Over the Hill and Far Away……….

We set off fairly early this morning to get a head start before the wind got too bad. The forecast predicted high winds and we had been told that they would get worse later in the morning as the day warmed up.

We were on the Interstate 40 again which follows the path of the old Route 66. It passed through the Painted Desert and Apache and Navajo country. Somewhere around there, as we were going through the Petrified Forest area, we were seized with an uncontrollable urge to replenish our stock of petrified wood and therefore stopped off at a rather quaint shack just of the highway. Apart from a rather interesting collection of old cars and shop-window dummies, the other thing that struck us was the rather large number of ostriches about the place. The only person about was an African-American woman who was busy collecting a new-laid ostrich egg which she then sat polishing as she tried to sell us various chunks of rock. She didn’t seem able to grasp that we would have difficulty carrying a petrified tree trunk on the bikes. There were some amazing fossils there though and if we’d had a pickup truck and a large amount of money we’d probably have a whole dinosaur with us now.

The rest of the journey was more to be endured than enjoyed really. The wind got up and at times we really had to struggle to keep the bikes going straight. It wasn’t particularly dangerous as the roads were wide and fairly quiet but it was just hard work. As a matter of interest Mark clocked the length of one of the big freight trains we keep seeing – it was 1.75 miles long!

About 50 miles from Flagstaff we spotted Winslow and had to stop off and get a photo – standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona (you have to be an Eagles or Jackson Browne fan to appreciate this). It was sad to think that the girl in the flatbed Ford is probably playing bingo in a care home somewhere now!

After just under 200 miles we reached Flagstaff. It’s a town quite high up in the mountains about 7000 feet above sea level and reminded us, respectively, of Canada or the Alps. It was noticeably cooler and a smell of pine was in the air. There is still some snow on the mountain tops in the distance.

Because of the early start and having lost an hour crossing into the Pacific time zone we arrived much earlier than expected. We couldn’t check into the hotel yet (and a special shout-out here for the hotel manager who has missed his vocation and ought really to be an instructor in an unhelpfulness class).

With time to kill we went exploring the town and to our delight found that it is within walking distance of the hotel, and is a real town with a real town-centre with shops and restaurants and bars (some with their own micro-breweries). People actually walk around it and socialise on the streets so it is quite a contrast to some of the places we have stopped recently. There is also an open-air market for the Memorial Day weekend selling a wide variety of hand-crafted tat and indigestible food.

After a pleasant couple of hours in downtown Flagstaff we were finally able to check into our hotel where we freshened up and recovered from the exertions of the day. Once restored to full vigour we did it all again and walked into the town centre where we ate at a Thai restaurant. We got to see the local bar-cycle which people pedal between the various bars in town. Walking back we had to take a detour to get around a massive, double-decker Amtrak passenger train which had stopped at the town station and overlapped it by several hundred metres.

Tomorrow we’re planning to visit the Grand Canyon which is about 50 miles from here.