Such a Fine Sight to See

Saturday, May 1 for Sunday, April 25, 2021

Sunday morning we got ourselves ready to leave, "watched" church via video, and headed out from the Wigwam Motel. It was chilly for the area, but a gorgeous day, so I took some pictures of the old cars scattered around the parking lot in front of the wigwams.

I never pass up a shot of a Studebaker ...

We wanted to get breakfast at another of those well-known Route 66 places, but it closed for COVID, then "Joe" passed away during that time, and they were not able to reopen. That sad story is repeated many times along the Route.

One place that does still exist, though it wasn't open on Sunday morning, was the Rainbow Rock Shop. Lots of dinosaur statues, as well as petrified wood and many decorative rocks and others.

We left Holbrook, AZ and headed to Joseph City, AZ. Another of those icons of Route 66 are signs for the Jackrabbit Trading Post. We saw a few along the way, but they are mostly gone now. The Trading Post is there, though closed early Sunday. We took the opportunity for a few pictures.

Our next goal was:

We had been reminded a few times to stop here for the famous statue, and it was on our itinerary.

Randy found another man of interest across the street.

As you can see, Winslow is another town that makes the best of its connection to Route 66. There was a museum ... closed.

We headed off down the road towards Flagstaff, AZ, another city mentioned in the song, "Route 66."

We were doing well, but stopped at a rest area just off I-40 (which was again over the top of Historic Route 66). When we got back on, we didn't even get to the end of the entrance, and traffic was stopped.

We stayed there for a while, getting out and talking to people, playing games on our phones, trying to find news of whatever was going on. One "official" report estimated the blockage would not clear for another couple hours. We were able to maneuver the little Prius around and back down the entrance ramp, because we had been told we could find an alternative road. We ended up on a National Forest Service road, gravel, which we followed for about seven miles. We were following the Jeep in front of us in the picture above. When the road petered out and became two ruts in the dirt, they went on and we backtracked that NFS road. By the time we got back to where we started, NOT two hours later, I-40 was flowing along nicely, so we got back on. Not too far down the road, we found out why there had been a stoppage. We couldn't tell all that happened, but this tractor-trailer was destroyed.

Our road to Flagstaff went smoothly from there.

Once through the traffic in Flagstaff, we turned south on I-17 and headed for Peoria, AZ and dinner with Randy's high school classmate, Karen Bell Goodrich.

After a very nice late lunch with Karen, we headed to Tempe, AZ and the home of Don's high school classmate, Bill Edwards, and his wife Cheryl.

Bill and Cheryl extended their hospitality to us for three days and four nights. We were able to recharge, do laundry (!), do some work on this blog, ate some great meals, and visited with Don's classmate Tom Kimmel, who drove from Tucson to Tempe to have lunch with the four of us, and catch up on each other's lives. None of us thought to take a picture!

We left Bill and Cheryl on Thursday morning, April 29 which is where the next blog post will begin.