel. After I’d unpacked the car, I called friend and music writer extra­or­di­naire Linda Ray, who gave me direc­tions to her house. I arrived at the appointed time, and we set out on a grand tour of Tucson. Everything Phoenix lacks, Tucson has in spades: some sem­blance of local cul­ture, beau­ti­ful adobe-style houses painted every color in the rain­bow, and a vibrance that the cap­i­tal city is miss­ing. After the tour, Linda insisted on tak­ing me to din­ner at the his­toric Hotel Congress, where I had a stel­lar meal of sopa de lima—a regional vari­a­tion on tor­tilla soup—a green chile cheese­burger and a slice of tres leches cake topped with fresh fruit. It was heavenly.

I couldn’t have found a bet­ter tour guide if I’d tried; we walked the streets sur­round­ing the Hotel Congress, as Linda regaled me with sto­ries about the inde­pen­dent music stores, bars, and shops that lined that par­tic­u­lar street. It was get­ting late, so we bade farewell, and I returned to the Extended Stay America to fight their painfully slow Internet con­nec­tion (which explains the tar­di­ness of this post) and cap the night with my last two cold bot­tles of Session lager.