Traveling Old Trails

  The above picture petty well sums up our last day on the road. It wasn't actually snowing much but there had been a good snowfall over night. Highway 89 is called the highway of the national parks, and it does take you near or through the parks from Grand Canyon to Glacier. We have visited Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce and the snowy roads made those side trips unattractive. The purpose of our trip was to explore some less frequently visited sites, not the most crowded, so we followed the urge to get home quickly. It was encouraging to see so much snow accumulation. Central Utah, like much of the west, has been suffering from drought and it looks like they may get some relief this summer. Maybe the biggest surprise of the trip happened when we drove by our old hometown of Sigurd where we lived from 1997 to 2013. In the early 2000's a company was issued permits to build a coal-fired power plant there. It was never built, due to a combination of impracticality and local oppositio

  The stopover in Flagstaff was refreshing. I think we are getting a bit road-weary, and a rest was welcome. I didn't take any pictures there. We stayed in the most upscale motel of the trip. The shower was large and the bed comfortable. The city has sprawled along Interstate 40 and the old downtown has been nearly swallowed up by new construction. Besides Northern Arizona University, there is a community college here, and Flag has become the closest thing to urban modernity we have encountered. There was old snow on the ground when we arrived, and when we left there was new snow. Highway 89 begins in Flag and it rapidly rises to 7000 feet. The plows were out and there was slushy snow on the road. It was quite a contrast to the sunny weather we had experienced so far. There are no towns between Flag and Page, only a few groupings of houses which popped up once we descended from the Ponderosa forest to open country again.                                                           Our

          Holbrook must have been quite a town in the heyday of Route 66. Today, it looks like most businesses are closed up or struggling.                         Click on images to enlarge                 The exception is the Wigwam Motel which was nearly full the night we stayed there. The rooms were very small, individual cement teepees. There was no morning coffee and few options for supplies, but it was hard to pass up the opportunity to stay in this relic of the days of cross-country travel.                                                                               The grounds were littered with old cars, possibly ones that never made it to California. What look like boulders on the left in the second picture, are actually petrified wood, which is also scattered around.    We had planned to be in Winslow for lunch but found ourselves ahead of schedule. It's sad when a town's defining moment is its appearance in a song by the Eagles, but that seems to be the case here.

                                                                               The Painted Desert Inn Heading farther down US 191, we finally made it to Interstate 40 and headed west. Our next stop was Petrified Forest National Park, embedded in the Painted Desert. Signs described the desert itself as over 700 square miles. It takes up a good chunk of northeastern Arizona. The Painted Desert Inn started out as a private enterprise but was taken over by the US Government when the park was created. It was renovated in 1934 by the CCC. A ranger told me the CCC areas were littered with whiskey bottles. It looks like they spent their scant wages on booze.                                                                            I told the ranger some of those bottles might be collectible. Her answer was that they were considered "historic trash" and had to left in place. That term was new to me.                                                                    More Historic Tras

                                  Last night we stayed at Canyon De Chelly's Thunderbird Lodge. With a fairly early start, we drove the North Rim trail. I didn't mention yesterday, but the rims are covered with people's homes. It's mostly manufactured houses and trailers. Lots of horses and dogs too. It's unusual for a National Monument.                                                                                              The view to the west is all the way to the Kayenta Plateau near Grand Canyon.       The cliffs on the north rim are very shear. There are not as many stops on this rim, but the views are great! Click on images to enlarge. Moving on, we headed down US 191 to Ganado. The roads in Arizona have ranged from bad to worse. There's been plenty of broken pavement and potholes. This continued. At Ganado we stopped at Hubble Trading Post, a slice of history that stayed in bus