Arizona Road Trip

In our latest step towards becoming adults and making career decisions, we took a quick road trip to Arizona for Eric to interview at Midwestern for PA school. This was the first of 2 scheduled interviews for Eric, who applied at 8 different schools across the country. Next month it’s off to New York. We are still waiting to hear back from Samuel Merrit in Oakland, CA, which would definitely be Heather’s first choice of possible destinations.

Our travels began Sunday after church when we went to rent a car. Despite wanting to cruise the freeway in a fancy convertible, we requested a boring economy sized car. However, they were all out of boring economy cars and upgraded us to a fancy Nissan Murano at a cheaper price than the economy car. Plus they threw in a free tank of gas to sweeten the deal. Wahoo … living the American dream.

For those who have never driven it, it takes a really long time to drive to Arizona. Like really really long. Like enough for Heather to decide she hates Arizona before we had ever exited the vehicle. It was roughly a 10 hour drive there and another 10 back. In addition to learning Heather’s distaste for the boring Arizona scenery, we also learned that Eric starts seeing things once he’s been driving for 7 hours straight. Along a particularly long stretch from Page to Flagstaff, Eric saw a leopard running through the tall grass, a couple of low-flying aircraft, and one of those wavy armed inflatable guys in the middle of the road. Between hallucinations we saw tons of signs with animals on them (these were real, not imaginary), which only added to Eric’s nerves and delusions. There were deer crossing signs, elk crossing signs, a bull sign, and even an “assorted wildlife” sign. After passing a sign with a guy riding a horse, Eric finally had enough and said “oh great” and stopped caring about crashing into animals. We also were for real pulled over by a cop in Kanab for apparently doing 52 mph in a 35 zone. Luckily Eric charmed his way out of a speeding ticket (by playing the “this is a rental car and I didn’t know how fast it was going” card). Or maybe it was because of his rugged good looks. The point is, we avoided a ticket and eventually got to Glendale around midnight. Since we were too late to get any real food, we had a nutritious dinner of Gushers and leftover Halloween candy. Arizona must have known we were coming, because when we turned on the TV to find a show to fall asleep to, we quickly found the Lorax, which was what we had been falling asleep to at home for the past week or so.

After a restless night for Eric, it was time to head over to the interview. Eric decided it would be best to have Heather drive since he was hoping to get dropped off at the campus and let Heather spend the morning exploring Glendale on her own. That turned out to be an interesting decision. On the way out of the parking lot, a half-asleep, no-shoed Heather was trying to slide the seat forward, when she suddenly flew forward into the steering wheel, hitting the horn and slamming on the brakes. Fortunately we were still in the parking lot. Epic.

Soon enough, Eric was at Midwestern University for his first PA school interview. There were roughly 25 other applicants in attendance, competing for approximately 90 spots. Around 200 students were interviewed in total and we should hear a decision in a few weeks. The interview itself went decently, although for some annoying reason, the entire interview process consisted of a group interview and that was it. 20 hours of total driving for a 20 minute interview with 2 other people being asked the same questions … Boo. Plus everyone in the actual interview besides Eric was female (2 lady PAs and 2 female applicants), which was surprisingly intimidating for some reason. Perhaps all the lady hormones wafting around that tiny room. In the meantime, Heather had herself quite the morning, getting lost on the way back to the hotel room and eating lunch at the renowned Peter Piper Pizza, which used to exist in Salt Lake. After having the interview, touring the campus, and having lunch at the cafeteria, Eric was ready to meet up again with Heather and make the long trek back to SLC. 

After doing some shopping at some outlet malls in Phoenix, it was time to head back. On the way home, we saw a sign for something called “Bearizona,” (fantastic name, no matter what even goes on there) which will definitely have to be explored if we end up getting accepted. We would have taken a pit stop on the way home, but it closed before we could make it there. We also saw another closed attraction which apparently offered a zipline over some wild animals. After several miles of Heather wanting to put sunglasses on every cactus we drove by to make them look like little spikey people, we encountered a group of Asians standing (and lying) on the other side of the highway taking pictures of themselves for some reason. What a peculiar people. Maybe they don’t have highways in their land. Anyways, hopefully we will know more about our future soon and if 115° summers are in our future.