Get your kicks on Route 66! With some Grand Canyon and other adventures

:scratchin How about Colorado?

Colorado is 4th with 4. All these come from wiki answers, by the way. In case I am wrong, that is my source.

I still gotta get to Utah one of these days. We are planning on a northern Cali trip for next summer, so we'll cross a few more of those off the list.
 
Hello everyone!

I am Rachel, a 30 year old attorney from Columbus Ohio (originally from the Pittsburgh area, go Pittsburgh sports teams!).

:offtopic: I just found your trip report. I didn't get past the first post and I like you already. I am from north of Pittsburgh and love all teams "black & yellow." I live in Columbus, and I worked as a legal assistant for 6 years.

Back to reading...
 
We were about to begin the Route 66 portion of our trip, but we had two cool stops to make along the way.



If you can't read what the sign says that is the Wupatki National Monument.

This is a description from the website:

Wupatki! Here in one of the warmest driest places on the Colorado Plateau, with little obvious food or water, people lived and others visited from far and wide. Trade items from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico have been discovered here. Eventually the builders of Wupatki and nearby pueblos moved on, but on trails, and through items left behind, you can let their stories touch you!

The large pueblos preserved at Wupatki National Monument were constructed in the years following the eruption of nearby Sunset Crater, sometime between 1040 and 1100. Volcanic ash, deposited in thin layers, retained moisture and improved farming for an increased
population at Wupatki.



It was only a short drive until we were at our first pull off.

We jumped out of the car, excited to see some ruins.

Ok, to be technical we limped out of the car. Very sore, remember?

We saw this little guy on the short walk:















I loved these pueblo ruins. At this particular area there were 3 different dwellings (that were still standing, that is). One was kind of off by itself and was pretty big. The other two were about a hundred yards away.

Then we found this really weird sign:



Apparently Wupatki does not allow Scottie dogs. Go figure.





Then we were off to the next little stop.

Which turned out be a sort of defensive fort on the top of a high hill.





This place was amazing. They had rooms for families along the outer edge of the hill, then an open area on the inside where everyone could gather and get work done.









No one really knows what the area was for, but the best guess is that it was probably a retreat in times of danger. Tons of people could hole up inside on top of the hill for long periods at a time.

Back into Little Big Engine (the car) we went and we headed to the last stop, and you know the phrase save the best for last? Well this place delivered.

Continued in next post...
 


There was a little visitor's center and then there was this:





It was huge! And so impressive. Some of the rooms had a sort of vent system built so they could either bring in cooler air or vent out the smoke from cook fires.









They also had a gaming arena.







And probably best of all there is a natural feature in the ground that may be one reason why they built this gigantic place here. It is called the blowhole and it is basically a natural air conditioner. Very cold air comes up from below. This day it wasn't blowing too much, but people who were looking at it with us told us that some days the air pressure
is so high you can float objects above the hole.



We stopped back at the visitor center and gift shop and got my favorite purchase of the trip. A national parks passport where you can get little stamps of all the parks you stop at! We had looked for one at the Grand Canyon but couldn't find one, luckily we grabbed a few stamps on pieces of paper they had lying out.

This was probably one of the hottest afternoons and we were still a bit tired from our early morning, so after doing a little exploring we were back out onto the road.

We had one more stop before the hotel.



Sunset Crater Volcano.

Once again a description from the website: Sunset Crater Volcano! Roughly 900 years ago, the eruption of this volcano reshaped the surrounding landscape, forever changing the lives of people, plants and animals. Hike the trail through the lava flow and cinders and you’ll likely discover colorful, ruggedly dramatic geological features coexisting with twisted Ponderosa Pines and an amazing array of wildlife.

We were really torn because we wanted to hike a trail here, but we were very tired and sore. Luckily it was taken out of our hands because we saw a sign that the trail was closed due to erosion of the top of the volcano.

But there was an area you could park and do a short trail around the bottom of the volcano.

















After the brief stop we were back on the road again for our final destination of the day.

