The Professor Errant

We love Phoenix but the real purpose of this trip was to test how well we could do a short road trip in Rob’s Ford Mustang Mach-E. It’s our first fully electric vehicle (I drive a hybrid).

And the answer is…very well!

Driving to and from Phoenix

Rob has had the car since Memorial Day (2024) but only driven it locally. He mainly charges it at home but has gone to Rove in Santa Ana to do charging too. (Rove is awesome by the way; tables, coffee, a whole mini Gelson’s grocery store actually, to keep you occupied and happy while you are charging up.)

Being the detail-oriented artist that he is (it’s one of the million reasons why I love him), Rob already scouted out places to charge along the route. (Which is I-10 most of the way.) Blythe, on the California side of the state line, and Quartzsite on the Arizona side seemed to be the best places.

After an obligatory In N’ Out Burger stop in Palm Springs, we made it to the charging spot in Blythe. It was a sketchy service station but at least it had a Taco Bell next to it. It got the job done and we made it the rest of the way to Phoenix.

It should be noted that Rob doesn’t have the adapter yet to enable use of Tesla’s chargers so that limits our options. But we still had no trouble staying charged up.

During our time in Phoenix itself, we made use of the charging station at a local outlet mall near our hotel (a Homewood Suites in Chandler). It would be nice if hotels put chargers in their parking lots. I saw one on Google Maps at a Hampton Inn (I think in Blythe) but this does not seem to be a wide spread thing. Yet!

On the drive home we charged in Quartzsite and also a quick stop in Palm Springs. That was enough to carry us home. The one in Quartzsite was at an unimpressive truck stop but it had Subway so I guess it’ll do. We had to wait 20 minutes for a charger to open up, the only time that happened on the trip.

Phoenix for a movie?

Yes…we went to Phoenix to see a movie!

You see, Rob and I are big fans of the Alamo chain of theaters. Food and drink delivered to your seat; loud talkers/phone users kicked out. We love seeing movies there. We started going to the ones in Virginia when we lived in Maryland. When we moved to Southern California, we had to give them up…until they built one in Downtown LA (it’s awesome, even if we have to brave the LA traffic to get to it). In the interim, when there wasn’t an Alamo near us, we would take weekend trips to San Francisco and Phoenix to visit theirs. (Just every once in a while; we aren’t THAT nuts!)

The Phoenix metro area actually was home to 3 Alamos before LA got its one! And then they all (through owner/management hijinx) changed over to another chain, Majestic. We hadn’t been in to Phoenix in a while but had been wanted to see how the Majestic theaters were doing, despite the shadiness of the changeover. So that gave us something do while we were in the area.

The War of the Rohirrim fit our time frame in December. We love everything Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a showing at the Majestic location we wanted to go to so Rob found another theater chain to check out, because why not? Fat Cats has a Dave and Buster’s feel, with an arcade, mini-golf, and bowling, in addition to the movie theater multiplex. You don’t order from your seat like Alamo (and Majestic) but they have a big menu and a bar. So we were happy to visit.

After a drink at the bar, we bought food and took it to our seats in the theater. And then we waited. And waited. THE MOVIE NEVER STARTED! We heard employees talking in the “projection” room (I know, they don’t really use projectors anymore at most theaters these days). Eventually they told us that for some unknown reason their system wouldn’t play the movie. We were literally the only ones in this theater and it wouldn’t work. (All the other movies in all the other theaters of the multiplex were working just fine, of course…) Lucky us. So they gave us a refund for our tickets and food and we left, a bit dejected.

But we weren’t defeated. The War of the Rohirrim was in fact showing at a Majestic location, just not the one we had originally wanted to go to. So we went to this other location and saw it there. A lot more driving back and forth around the Phoenix area than we expected to do but what can you do.

The movie was very good. Not sure the motivation for making and telling this story but it was very enjoyable. Majestic? Well, the food was good, similar in quality to Alamo. But the experience just didn’t match Alamo’s. Hard to put into words but the atmosphere and spirit of the place just didn’t reach Alamo’s level. Oh well, now we know! And we won’t cheat on Alamo again…