A Hop & A Skip Along Route 66

We drove from Las Vegas, NV to Cortez, CO, making a couple of quick stops along the way.  We drove on I-40 which follows the old Route 66, stopping in Williams, AZ and Gallup, NM.  Both of these towns tout their Route 66 history, but that's where their similarities end.  Williams is a cute, 'hopping', little town.  Gallup could just be skipped, in our opinion.

Williams proudly proclaims that it was the last town on Route 66 that was by-passed by I-40.  That happened in October 1984.

The town has created a destination for itself with cute shops, restaurants, and bars all along Route 66.

Gallup, on the other hand, has no such attractions along its stretch of 66.  It's full of trading posts and pawn shops.  In fact, when searching for 'things to do' in Gallup, the first 5-6 'attractions' we found were trading posts/pawn shops.  They do have a nice memorial to Route 66 with a John Steinbeck quote engraved.

Both towns have a railroad track running right along their main street, and both towns have quite a bit of commercial train traffic.  Williams has capitalized on this and its proximity to the Grand Canyon by establishing the Grand Canyon Railway.

For a fee, folks can park in Williams and hop on the train for a ride to the canyon.  This is a popular adventure for RV'ers.  If we had not already seen the Grand Canyon, we may have considered doing so.  In November & December, the Grand Canyon Railway becomes the Polar Express.  Kids get to ride the train in their PJ's, drink hot chocolate, and meet Santa.  We know a couple of young boys in Austin that would go nuts for a chance to ride it.

Gallup's train tracks are very busy and noisy, and are only used for commercial purposes.  We're not knocking the busy train traffic, mind you.  We do appreciate the increased use of trains over trucks.  We only bring this up to highlight differences between the two towns.

 

We've found that RV parks are often situated for easy access to/from busy highways, without a lot of concern about nearby noise.  Neither of the two RV parks that we stayed in were exceptions to this.  We stayed in the Grand Canyon Railroad RV Park in Williams, and were within 100 yards of the railroad track.  Fortunately, there wasn't much train noise throughout the night.  In Gallup, we were further from the train tracks, but clearly heard trains all night.  In addition, the park is situated right at the end of the runway for their local airport.

Even though the air traffic was limited to small planes and helicopters, the noise was loud when they flew directly overhead landing or taking off.  This went on both day and night.

We've jumped off Route 66 now and will spend a couple of weeks in southwestern Colorado.  The weather forecast is very mild as we pass into autumn.  We hope to see some fall colors in the higher elevations, but we may be a little early.

Singing "Leavin' Las Vegas!"

Leavin' Las Vegas!
Leavin' Las Vegas!
Viva, Leavin' Las Vegas!

(Sung to the tune of "Viva Las Vegas!", of course.)  We were very glad to leave Las Vegas after our stay there extended an additional, unplanned week.  As is the way of life when full-timing in an RV, we are rather at the mercy of service providers and parts availability when anything needs repair or maintenance.  Such was the case while we were in Las Vegas.  Our HDMI matrix went bad, and getting it resolved resulted in our 1-week stay stretching to 2 weeks.  Las Vegas is fine for a few days of fun, but it's much too hot for much longer than that.  To make it even worse, it wasn't a 'dry' heat as the tail end of the monsoon season brought daily showers and kept the humidity very high.

For the most part, we did enjoy our stay and left less than $50 in their gambling coffers.  Rather than gambling, we decided to spend our money on live entertainment.  We went to see Penn & Teller at the Rio one evening.  They put on a very good show, and afterwards made themselves available for pictures.

When we were looking for shows that were available during our stay, we had seen that Jerry Seinfeld was coming to Vegas.  However, it looked like we would miss him since we were scheduled to leave a couple of days before he arrived.  As it turned out, our HDMI matrix went bad, yadda yadda yadda, we bought tickets for Jerry Seinfeld.  He performed at the Colosseum in Caesars Palace and we really enjoyed his show.  As you might expect, there were no photo ops with him after the show, so this is the only picture we got.