Up next: we find some remnants of Route 66! And stay in a themed hotel :goodvibes
 
:offtopic: I just found your trip report. I didn't get past the first post and I like you already. I am from north of Pittsburgh and love all teams "black & yellow." I live in Columbus, and I worked as a legal assistant for 6 years.

Back to reading...

Welcome :thumbsup2

I like you already too :)

Hope your enjoying the report!
 
Did you guys make any plans yet on things you want to do?

DH and I are avid amateur photographers. We plan to take as many pictures as possible. DH and I have been to the GC at least twice before so we don't have any pressing must do; aside from a mule ride (which will have to wait until DS is 16).

We will have come from Sedona and are heading to Page after GC. Plans are locked in for Sedona and Page.

For the GC, we figured we would play it by ear. I'd like to walk down to Ooh Aah Point; but it all depends on DS13. We will have done a 6 mile walk in Sedona and I wasn't sure how he would cope (he's not a sporty kid). I know they rent bikes; so that's an option. But my fall back is walking the rim trail with DS rather than renting bikes. We will have a car; so we can always drive from look-out to look-out.
 


We stopped back at the visitor center and gift shop and got my favorite purchase of the trip. A national parks passport where you can get little stamps of all the parks you stop at! We had looked for one at the Grand Canyon but couldn't find one, luckily we grabbed a few stamps on pieces of paper they had lying out.

:thumbsup2 :love: I've had a parks passport for years and I am obsessed with getting as many stamps as I can. I have already filled up the green section (Western Region).

Glad you enjoyed the ruins. Sunset Crater is one of our favorite monuments to visit. The drive to and from Flagstaff is very pretty.
 
DH and I are avid amateur photographers. We plan to take as many pictures as possible. DH and I have been to the GC at least twice before so we don't have any pressing must do; aside from a mule ride (which will have to wait until DS is 16).

We will have come from Sedona and are heading to Page after GC. Plans are locked in for Sedona and Page.

For the GC, we figured we would play it by ear. I'd like to walk down to Ooh Aah Point; but it all depends on DS13. We will have done a 6 mile walk in Sedona and I wasn't sure how he would cope (he's not a sporty kid). I know they rent bikes; so that's an option. But my fall back is walking the rim trail with DS rather than renting bikes. We will have a car; so we can always drive from look-out to look-out.


You'll have to let me see some of the pictures you take!

What are your plans in Sedona? We only had a night and a morning there, but we did take a Star Gazing tour (if you are interested, it was amazing).


:thumbsup2 :love: I've had a parks passport for years and I am obsessed with getting as many stamps as I can. I have already filled up the green section (Western Region).

Glad you enjoyed the ruins. Sunset Crater is one of our favorite monuments to visit. The drive to and from Flagstaff is very pretty.

I am obsessed with my passport! I even wanted to go to Cleveland this summer just so I could get the Cuyahoga stamp!
 
We were pretty tired from all the days' events so were glad to be on the road to our final destination.

The road we were on finally coincided with how I'd always thought of Route 66.



We passed town names like 'Two Guns' and started to see a lot of signs for the Meteor Crater, which I was excited to see because I like good ol' fashioned tourist traps!

I was trying to find a good song on the radio and we even came across Meteor Crater radio! So we listened to that for a good 5 minutes before we were bored to death of it.





There were train tracks next to the highway and we saw some 50 million trains (Sheldon would have been so excited).

Who doesn't just love tourist trap gift shop teepees along the side of the road?!



Finally around 8 pm we rolled into our stopping point for the night: Holbrook Arizona.





We were staying at the Globetrotter:



I can't recommend this motel highly enough! It is run by a couple of Austrians who take customer service and hospitality to the extreme. And to top that all off it is themed after the 50s!

And if you don't want to take my word for it, I believe it is one of the top ranked hotels in Arizona on trip advisor.



Look at the pool!









Um yeah, those are black velvet Indian paintings on the wall. Doesn't get much better than that!



I loved the sink:



There is only one slight, teensy thing against the Globetrotter...

Across the street is a teepee hotel!!



Seriously, you can spend the night in a teepee. Brian got a little bit of grief for booking us at the Globetrotter when there were giant teepees across the street. Seriously, I loved the Globetrotter, but I am also 5 so I wanted to stay in a teepee.

