A Mirror for the Sun

I’ve never driven any of my cars more than about an hour from home, regardless of where home was at the time. With the weather cooling down in Arizona and becoming tolerable for outdoor activities, I wanted to escape the city and enjoy it. I planned a weeklong trip with my significant other, touring Northern Arizona and bordering states.

So which car should I choose? I only have two options. Well, three.

Option 1: MR2

Pros:
-Fun to drive
-Reliable for 3+ years
Cons:
-Lack of cargo space
-No cruise control

Option 2: RAV4

Pros:
-Plenty of cargo space
-Ability to go off-road if necessary
-Cruise control
-Reliable for over 1 year
Cons:
-Some exhaust drone
-Unknown fuel mileage

Option 3: Rent a car

Pros:
-Brand new car
-Comfortable (maybe)
Cons:
-Boring

Anyway, I chose my RAV4. This was a great opportunity to put it to a real test and gather some data. Northern Arizona also has some great off-roading trails if I decide to give them a go. So, what’s the plan? I wanted to go to places I’ve never been before, and knock out a few bucket-list places.

Day 1: Jerome, Arizona

Jerome is a small hillside town in north-central Arizona of about 500. It’s known for being haunted. 2 hours north of Phoenix, this makes for the perfect first test for my RAV4. Luckily, that leg of the trip went off without a hitch, and we stayed overnight in the ghost town. Nothing beats a RedBull at 5000ft.

I promise my car is in the second picture, look right next to the yellow sign. From a car point of view, there’s nothing particularly special to write here. This was probably the highest elevation my RAV4 has ever reached. There’s a pretty fun road on the way up, which I was driving the wrong car for. Not that it was boring, just less fun than it could have been. The kind of car where you want to follow the speed limits.

Day 2: Flagstaff

Jerome and Flagstaff are not far apart. We took this time to do a little sightseeing, namely at Montezuma Castle. Despite living so close, I had never actually visited.

A bit out of the way, but a short walk to see the monument. One thing I don’t appreciate much about living in Arizona is the rich human history. There’s so much that has been preserved in little time capsules. There was a time when visitors could walk through the castle, but that was eventually halted for safety and preservation. Unfortunate that we can’t do that anymore, but I’m sure it’s for the best. Maybe after hours you can sneak in and make the monument collapse on you.

On the way to Flagstaff, we took a small detour to Sedona to sightsee, grab lunch, and do some shopping. Driving through town was a bit of a pain, one lane each direction and lots of traffic. Tourist central, of course I’m joining them. Side note- I don’t remember who recommended the Sedona Pizza Company, which has changed their name to the Sedona Pizza and Pasta Company, but it was awful. I don’t recommend anyone go there.

89A to from Sedona to Flagstaff tops of the list for reasons I regret not driving my MR2. It’s so twisty, back and forth the entire way. It’s close enough to home I’ll have to go back at some point. My welded diff, axles, and knobby tires were so happy with me the whole time. Nothing broke, though.

Day 3: Kanab

Kanab is our first stop out of Arizona. I’ve been many times as a kid, and there are tons of places to hike, offroad, and more. I’ve always loved red rocks, so this is another place to see them. I have an uncle there, so he knows where all the best spots are.

First stop on the way was Glen Canyon Dam. It’s no Hoover Dam, but it’s cool nonetheless. Kanab is about 45 minutes past the Utah border, so we made it into town mid-afternoon.

We did some light off-roading, explored secret spots we probably weren’t supposed to visit, and grabbed a quick bite before heading to bed. Our favorite spots were seeing a few places where the natural aquifer shows its head in natural wells. Legend has it Montezuma’s treasure is buried in one of these wells. But nobody has found it yet. We also went up to the tower overlook, a short trail takes you up there. I could have easily done any of these trails in my RAV4, but we got chauffeured around in a Land Rover. Living like the royal family over here.

The next day, we woke up and headed to our main destination, Zion National Park.

I’ve been to Zion a few times as a kid, but I’ve never driven through myself. Plenty of hiking, driving, scenic overlooks, and more to go around. This is one of the coolest and most peaceful drives I’ve experienced. I really don’t have much to say about this, so here’s a bunch of pictures we took.

Day 4: Las Vegas

Our last major stop was Las Vegas. By sheer coincidence, the F1 race was happening the same weekend I was visiting. I did not know that when I planned this trip, but that was okay. There’s something a little surreal eating overpriced sushi hearing formula cars zoom down the road right outside the open window. The Strip was closed, which made getting around a bit of a challenge. Luckily Vegas has enough bridges to get across the street despite the race track below.

Now for the real reason I went to Las Vegas. Some backstory: as a kid, I loved F-Zero GX for the Gamecube. For some reason nobody has heard of that game, despite it being made by a large name like Nintendo. There was an arcade counterpart to this game, F-Zero AX. This ran on the Triforce platform, essentially an upgraded Gamecube that Nintendo, Namco, and Sega (hence the name) jointly developed. Other games on this hardware are the Mario Kart Arcade GP series, and the Namco development is why Pacman appears in those games. As a kid, a local lazer tag/arcade/bowling type entertainment place called Wazzy’s World had two or three F-Zero AX cabinets. One of my friends always had his birthday party there, and I’d spend most of my time playing F-Zero AX. One neat feature of F-Zero, which no other Triforce game had, was a Gamecube memory card slot. You could bring your memory card from home and save your progress in game. On top of that, if you had the home console version, you could unlock the arcade tracks and ships that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to unlock.

