Game Hunting Off Off I-17

On our trip back from Sedona to San Diego, we took some backroads to avoid crowds.  There's really no alternate route except Interstate 17, but there are some exits with small towns where unusual items might show up.

We started off in Lake Montezuma.  There's a little shop next to the building that says Post Office (but hasn't been a post office in years), across from the Beaver Creek Inn.  I'm not sure it had a name, and there was such a frenzy of Halloween decoration we're not sure we'd recognize the place again.  But it said "Little Bit Of This, Little Bit of That, New $ Thrift Store" out front.  There was a surprising variety of things here, from games to books, plush animals, 3-for-$1 stickers, cards and more.  The game section caught my eye with 3 different editions of Fluxx.  There were some funny spawns of Cards Against Humanity, including Kids Aginst Maturity and Stoners Against Sanity, plus a range of small card games.  We grabbed Gloom and an odd little deck called Chabyrinthe.  The lady who runs the place seems to have played all these games, and was interested when I mentioned that Looney Labs had finally come out with Cat Fluxx.  She had a lot of good things to say about Gloom.  And if I liked that, there was a sequel called Gloomier.

That whole shop was a neat find.  A shame that it's 500 miles from us.  And nothing of the sort appears on Google maps, where there's just a hair salon and a wellness center.  The receipt says it was the Emerald Wave Healing Center, and I think it was Christine that we spoke to.

After that, we stopped at Toni's Thrift in Black Canyon City about 50 miles to the south.  The reviews said there was a lot of stuff here, and they were not kidding.  There's a wall of CDs and DVDs as you walk in, and about 25 games toward the back of the shop.  They were fairly common, but one quirky game stood out: Doodle Dice for $2.  What the heck is Doodle Dice?  I enjoy the quirky things I've never heard of.  Something about rolling dice with funny symbols and trying to match patterns on cards.  Easy enough.

After that, the traffic heading into the Phoenix metro area sucked our souls completely, and there was no energy left to keep looking.

This was just a test to see what some of the out-of-the-way places had to offer.  And to relieve the boredom of driving 500 miles home.  And it's always fun to have some side quests in mind for a sunday drive.