Anyway, we got all our stuff unpacked and we relaxed for a bit while we looked up nearby places to eat on urban spoon.... and we found the best place ever!!

So we headed out for the short drive...

teepees in the dark!!



And we ended up at Joe and Aggie's Cafe:





This was our appetizer:



Their Mexican food was actually very spicy. So I'm glad I just got a BLT.



And yes, I was embarrassing Brian with all these food pictures. Pretty sure he told me that we were not in Disney so I wasn't allowed. But of course I didn't listen.



So why was I so excited to eat here??

Hmm...




Yep, this is one of the places that gave John Lasseter the idea for Cars. The owner was hanging around the place and when he saw us leaving and lingering at the Cars merchandise display cases, he was more than happy to give us the story.

Apparently Lasseter was driving his daughter to college across country. They just happened to stop at Joe and Aggie's and got to talking to the owner and his mom. They all talked for hours, and Lasseter kept in touch and made a few more visits.



After the movie came out Lasseter sent all these signed pictures and he sent out 'a box' of merchandise. The owner told us that he was thinking oh yeah, a little box is on the way. It turned out to be this huge crate of toys and stuff that take up two huge display cases in the restaurant.

The owner also asked if we had seen the wigwam hotel, we said we had, and he told us that it was the inspiration for the Cozy Cone Motel.

It was getting pretty late so we listened to another couple notable places around town that we should seek out, then we made the 2 minute drive back to the hotel and were immediately asleep since we had another early morning.

Up Next: Holbrook exploration and the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert.
 
You'll have to let me see some of the pictures you take!

What are your plans in Sedona? We only had a night and a morning there, but we did take a Star Gazing tour (if you are interested, it was amazing).


I've been posting life in Melbourne on my DisBlog......er......PTR, pictures and all.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2958450


I'm planning on walking the Oak Canyon West Fork trail and will be doing the Verde Canyon train whilst in Sedona. We're staying near Cathedral Rock in Sedona. The last time we were in Sedona, I was pregnant with DS. DH and I figured we would bring him back so that he could see it at some stage.
 
Even before I read down to the Lasseter story I could see Radiator Springs in your night picture with the truck and the wigwams! Haven't been up to that part of AZ in a long time. I do remember liking Sunset Crater as a kid. I can swear we drove or hiked to the top and looked into it, but I got dragged to a lot of national parks as a kid.

If you are doing Northern California next summer, see if you have time to go to Crater Lake just into southern Oregon. Great hiking trails and the most beautiful shade of blue lake ever.

PHXscuba
 
I've been posting life in Melbourne on my DisBlog......er......PTR, pictures and all.

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2958450


I'm planning on walking the Oak Canyon West Fork trail and will be doing the Verde Canyon train whilst in Sedona. We're staying near Cathedral Rock in Sedona. The last time we were in Sedona, I was pregnant with DS. DH and I figured we would bring him back so that he could see it at some stage.

I will have to check out your blog, sounds interesting :thumbsup2

Even before I read down to the Lasseter story I could see Radiator Springs in your night picture with the truck and the wigwams! Haven't been up to that part of AZ in a long time. I do remember liking Sunset Crater as a kid. I can swear we drove or hiked to the top and looked into it, but I got dragged to a lot of national parks as a kid.

If you are doing Northern California next summer, see if you have time to go to Crater Lake just into southern Oregon. Great hiking trails and the most beautiful shade of blue lake ever.

PHXscuba

You might have hiked to the top, the trail to the top was only recently closed.

I'll take you recommendation into consideration, but I am not sure if we'll go so far north as Oregon, but we'll see.
 
We were up bright and early so we could make it to all our many stops today!

We got all our bags all organized and packed back into Little Big Engine, then we decided to grab some free breakfast.

I have never seen a hotel with a free breakfast quite like this. We were greeted warmly when we entered the lobby and shown to the little breakfast nook. There were cozy little tables that had our room numbers set out so we'd know where to sit.





There was juice and coffee and cereal and bagels and some other things.



