Route 66 Day Eight

Today is Thursday, June 30, and it is day eight of our Route 66 tour. We are going across the street from our motel this morning for breakfast at Westside Lilo's Cafe in Seligman, Nevada.  Ironically, we are joined for breakfast by Ken, the retired RV salesman, with whom we had dinner last night. This guy is great and I almost wish we could take him with us except we are traveling in opposite directions on The Mother Road.

On the road by 8:00 a.m., our first stop is a gift shop in town.  Stop two is another gift shop where we met Angel Delgadillo, the founder of the modern Route 66 movement at his historic barber shop in Seligman that he still visits each morning.  He told us the body has given up but his mind is still all there and that is what is important.  I am not too sure why I was too timid to ask to have my photo taken with the man who helped make this trip possible but it is one of the regrets I have from the trip.

We are following the directions from a great website tour that someone else took from the east to the west, following the oldest routes we can locate.  Because I had to reverse the directions and used Mapquest to verify them, occasionally on this trip we are getting a bit confused.  Today we went the wrong way out of town and got on the freeway instead of bypassing it and then we could not find the bridge with the tree in it because we went the wrong way and ended up on an unpaved ranch road. However, I did get this great and ironic photo out of the experience.

Then we drove back to Seligman on Crookton Road and guess what—there was the bridge with the tree in the middle of it that we could not find earlier. I told Denice I was going for it despite the fact that it sat in a field protected by barbed wire.  For the record, I want to let the world know I was kind and did not take any photos of Denice shimming her way under the barbed wire fence in and out of this field. 

After I took the photos, I found two pieces of rusty stuff, a vintage rear view mirror off a car and a small piece of the original road with part of the yellow strip still visible on it to take as souvenirs from out hike. Although their was plenty of evidence under our feet and on our shoes, no cows or horses were harmed in the making of these photos.

In Ash Fork, I explored an old abandoned motel.

Sometimes when I open a door I am surprised by what I see.  In this case, it looks like you could move right in. 

In Ash Fork, the DeSoto's Beauty and Barber shop has a DeSoto on top of it so that there is no irony in its name.

In Williams we took an auto tour of an amazing little cemetery with the grave sites decorated in the southwestern style of adornment. 

Lunch today was at the Cruiser’s Café 66 where we were entertained by a guitarist.  Then we strolled the streets and hit a few shops. 

Out of town, we hit a gravel road where we saw some interesting things including a family of cows grazing outside the fence along the highway.  On Buggy Springs Road we found this pink ranch fence.

We are still dealing with temperatures well over 100 degrees.  It is very sandy as well and with the wind blowing, brown sand is everywhere in the van and on our clothes. 

Through Parks and Bellemont, we were on to the big city of Flagstaff.  When Denice and I hit these bigger cities, we try not to spend too much time here as they can be minute-magnets and this trip is really about logging miles on The Mother Road.  However, I spotted this church and just had to take a few shots.

We made a trip out to the Pine Breeze Inn (a location which was used in The Easy Rider movie--oddly, the second site from this movie I have visited this year with the other being a grave in New Orleans).  After Winona, we found ourselves in Twin Arrows and I had to invade the Twin Arrows Trading Post.  This old ruin was fascinating to walk through because when I do this it feels like being on an archaeological expedition. 

In Two Guns, there is a former tourist spot which ran a zoo that included mountain lions!

Because it was now 7 p.m. we just jumped on the freeway and headed to Winslow and we made the best decision we made on the whole trip.  We decided to check into the 5 star La Posada, a former Harvey House that has been restored to an elegant working hotel. We ate in their wonderful restaurant where we both ate the Wild, Wild Wild sampler including quail, elk medallions and a tamale with bison.

Miles today: 245

Total miles for the trip: 2,860

View all the photos from this trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gniebuhr/