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.