I just really can't say too much about the customer service at this place. The man running the desk at the time spoke with us while we ate and asked where we were headed and gave suggestions on stops we might find interesting.

We finished eating and headed out, I got another picture of the Wigwams:



And we decided to do some close up exploring.





I guess older cars must be super cheap in Arizona, because every hotel we passed in this town liked to use them as decoration. Our Globetrotter had a few parked out front, and the Wigwam motel had one at every Wigwam.

The Globetrotter's old cars:



There are also some highly suspicious cars in these following photos...perhaps a very rusty truck and a certain towtruck that are sitting close to each other...which may have given someone an idea for a certain towmater.

















It was time to be moving along so we headed to the next notable place in town: The Bucket of Blood saloon. According to stories from the Joe and Aggie's owner, the shootout that happened at the Bucket of Blood was a bloodier battle than the OK Corral, and the cleanup involved filling buckets with blood, hence the name Bucket of Blood saloon.



Sadly, the Saloon has fallen into disrepair and was borded up. I feel like if someone restored it and opened it as half bar/tourist attraction and museum it could be pretty popular. Who wouldn't want a tshirt?







The Saloon was across the street from the old train station. We'd heard from Joe and Aggie's owner that Geronomo had been loaded onto. Invitations had also been sent out for a hanging to be held at the station, the invitations specified that it was to be a black tie affair for the hanging of John Smiley.



Always talk to the locals guys, they have some interesting stories.

This was the old looking area around the Saloon and the train station:







We drove around and took some pictures of interesting signs/other stuff around the town.





to be continued immediately...
 
Joe and Aggie's in the daytime:













I liked this street because the GPS insisted on calling it Nava Joe road.
















It was only a short 15 minute drive to the start of the Petrified Forest. On the outskirts a lot of shops had set up selling pieces of Petrified wood. You are not allowed to take pieces out of the National Park itself, but these tourist places had found their chunks outside of the Park grounds (hopefully).






Next Up: we finally make it to the National Parks
 


Our first stop was the Visitor's Center which was just a minute or two inside the Park. I made sure to get my stamp!





We watched a bit of the video that explained how the petrified wood was formed. They also had some fossil skeletons and other things to look at inside the center.




I thought this guy was pretty cute:



You can't really read these, but these are letters from little kids who took pieces of petrified wood and felt guilty so mailed them back:



Lots of people used to take wood back before it was a National Park, and I guess people still try, even though they do random searches of cars when you leave.





I bought a tshirt, then we followed the very short trail behind the Visitor's Center to look at some of the petrified wood.

Hope everyone is ready for some pictures because some of this wood was gorgeous!













Hello little friend:





This is the best known petrified tree. I forget if it is the biggest, it might be. It is at the top of the little trail by the Visitor's Center.














We left the Visitor's Center area and stopped at a National Park sanctioned gift shop. They were selling petrified wood there and we picked out a real nice chunk that could sit on a shelf at home, it was all nicely polished up and was only $15. Then we drove a short distance to another trail/outlook, the Crystal Forest trail. So named because the area was just covered with petrified wood.









We really took a lot of pictures here and I'm trying to be selective but everything was just so pretty.

We saw one of these guys:



I guess it is pretty rare to see a pronghorn sheep, so that was lucky.



What a great look for me hahaha:



to be continued immediately...
 


Back into the car we went and headed to our next stop:





If you look closely you can see the concrete reinforcement under the petrified tree. I guess they used to do things like this, but now they don't reinforce or help out the natural formations, if they fall they fall, they don't like to meddle with them.


At this point we were also starting to get into the Painted Desert, so we got some super pretty views like this:



The picture doesn't really do it justice, I thought the colors made the hills look like giant seashells.











Then we were at another stop that had historical Pueblo ruins!

I'm not sure if I was too pleased to see more ruins at this point. It was starting to get towards late lunchtime and we didn't have any food and there was nowhere to stop since we were still in the National Park.

But we still wanted to see the ruins, so off we went.





We also got see some neat paintings and markers.









Back into the car just to stop once again at another sign.

This little display commemorated old Route 66.





See the telephone poles that are closer to us? Those mark the old Route 66, and you can even see the newer highway off in the distance a bit.



