Saturday, August 9, 2014

Arizona

Well, it seems blogger is having a bad hair day. The post from last night, I could not post and can no longer edit. Like a good application designer / tester, however, I seem to have found a workaround. I'm in the lobby here, 3 days ahead of where this post describes.




We left Albuquerque and headed due north to the Grand Canyon, which I think is the law when you are in Arizona, and were joined by half the Earth's population along the south rim. We did not have time to do much off the beaten path, but I gotta tell you, Canyon de Chelly, which is on the east side of AZ and is the second largest canyon in North America, does not compare at all to the largest one. After some really cool photos - which I STILL CANNOT UPLOAD - we headed back down to RT 66; an actual old section far from the interstate highway which replaced most of it.

Starting in Seligman, which is the Interstate exit and has loads of cool nostalgic stuff, we headed off through MORE desert toward Kingman, where we stayed the night. I had the worn rear tire replaced at the dealer down the street first thing in the morning, and we left on the OLD, old route through Oatman, AZ, which must bee seen to believed. It's an actual ghost town, without the ghosts, but which time has essentially forgotten. The busted old pavement runs right down the center of town, where burros freely roam anywhere but the wooden sidewalks, where saloonkeepers shoo them away. Nobody wants mule dung on their nice wooden sidewalks.


Another blessing from fate had a hand drawn map in the hallway to the men's room in the place where we had our sandwich and sarsaparilla, the gist of which was a shortcut to Las Vegas, our next stop. By now, it was getting *very* hot - no more jackets in the morning and uncomfortable all day long, and dropping down out of Oatman seemed like the furnace of hell.

At the next outpost near Bullhead City, the thermometer confirmed the 108 degree heat, and the nice lady in the convenience store, where we drank a gallon of water, confirmed the shortcut. And good thing, too, because it was Saturday and Laughlin NV had a float-your-ass-down-the-Colorado-River fest thing which would have made getting through that town a nightmare. As it was, Donna was ready to kill me when I detoured to find the "welcome to Nevada" sign for our obligatory pic. So just so we're square here... Next stop is Las Vegas for Saturday and Sunday night, today is Tuesday and we're far from there already, and I'm trying to get a dozen or so pictures up here for posterity.

Got it?

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