One thing I didn’t realize until much later in life, there were two styles of arcade cabinet. Wazzy’s World had the “standard” model, which looks basically the same as any other racing cabinet. Upright seat on a rail, no frills. One thing I had never seen before was the "deluxe” cabinet, which looked more like a cockpit, and the seats would actually move, shake, and rotate based on the g-forces experienced in the game. There is a small, but dedicated group of people online that track these arcade machines, their locations and their statuses. The closest deluxe to me, Circus Circus in Las Vegas. They have three. Two in the Midway arcade, and one in the Adventuredome.

January 2024 I happened to be in Las Vegas for work. I remembered that Circus Circus had several F-Zero machines. I go back and check, someone had verified they were present and functional in late November of last year. One night, when we didn’t have anything going on, my friend and I made to the opposite end of the Strip to Circus Circus. First stop: Midway. After finding the location shown in the picture on Reddit, both machines were gone, replaced by some random shovelware racing game. There’s still one last hope, the Adventuredome. I ran around the entire place numerous times, and it was nowhere to be found. Defeated, I left.

Fast forward to today. We actually stayed at Circus Circus. Despite its reputation, the hotel was not bad. Dated, but not low quality. Friday morning I woke up and headed straight for the Adventuredome. Lo and behold, there was my white whale F-Zero AX Deluxe cabinet. A lifelong dream, I sat down to play for the first time. For myself and for the group, I just wanted to see if everything worked, and on this one it did. The pedals, wheel, and seat all responded as they should. After a few races, I called it good and keep walking around the rest of the dome. About 100 steps away, they had a second machine. Of course I had to sit down to play this one, and I’m happy to report that this one worked just the same. After a couple more games, we headed to the opposite side of Circus Circus to the Midway arcade, but sadly that one was still missing. I’m hopeful that it is just in storage somewhere getting repaired.

Day 5: Bullhead City

Our final stop was Bullhead City. There’s not much here, but we wanted to stop and visit my sister. Esen hadn’t met her yet, and I have a new nephew that I haven’t seen either. That aside, there’s still some fun stuff to do around town. After dinner and a night’s rest, we did some very light off-roading—during which I almost killed us. There was a small hill off the side of the road that had clearly been driven up and down before. I decided it would be in my best interest to pull off the highway and take on that obstacle. Didn’t look intimidating at first, but as I approached the top, I realized how steep it was. I was spinning all four tires, unable to make it over the crest. Standing on the brake, I started sliding backward. I’m going about 35mph backwards down a hill with no way to slow down. Leaving no expletives unused, I somehow made it and turned off the trail into a bush. That’s fine. We’re okay. After regrouping we head back onto the road in silence.

Oatman Arizona is a town on the original Route 66. The kind of town with no cell service. Their mayor is a donkey named Walter, and he gets reelected every year. Donkeys just roam the streets, and all the shops in town sell hay pellets to feed the aforementioned donkeys. This town had the highest density of Trump flags, tshirts, stickers, and other merchandise I have ever seen in my entire life. You couldn’t turn your head without his face in your frame of view. Frightening, really.

Surprisingly, despite that, I got a lot of thumbs-ups and cheers from the biker club, presumably for driving my old RAV4. I guess the people love it. It’s small and it’s cool, as all cars should be. The RAV4 as a concept really brings the world together.

Our drive home had no hiccups. The only thing to say is that the road from Oatman to Kingman, which is the easiest way to get back to Phoenix, is the twistiest road I’ve been on in a long time. Not even fun twisty, just a pain to go back and forth for miles and miles. Feels like it takes forever to finally get out of the mountains. Past that, it was a couple hours’ drive, and outside of a couple rest stops, we made it straight home.

The Nerdy Stuff:

As previously stated, this was my first long trip in my RAV4. Not just since it’s been swapped, but ever. I’ve driven to Tucson and back twice, once with a 3S, and once with a 1AR. That’s about an hour drive from Phoenix, but I’ve never gone past that, and never far outside of a metropolitan area. So, what are my thoughts? First off, to get the biggest thing out, my 1AR. It performed AMAZINGLY on the drive. Had so much power everywhere, I rarely needed to downshift even up steeper sections of road at high altitude. I honestly only had one complaint about the swap; there is a small amount of drone at around 75mph. Mild enough that turning the radio up a couple notches solves that, but it’s still something I’d like to address. A Helmholtz resonator or even a quarter-wave resonator would go a long way. That’s something I can address at another time. Or maybe never, we’ll see.

The next nerdier topic, fuel mileage. This trip was around 921 miles, and I burned about 40.4 gallons of gas. That comes out to a whopping… 22.7 miles per gallon. Or about 10.36 L/kM for you worldly types. I’m not sure if I should be impressed with that or not. Given that I’ve put a lift kit, snorkel, and knobbier tires than before, I really can’t compare that MPG to my old 3S numbers. I also never drove in quite the same situation, steep hills, constant elevation change, high altitude, so I’d be making up numbers. I’ll say I’m impressed enough.

Overall, I’m very happy with the car, and we had a lot of fun on the road trip. I don’t regret anything on this car build, despite what a lot of people thought. Especially from the RAV4 group specifically, for some reason.

Doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement.