For most of my life, I can honestly say I can’t recall ever hearing anything controversial about any Arizona sheriff. By the time I made it to Arizona as part of the trip, there were two controversies involving Arizona sheriffs that had been heavily reported.
Joe Arpaio was the sheriff for Maricopa County who had been outspoken against illegal immigration and eventually was accused of illegal tactics used on detainees. Arpaio was defeated in the sheriff’s race in 2016 and then in the U.S. Senate primary in 2018. His radical stances clearly weren’t resonating with the majority of voters in his state.
Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb was already a rising star as a recurring visitor to Live PD and then joined a new spinoff called Wanted. Those shows were cancelled shortly after protests and riots that took place to put an end to the attacks by law enforcement against innocent black men. While Lamb’s 15 minutes of fame was a casualty not of his doing, he ended up getting COVID-19 shortly after being among those who claimed it was no big deal. Now, he is currently being investigated for financial issues related to a charity he created. Needless to say, 2020 has not been Lamb’s best year.
I mention these two law enforcement officers not just because they were prominent in the news - my memories of Arizona in 2020 outside of the Grand Canyon will be the massive police presence in just the northern parts of the state I traveled.
Entering the state from Utah, I saw several police cars just sitting together near the border. That alone had me driving exactly the speed limit the entire time I was in Arizona. However, as I continued to drive, I was seeing more police cars than I had seen during the entirety of my trip up until then. Once I drove through Flagstaff and began to make my way toward the Grand Canyon, I was seeing a cop at least every mile - mostly sitting in the medians but sometimes on patrol. As I got closer to the national wonder, they seemed to thin out but the message had been received.
I had hoped to be able to camp out at the canyon, but everything was booked. Fortunately, a couple of days before I started the trip, I was able to find a campsite in Kaibab National Forest just a few miles south of the South Rim area. I stayed the night and woke up extremely early to get the day started.
This was my second trip to the Grand Canyon, having visited before when I was 11. I don’t recall much from that vacation and I probably didn’t spend enough time on this trip to allow myself long-term memories. However, the views were incredible and I bemoaned the thought that I didn’t leave myself enough time to hike down into the canyon. But likely I was better off anyway given how out-of-shape I was going into the trip.
I was gone from the canyon by mid-morning and planned to get lunch in Tuba City and then visit the Four Corners Monument before making my way to New Mexico. I should have gone with my initial instincts to go through Winslow for a stop at the corner (channeling The Eagles, for those of you who know the reference) and then head straight to Albuquerque. Only fast food restaurants were open for business as I traveled through north central Arizona and the Four Corners Monument was suddenly closed. Guess I should have been checking daily for whether it was still open or not - I took one pic of the closed sign and then headed to Albuquerque.
Lots of driving and very little to show for it - on a positive note, however, there were very few cops around during the eastern half of the Arizona journey and New Mexico was a drive that seemed much more like what we are all used to.
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