The Prickly Pear Cactus State

thurs | fri | sat | sun | mon | tues | wed | thurs2 | fri2 | sat2

day 1: thursday, october 12 — 305 miles
We arrived in phoenix, made a quick visit to the relatives out in apache junction, and hit rush hour traffic coming and going. Argh! We hightailed it north to flagstaff on interstate 17 and then east toward winslow, where I stopped in the historic la posada hotel for a route 66 cadillac margarita in the turquoise room bar. This hotel is one of the original harvey houses. (Never heard of fred harvey? Click here for more info on this legend of the old west.) Then it was a short drive to holbrook, where we slept in a piece of classic route 66 decor: the wigwam motel. This place was nicer than I expected, although since every wall is on a slope, the bathroom mirror hung at a weird angle. And taking a shower was pretty funny (see my route 66 pics).

day 2: friday, october 13 — 296 miles
The next morning we double backed to winslow, adding an extra hour to our day, so that I could be filmed standin on one very famous corner. Believe it or not, there were 3 or 4 other people (all of a certain age!) milling around to take pictures at 9:00 AM (see my video)! We then headed off to the south entrance of the petrified forest national park. As we passed through the guard’s gate, the ranger asked the standard question, “Have you been here before?” (to warn you not to take any petrified wood). Without missing a beat, I answered, “Yes, in 1968!” That brought a grin and a wow from the ranger. We drove quickly through this fairly small park. After you’ve seen one petrified log, you’ve seen ’em all. The painted desert portion of the park is north of interstate 40 (see my petrified forest pics). After lunch in the park’s cafeteria, we headed east and into new mexico . . .

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The approach to monument valley coming from utah is just stunning. A long, flat, winding ribbon of a road heads straight into the bluffs. It was easy to find goulding’s lodge, which is the main center of commerce here. We were scheduled for the 3:30 sunset tour of the valley, which meant this was gonna be 3.5 hours!

Driving around monument valley was something I had looked forward to for a long time, and I wasn’t disappointed. All the famous john ford movie backdrops are here, with the most famous probably the left and right mittens. But there are also a lot of less well known, really interesting settings (see my monument valley pics). The only downside was the length of the tour: after about an hour and a half, most of us on the bus had had enough! The dust and the extremely bumpy ride had worn us out, but the sunset was worth the wait! We had a nice dinner at goulding’s stagecoach dining room, and then we headed into the darkness to our motel in tuba city.

day 6: tuesday, october 17 — 270 miles
We woke up in navajo country and began our trek back up towards utah. But first we made a slight detour off our route over to jacob lake and the north rim of grand canyon national park. We had never been to the north rim before (which is a long ride around from the south rim), so being this close, we couldn’t pass it up. As we got closer, we encountered a dusting of snow on the side of the road, and found out at the jacob lake inn that although it had snowed the night before, the road to the north rim was still open. As we headed south, there were a bit of flurries, but we were right behind a snow plow! When we got to the rim, the ranger station and all services had already closed for the season. (The website said things close down in “mid-october”, which is not too specific.) And the canyon itself was fogged in, with visibility from the rim at zero. Oh well. We did run across some wild turkeys hot footing it across the road (see my wildlife pics). When we got back to jacob lake, we loaded up on snacks and headed north into utah once again . . .

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On the nevada – arizona border is the famous hoover dam. Although we’ve been here before, this time we parked in the main visitor garage and walked across the top of the dam (see my hoover dam pics), had a snack in the snack shop, and of course stopped in for some dam souvenirs (a running joke on many of the items here!).

Upon leaving the dam, we head out of the mountains. An unusual warning sign here is to watch out for bighorn sheep. I took a pic of the sign, but we didn’t see any bighorn.

While we would be spending the night in kingman, we drove past it and farther east to hit some old route 66 sites. Our first stop was delgadillo’s snow cap drive-in. This is a great hamburger and milkshake stand in the sleepy little town of seligman. Lots of cool memorabilia is plastered all over the place, and the guy behind the counter (the son of the original owner juan) was very funny. Menu specialties include the dead chicken sandwich and the cheeseburger with cheese (see my route 66 pics).

From here we stayed off the interstate and drove west on historic route 66 back to kingman. While this was a fairly good sized small town, it seemed pretty dead at night. So we headed off about a half hour west to laughlin, nevada. Although this gambling center cannot compare to vegas, I’d say there were 10 or 11 hotel casinos which together appeared to be about as big as the atlantic city setup. We played at the colorado belle, a casino that looks like an old riverboat (here’s a pic), and I lost all my winnings plus a little more. Disaster! Afterwards, we stopped into their brewpub, the boiler room, for some excellent pizza and brews.

day 10: saturday, october 21 — 285 miles
Well, all good things must come to an end. Our fantastic journey had pretty much run its course. We made a quick stop in the kingman powerhouse, which is the tourist info center for the western arizona route 66 area. We headed southeast toward phoenix, stopping for a break in wickenburg. By early afternoon we were in the airport and on our way home.