Cars was right, it is a shame that all the cool Route 66 stuff got bypassed when they put the highway in.

Then we officially passed over into the Painted Desert:



Then we found this guy:



I'm pretty sure he was saying 'Hello, my name is Black Feather and I will be your spiritual guide for your journey through the Painted Desert'.

He was huge!









 
This place used to be a restaurant/hotel for visitors to stop at, now it is a little museum/gift shop called the Painted Desert Inn Museum.





The ceiling was super cool:







We were super hungry by this time and it was around 2 pm and getting hot so we were done. We didn't get randomly checked but we stopped at the big Visitor's Center for this end of the park, which was a mistake. It was packed! I am not sure where all these people came from since we definitely didn't see them out on the road or trails. There was a cafeteria type place but it was also packed and we really didn't feel like eating there, so we headed out in search of food and saw some more interesting stops along the road.





This place really scared me. You see the mannequin leg sticking out of the dinosaurs mouth? Well there was a ton of stuff like that. Against my better instincts we decided to drive up to check out the gift shop.



Yeah, there is definitely another mannequin inside this dinosaur's mouth. And all the mannequins seemed to be women....so yeah. Fun.

Not a good place to be a mannequin. Except for this one, who seemed to be the only one to conquer their dinosaur rather than be eaten:



All hail the victorious mannequin!

There was a pen full of ostriches next to the gift shop. I took one look at the gift shop and informed Brian that I was not in the mood to be murdered and have my skin removed to make a hat so we were leaving.



All of those other cars looked broken down. I'm sure they had belonged to other unwary tourists who stopped to pet the ostriches and ended up killed in numerous macabre ways...and there their cars sit to this day.

Being a man, and not as well informed as we women are of the serial killing nature of places such as this, he insisted on getting out of the car and taking pictures of the ostriches.

I promptly locked all the doors (sorry Brian, you took your chances) and nervously checked the place out while he snapped away.



There was a sign on the fence stating that you could feed the ostriches for $5. I had the sad thought that that might be the only time the poor ostriches got fed.

There was also a sign next to that stating that the ostriches were all for sale.

How do you like that for a souvenir? Just strap an ostrich to the roof and take it back to Ohio.



That one was friendly, should have grabbed him.



Brian had enough of his ostrich close up picture taking so I unlocked the doors for him and we were on our way.

We never did catch sight of the proprietor of that gift shop, I imagine he was in the shack out back sharpening his skin removal tools. I'm sure he had his eyes on us.

Dodged a bullet there.

We ended up going back through Holbrook and couldn't help but take a few more pictures.

We hadn't got a picture before of the street sign:



This apparently quite frequently makes lists of the oddest street names in America.

We did another gift shop stop, this one looked a lot more reputable than the last:



And yeah, we were starving and cranky at this point, but you can never be hungry enough not to go into a gift shop.

They were selling huge chunks of petrified wood for thousands of dollars.



They also had some shined up that could be used as tables, which looked lovely but were way out of the budget. Not to mention too big to go inside of the car. Guess it coulda gone on the roof with the ostrich.

We decided to head to Winslow to find some lunch (finally) since we had been told that Winston was also a good Route 66 town and it was only about 15 minutes away from Holbrook.


Along the way we saw some awesome signs for this Jack Rabbit place, which I later read are a Route 66 staple and inspirational to Lasseter as well.









We began to explore Winston and look for a place to eat. We finally ended up at a place called Casablanca (which I thought was named after the movie, I had no idea it was also Spanish for white house). It wasn't the best of places and wasn't really Route 66 themed so I was not pleased. I also am not the biggest fan of Mexican food so was slightly happy to see they had a hamburger on the menu.

Winston was pretty much a huge bust. We drove around for a while but didn't really see any cool Route 66 stuff. I would definitely recommend Holbrook over Winslow.

We really needed to head towards Sedona by now. We had our star gazing tour scheduled for tonight and we desperately needed to have some downtime at the hotel there.

But of course we got ensnared by the biggest tourist trap in the area...

to be continued!

next up: where we discover the 'biggest' tourist trap in the area!!
 

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