We are big fans of the TV show 'Pawn Stars', so had to go see the pawn shop while we were there.

It's actually much smaller than it appears on TV--maybe a case of the camera adding 10 pounds AND 20 feet?  We could easily identify the spots where the show is filmed, and we spotted several of the items we've seen them buy.  We made a point of looking for the sports championship rings.

We made the drive down to Lake Havasu City to see the London Bridge.  We were expecting something a bit bigger and grander, but were glad that we saw it.

Anywhere that we stay, we figure that once we're able to navigate around the city without the aid of maps or GPS, it's time to move on.  We became very familiar with getting around Las Vegas.  We understand that it's one of the fastest growing cities in the US, but truly we don't see the appeal.  Maybe we're just getting old?  In any case, we're heading for cooler climates.  Our next real destination is southern Colorado, making a couple of quick stops along the way.

Southwest Utah--More of America's Treasures

We moved about 250 miles south of Salt Lake City to the town of Cedar City, giving us easy access to a number of canyons and national parks.  We allotted 2 weeks for our stay there so we could see as many as we could.  As we traveled south, the landscape changed gradually (and sometimes not so gradually) to highly-eroded rocks, cliffs, and canyons, red being the predominant color--iconic Utah.  We had originally planned to stay in the town of Virgin, right outside Zion National Park, but comparing the forecasted temperatures for that area at 100+ everyday to the forecasted temperatures for Cedar City at 80+ everyday, we chose to be a little further away from the park and cooler.

There are a number of gorgeous areas to explore in this part of Utah.  Our list consisted of Cedar Breaks National Monument, Red Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Kolob Canyons, and Zion National Park.

Our first couple of outings were to drive through Cedar Breaks and Kolob.  Each are an easy drive from Cedar City, and offer a short scenic drive.  Cedar Breaks gives you a preview to Bryce Canyon's beauty.  The pinnacles are called hoodoos, which are everywhere in Bryce.

Kolob Canyons is actually a part of Zion National Park, and gives a preview to that park.  Hoodoos are not what you find there, but instead sheer carved rock which at times appears to have been formed by an artist rather than water and wind.

We decided that this would be an ideal area to take in some of views by horseback.  We found an easy trail ride through Red Canyon.  Butch Cassidy was from this area and lore has it that he spent a lot of time here.  Our ride took us along the Cassidy Trail.

SheM was on Leo, a very docile horse that had obviously walked the trail many, many times and did not need/want any direction from her.  HeM was on Red--halfway through the ride, one of the guides told him that Red had been a bronco before joining the troops, and has to be ridden by experienced guides for the first few weeks of each new season before he calms down to the slower pace.  HeM had no problems with Red.

Bryce Canyon is a wonderful place to visit.

Hiking trails offer a more intimate experience with the canyon.  We chose one that combined an 'easy' hike with a 'moderate' one, Queens/Navajo Combination Loop, and we were not disappointed with our choice.  We enjoyed the walk.  The only problem with going down 600' into the canyon, though, is that you then have to hike UP those 600'.  And this trail saves about 400 of those feet until the very end where the path is a continuous series of switchbacks to the top.  With several 'breather' stops, we made it.

After Bryce, we visited Zion National Park.

Again, we chose a couple of trails to hike.  We decided to stick with 'easy' ones in this park, given that the temperatures are so much higher than Bryce, and we weren't up for a strenuous uphill trek.

On the eastern side of the park, a one-mile tunnel was built into one of the mountains.  This picture is one of the 4 openings along that mile allowing light and air into the tunnel.  And you can hear echoing car horns from inside.  We drove through and honked our horn, too, of course.

Cedar City is an interesting town.  Its moniker is Festival City USA.  Every summer it hosts the Utah Shakespeare Festival.  Every day for three months, one or two plays are presented.  They have an outdoor theater as well as an indoor auditorium for the plays.  We saw Love's Labour's Lost one rainy afternoon.

We've now moved on to our next stop, Las Vegas.  The scenery is much different, the temperatures are hotter, and it may offer us treasures of another kind?  We won't count on it, though.