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| The two lane blacktop |
The last two days have been Route 66 proper. We first hit Amboy, population 2. The only thing still open was Molly Malone's Irish Bar. Joking. It was a Post Office. You know that wouldn't happen in the UK. Post office would have been the first to close. An entrepreneur bought the town a few years ago for $400k. Bit of a fixer upper (there's a bloody runway and school there, but he's got restoring electricity to get to first). Amazing the decay in such a short-time, just since Interstate 40 came into being in the 60's/70s.
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| burro |
Then it was up into the mountains. First bit of tricky navigation, but we eventually made it to Oatman, a real-life cowboy town. Much better than Calico! Still a bit touristy, but a real little old mining town in the hills, with burros walking the streets and original buildings still hanging on.
A sweet drive down to the tunes of Steppenwolf and Bachman Turner Overdrive followed, with the occasional random one shop outpost along the way. We also came across a homemade cemetary in the side of a hill by complete chance (I wanted to try the car out in a bit of off-roading along the cliffside). Not mentioned in any of the guide books, and we figured it must be bikers that have died aloung the route. So I scrapped the offroading along the cliffside idea and took a few pics instead.
We made it down to Selgiman for our first night's unbooked accommodation, and got the last room at our preferred choice, the Canyon Motel. Ended up in the James Dean Themed Room. Sweet! If someone doing James Dean jigsaws and putting them on the wall counts as a theme. Still, at $60 for the night, I'm not sure what we could have expected. After the worlds biggest plate of nachos, some warm mexican beer and a generous slug of Makers Mark bourbon, it was another early night.
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| One (of many) blistered toes |
What I learnt today - don't run bare foot on treadmills.
Day 6 started with the cars from Cars.We drove into Flagstaff (a bird flew into our grill on the way - I was slightly taken aback by Dad's "Got it! Did you see!"). He was in a great mood, and bounced into a proper American diner for breakfast. It didn't think of itself as an American diner, and our server thought it was so sweet that there were tourists there, and that we were so cute and polite. Flagstaff's a nice liitle town, with it's funny named streets.
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| red light at the entry to Steve's Boulevard |
250 miles and two sightseeing trips later, we were back at Flagstaff. Sure Dad's covered it.
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| Twin Arrows! |
By then we were in a bit of a rush to get back on route 66, and past Winona (tiny), the Twin Arrows (viewed at high speed), Two Dogs (more later), Meteor City (closed), Winslow (we stood on a corner) and on to our wigwam at Holbrook (I had my reservations).
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| Off-roading! |
Two Guns was the highlight. We pulled off the road to this derelict group of buildings (which used to be a zoo), and there were two cars already there. We drove up and this bunch of goths asked us if we were here 'for the meet'. They'd obviously spotted a kindred spirit in the bird sacrificing driver. Intrigued, we pressed for info, but they were reluctant to share details. Instead we ended up with directions along a dirt track to an old bridge and view of Diablo Canyon which was 'kind of spooky' and 'where lots of people had died'. As the sun was getting towards setting, I was happy to nod politely, get the hell out of there and back on the freeway. Dad, however, wanted to do the drive. Mostly, he informed me, so he could see what the hell these kids were up to when we got back. I put aside my visions of being followed into the middle of the desert by these human-sacrificing devil-worshipping direction givers, and went along with him. It was pretty spooky.
And when we got back to Two Dogs, there was a different car and a lorry now pulled over. Following Dad's considered verdict on the driver ('don't like the look of him, not that I can see him'), we scooted on by.
What I learnt today - still to be discovered, once I've googled 'the meet Two Dogs AZ'
We made it down to Selgiman for our first night's unbooked accommodation, and got the last room at our preferred choice, the Canyon Motel. Ended up in the James Dean Themed Room. Sweet! If someone doing James Dean jigsaws and putting them on the wall counts as a theme. Still, at $60 for the night, I'm not sure what we could have expected. After the worlds biggest plate of nachos, some warm mexican beer and a generous slug of Makers Mark bourbon, it was another early night. 
Those Nachos look riiiiiight.
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