I have no phone in my room tonight, but I'm being good and writing this, anyway. At least I will until the battery runs out, since the outlets here are two prong, without the ground, and I have no adapter.
I left the Grand Canyon this morning at eight. It had been wonderful, but I was ready to get back on the road.
I headed east on Alternate 89 and before long (well, a few hours later) was at the Vermillion Cliffs, big orange cliffs with defined ends (although these actually just wrapped away).
Several California condors have been released in these cliffs over the last six months, so I wasted about an hour pulling over at every opportunity and scanning the cliffs with my zoom at full extension.
When I arrived at the Cliff Dwellers general store, I apologized to the girl for asking the same old question about where to find the condors. She said I was the first person who had asked her. The most common question is "where are the cliff dwellings?" The answer is that there aren't any.
She made a copy of a map for me, showing the condor viewing areas. At least I had been looking in the right place. Briefly I started back to try again, but thought better of it and continued northeast.
I cross the Colorado River, somewhat impressive here, and headed southwest beside a large, looming orange plateau to the east. To the west I could still see the Vermillion Cliffs, and would continue to see them for the next hour or more.
I now realized why I couldn't continue north to Page. I had to follow Alternate 89 south until it hit 89, then take 89 north up the side of the plateau to its top. After a bit of travel at high altitude the road dove, slowly but steadily, to Page. As soon as it started its descent, still ten miles from Page, I could see the blue-green water of Lake Powell.
Page was founded in 1957 as housing for the workers building the Glen Canyon Dam. It is now a reasonably sized independent town.
An impressive arching metal bridge crosses Glen Canyon just south of the dam. North of the dam is Lake Powell, the second largest man-made lake in the world. Since the lake fills an orange rock canyon, which had very little soil, the water is fairly clear and a brilliant blue-green.
The tour of the dam is free and without a guide. I got a brochure from the guard (who also made sure I wasn't carrying a large backpack (we wouldn't want anyone taking a bomb down there)) and took the elevator down to the top of the dam.
After a short walk across the top of the dam, I took an elevator down to the bottom of the dam. From here I followed a walkway back to the generators, then out the back to just above the surface of the water.
It felt very strange walking around inside a dam unattended.
From the dam I had to retrace my path back over the plateau. Then I was heading south on U.S. 89, toward Flagstaff, down the western edge of the Navajo Nation.
Drivers are required to have their headlights on at all times along U.S. 89 in the Navajo reservation, and possibly throughout the reservation.
Most of the way down 89 orange cliffs followed me on the left. After a bit the bottoms of them looked like the South Dakota Badlands, rounded grey or beige hills with pink and mauve stripes, while the tops continued to be rocky, layered orange stone.
Scattered along the way were roadside stands selling Indian jewelry and blankets. They looked like fruit stands: open structures made of two-by-fours, sometimes painted, sometimes not, with angled shelves and corrugated tin sheets across the top.
The largest of these was Chief Yellowhorse's Trading Post. I stopped because one of the six yellow hand-painted signs leading to it said "CHIEF YELLOWHORSE (heart) YOU"
Here I bought a scorpion embedded in lucite. I knew I'd have to get one sooner or later. The bonus is that the base is green and glows in the dark.
There are six signs on the other side compelling northbound drivers to stop. On the back side are six signs begging drivers to stop and turn around. I suppose the ones I had seen approaching from the north had the same pleas on their backs.
Near Flagstaff I stopped at Sunset Crater National Monument. This is a volcano that erupted within the last millennium. They don't let you go up to the crater, but they let you look from the ground. They do let you walk on black lava flow areas, which is pretty neat.
Even if the name of the main drag in Flagstaff wasn't "Route 66", and even if so many businesses didn't have 66 shields on them, it would still be easy to tell that this city is on the Mother Road: there is a seemingly endless string of old motels all the way into town, sometimes appearing one after the other in strings of four or five.
I drove 66 into the center of Flagstaff, then did my best to follow it east. For most of the rest of the journey that wasn't too tough, since I-40 has physically replaced a lot of 66. I saw and drove a few parallel roadways, but many of them were deadends.
Many of th exits share the names of the attractions. I took the Twin Arrows exit to visit the Twin Arrows cafe. The two huge arrows are still there, but the cafe is closed.
The Two Guns exit led me past the Two Guns attraction. Even the gas station here was closed. The road going back to the ruins of the attraction was gated, and there was no one around.
My first real 66 stop was Meteor Crater, a privately-owned tourist attraction based on an actual meteor crater. At $8, it is too expensive. They've tried to increase the value, featuring a museum that covers this crater, Shoemaker (sp?) Levy 9 and other big things that have hit bigger things, and an Astronaut Hall of Fame. It is still too expensive.
The shining light here was the presence of two pressed penny machines, fifty cents each, that imprint both sides of the penny. I have never seen this before.
And, yes, the crater was impressive, just not worth $8 to see. $5 would have been better. Children under six get in free, and older children for $2, so it isn't that much worse for family groups.
Meteor City (you know, from the Kit Kat commercial), home of the world's largest Route 66 map, was at the Meteor City Road exit.
The Jack Rabbit Road exit took me right to the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, a famous Route 66 stop, but I didn't.
At the Geronimo Road exit I stopped at a trading post tourist stop named simply Geronimo. I bought some great old American Indian postcards here.
I saw a sign along I-40 that said "Watch for Elk", but I didn't see any.
Although billboards compelled me to, I didn't stand on a corner in Winslow.
Finally I arrived in Holbrook. Holbrook also has a lot of old motels along what was route 66. I got a room at the Wigwam Motel. The rooms are in individual stucco teepees and are based on the same blueprints as the Cave City, Kentucky, Wigwam Village #2, where I've stayed on two occasions.
There's no phone, so you won't find out about this until tomorrow. Besides, the battery is almost dead.
Tomorrow I head for the Petrified Forest National Park, then south in the general direction of Tucson.