By Christie Walker Bos
My best friend had wanted to take a road trip for as long as she could remember, but her husband wasn’t interested in driving through the desert to stand on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, or try the “Yellow Line Bovine” hamburger at the Roadkill Café in Seligman.
After her husband passed away, I got the call: “Let’s do that road trip.”
A willing co-pilot, I grabbed my dog — a black-and-white, shaggy Bernedoodle — packed a bag, an ice chest with cold drinks, and a shopping bag full of road snacks, and we were off.
Little did I know that the trip would become the inspiration for my next novel.
Having traveled around the area several times before, she asked me to plan the trip. There’s a wonderful loop that takes you through six states — California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada — before heading back to California.
From previous trips, I knew we would stop in Mesquite — the perfect place to gas up, grab a bite and stretch your legs before the final push home. On trips to Lake Powell, Mesquite has also been our go-to overnight stop before finishing the journey up the mountain to Zion and on to Lake Powell.
Traveling with a dog means I’m always looking for parks, which is how I discovered Pioneer Park. My husband and I will often grab takeout in town and bring it to the park so the dog can stretch her legs — although she is usually more interested in what we are eating than going for a walk.
On the road, I journaled while my friend drove and the dog snored. I recorded brief descriptions of the landscape, the sky and the towns we passed through.
Desert mountains rose from the sand in a palette of colors — deep rusty red, pale pink and chocolate brown — with jagged lava outcrops as black as coal. Sweeping vistas of peach-colored sand were dotted with the blue-green of Great Basin sage and the forest green of resilient mesquite shrubs.
The grit-filled wind blew through towns with the power to strip paint off metal. Cloud shadows raced across the barren landscape, creating magical tableaus while teasing the parched flora with hints of rain.
Hundreds of these descriptions — along with moments of reflection available to anyone who has nothing more to do than sit in the passenger seat of a moving vehicle and watch the changing landscape slide past in a blur — became the foundation for my novel.
The experiences, the surprise discoveries and the “aha” moments became the actions that drove the story forward. I blended real encounters — like stopping to usher a desert tortoise safely across the highway — with my imagination to send my two characters, Patsy and Rosa, not only on a road trip but on a journey of the heart, generously sprinkled with humor and a healthy dollop of compassion.
On the final stretch of our journey, we stopped in Mesquite and visited Pioneer Park. I watched a family enjoying a picnic at one of the shaded tables, and my dog, Rae, strained against her leash to invite herself over.
That moment inspired what would become a pivotal and emotional scene near the end of the book. When I finished, wiping tears from my face, I knew I had something worth keeping.
It wasn’t until I returned home and reread my journal that I realized I had a novel hidden within the hundreds of notes I had taken along the way.
As I head out on my next adventure, journal in hand, I wonder what new stories the open road will inspire.
Christie Walker Bos is a journalist, novelist and satirist whose work appears in local newspapers and magazines and on her Substack, Humor for Humorless Times. Her new novel, Patsy Hits the Road, is available for preorder on Amazon and launches April 18 as an eBook and May 9 in paperback.
