Restroom Ratings » Arizona

The Horny Toad

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Nestled in an encove of tourist trap souvenir shops in Cave Creek, Arizona lies the Horny Toad restaurant. Dimensionally speaking, it’s tiny; tiny in that "hard to turn around if you’re wearing a puffy coat" sort of way. After some awkward adjusting (the door opens inward) and turning (the toilet is around the corner from the sink) however, the situation quickly becomes cozy and intimate. Being closer to the bar and featuring a waiting line 4 deep, the womens restroom may be lacking a bit on the aforementioned qualities.

I was pleased to see a special graffiti chalk board installed which encouraged visitors to post their thoughts and thereby inspiring a completely different breed of nonvandalistic writers to contribute. Unfortunately, it was blank.

Pizzeria Uno

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This pizzeria restroom, located in the utopian Arizona Center in downtown Phoenix, suffered from a waste management problem. While mostly clean and outfitted with modern fixtures and amenities, the two small garbage cans below the paper towels just couldn’t keep up with a relatively small Saturday night crowd. Also, the small urinals were a ridiculous 4 inches from the floor. At that height, even a dwarf may find himself nimbly crouching to stay on target.

Canyon View Information Center

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Just across the road from the first magnificient vista of the famed Grand Canyon, Mather Point, sits a small collection of pathways and buildings. The first you will encounter is the separate restroom building near the bus stop. Inside the aroma was a just a notch past tolerable, but excusable due to the utilization of reclaimed water and the water-conserving sinks throughout the facility. Perhaps air freshener was also being conserved but the urinals, likely due to low-water usage, featured a fancy trap-type system which may have aided in abetting the stench. A steady stream of water guzzling tourists surely put this restroom to the test every day of the year.

Kaibab Trailhead

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Two wooden outhouses sit in the bus roundabout (just beside the mule barn) at the Kaibab trailhead on the rim of the Grand Canyon. On my encounter I let out an audible gasp as I opened the door to find a pile of toilet paper overflowing from the toilet a solid eight inches higher than the seat itself. For a typical outhouse, this would be an incredibly alarming thing to encounter. What I failed to realize is that this wasn’t a "pit" outhouse. It was resting on pavement. And the outhouse actually featured a flush-pedal, operated with your foot, which opens up a stainless steel trap and lets out a generous amount of dark blue liquid – just like an airplane restroom. A quick pump with my foot sent this tremendous mound down the chute – making it possible to now sit on the seat without brushing up against urine-soaked toiletpaper.

For anyone who has hiked the Kaibab trail, they are familiar with the mass quantities of mule droppings on the trail, particularly near the switchbacks along top. After becoming accustomed to this overpowering stench, the smell from these stench-pits actually seemed pretty tame.

Red Lake Hostel / Mustang

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Just south of the Grand Canyon on Highway 64 sits a small hostel adjacent to a much larger gas station and convenience store. Unfortunately they share the same two decrepit outhouses. Don’t be fooled by the bright colors and quasi-modern design of these chambers. It doesn’t take too long to mess one of these things up. And according to the service record posted prominently inside, no "DRIVER" has stopped by to clean these things since… well since the sign was posted. It does note, however, that it is made to "…accommodate 12 persons for a normal work week. Excessive use will result in unsatisfactory conditions before the next regular servicing." It is very probable that this quota was being exceeded. From a quick glance down into the abyss of the pit it appeared that the "PLEASE DO NOT THROW DIAPERS OR TRASH INTO THE TANK" command was also being violated fairly regularly.

Puerco Pueblo

Jon — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Prior to 1400, Puerco Plaza was a bustling Native American community on the banks of the Puerco River in what is now Petrified Forest National Park. Today there are the ruins of dozens of buildings (basicly foundations and pits, but interesting nonetheless) and numerous petroglyphs cover the rocks nearby. The remote restroom which has been erected on the site is a tasteful tribute to the architecture of the period while still using modern materials and offering sufficient amenities for most visitors. Petroglyph etched plexiglas was mounted on the doors, leaving me to wonder just what kind of amazing artifacts the Native Americans would have made if they had state-of-the-art plastics and precision laser engraving facilities. The insides were fairly dismal. I was surprised to find a biohazard waste container for needles, a luxury usually only found in lusher public facilities. An 8.5" x 11" sign mounted advertises that wilderness camping is available in the park, for those who wish to pitch their tent near tremendous logs which have transformed into stone over hundreds of millions years, and then bury their poop next to it.