Shoshone Point

Today is an interesting day. For the first time, we planned an actual detour away from the route 66. This means we will actually miss part of it. From Flagstaff to Williams, we will be taking a different route north... to the Grand Canyon of course! It's an hour away, so it seemed like a detour worth planning for.

The day started off a little odd for us... We slept at a rest stop along the highway just before the exit leading to the Meteor Crater that Jack really wanted to check out. We put our alarm on bright and early, 7am, to give us time to cook our breakfast on the BBQ and arrive at opening time at 8am. Of course, we snoozed, so decided to drive over to the crater without breakfast, and while Jack visits, I plan to cook the breakfast. It's 18$ to get in, and as we've done for a few activities along the way, only the interested party goes in and shares with the other. So we drive up to the gate, and we're parked in front of the closed fence by 7.50am. Employees seem to be arriving but closing the gate behind them. Come 8.10am we ask if they're opening soon and we're told "Yes, at 8am". Confusion continues. We are then told it's currently 7.10am. Heh? We later find out that Arizona doesn't follow daylight's saving time. So we just gained an hour! Right there, in front of the gate, we took out the table, the BBQ, and made some fantastic coffee and toasts we ate with Nutella and yesterday's left over beans from diner. Breakfast on the go!

Jack was in the crater museum for about an hour while I blogged, or attempted to. I get distracted easily, write run on sentences that I then take out, it takes me about 1.5-2 hours per blog. Ridiculous, I know. I'm typing this one sitting in an I-Hop, with my little portable keyboard and tablet. Thank God for that keyboard, love that thing.

Jack's crater experience : "It was cool. Very, very cool. It almost looked like a volcano crater, or at least some that I've seen, but knowing that it was from a meteor some 50,000 yrs ago just gave it a different feel. It was well done with a viewing platform from the top and slightly lower, a museum and so forth. They even did moon and Mars training here! It was expensive, but The largest and most well-preserved meteor crater on earth. Or so they say."

From the crater to Flagstaff were more abandoned, or small towns. One of which was an abandoned old trading post Two Guns and another called Twin Arrows. Both made for fantastic photos. Graffiti, broken walls, and a very vague illusion of what life once was here. These little towns, or settlements, actually have highway exits all to themselves. In Flagstaff, in order to allow for more time at the Grand Canyon, we decided to stick with the route 66 and just drive through the town, no stopping. And we did just that. Passed a few great old neon signs, a few motels and diner circa 1940's, and off we went to the Grand Canyon!

30$ ! Then again, for the both of us... We quickly forgot that price once we stood at the edge of the canyon. There's a certain feeling standing at the edge of the grand canyon that can't be described into words. This absolutely incredible, massive landscape that we all line up to see or get a better view of, and man kind had nothing to do with it. We keep trying to have higher building, or nicer trimmed parks, or the most high-tech houses, but experiencing the Grand Canyon is taking a step back and admiring something that needed no intervention from us. Spectacular all on its own. With 250 billions years of formation, not much can beat it. Of course, the visitors center had an incredible amount of tourists, understandably so.

We did the north rim drive, from east to west, starting at the desert view point. We stopped at every single view point along the way, both for the obvious views, and because the more we continued, the less tourists there were, so we got to experience it better. Jack and I got in a little disagreement about her hugging the edges a little too much... Our conclusion, she's crazy and I don't have to watch. At least that was my conclusion. So I had to walk away a few times. Her sense of adventure is something I love about her, but sometimes just a little fear from her would help me through my day. Haha. We did take about 3.5 hours driving and stopping along the rim, but even this seemed so incredibly short. We treating this stop like the others along our way, it's a taste, a sample, and we must move on.

On our drive back to 66 Jack planned a stop for us at the Flintstones Bedrock City. Amazing. Granted we just came out of the Grand Canyon, but Bedrock! I got to catch up with my homeboys Fred and Bam-Bam, and Wilma... We had to pay to into ground of the Bedrock city, which was a camp ground turned mini amusement park! Instead, being our cheap selves, Jack gave me a boost to try and climb a tree a the fence. I got a great view! Slides and more statues of the gang. Had it not been close to sunset, Jack and I would have had ourselves a ball in here! But, sticking with our plan to try and always be in whatever town we plan to spend the night by sunset, we moved on.

Glad we did! Williams was the cutest town we've seen yet! They call it the entry gate to the Grand Canyon, and with the amount of tourists roaming the streets, I would have to agree. Assuming tourism money is what's keeping this town as alive as it is, they did great. They had a mini Frontier town, they had plenty of old school neon signs worthy of route 66 mention, they had a couple old diner decked out in 1940s decor, and of course plenty of souvenir shops with the same trinkets over and over again. We had ourselves a nice diner and locally brewed beers before heading out in search of our usual gas station home for the night.Read more