Day Nine - Santa Fe, NM to Williams, AZ

The day began beautifully with a stunning drive down from the hills where Santa Fe is located to Albuquerque listening to The Little Willies with Norah Jones on vocals.

Central Avenue, Albuquerque is a wonderful stretch of original Route 66 with some fine neon, diners, gas stations and motels. What is great about this stretch through town is that it shows the convergence of the three main cultures in New Mexico (Anglo, Mexican and Native Indian) with cantinas huddled next to Whiting Bros gas stations and repair shops and Indian craft shops with rugs and beads next to them.

Out of Albuquerque and the road to Gallup. I-40 - which is a long highway that runs from Oklahoma through to California - runs on the original Route 66 throughout pretty much all of the rest of New Mexico and into Arizona. More Country music accompanied me along this road as I enjoyed the scenery of New Mexico - one minute flat plains and then elevation, colour and rocks for miles and then flat again...Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and others adding to the drama of the scenery.

"Well I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die..." - Folsom Prison Blues - Johnny Cash. Brilliant.

Coming into Arizona you feel that you really have arrived in the Wild, Wild West. Suddenly huge mountains and rocks flank the road - red rocks at that, and the scrub on top of desert dirt gives the impression of real Western country - no floral gardens here, thank you.

Bob Dylan's "Desire" may not have much to do with the place I was in, but the epic nature of the album - especially songs like the Hurricane and the 10 minute Joey - about the New York gangster Joey Gallo - fit right in with the epic scale of the Arizona landscape.
And "Desire" is a great album - one of his best.

Just before Holbrook I peeled off the freeway and visited the national park of the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. This is a 28 mile road which meanders through some absolutely breathtaking scenery. I remember being taken there as a child by my father - ever dilligent in ensuring that the kids saw all the main sites. It features wood - indeed whole trees - that have become fosilised and have turned to crystal format and agate in particular.

The place was full of tourists - mainly Americans and mainly white trash. While observing this species in its habitat,  I spotted two extremely rare phenomena in the park....

Firstly, a Japanese couple carrying absolutely NO camera equipment at all (yup - NONE) and secondly - and perhaps even more remarkable, an American family eating fresh fruit. Yes, FRESH FRUIT. Not a chocolate bar, soda or french fry in sight.

I was quite overcome.....

Also of great interest in the park is the Painted Desert - a series of remarkable geological formations in the desert which over thousands of years have created rocks with different coloured strata which - added to the shadows and the reflections of the sun - create a stunning view. Route 66 cuts across the park - but unfortunately it is one of the sections which is no longer in service.

There are also some examples of petroglyphics - carvings in stone made by native inhabitants thousands of years ago - confirming that there has been life in this area for a very long time.

My musical accompaniment through the Petrified Forest and then back on Route 66 through Holbrook was Bach's Goldberg Variations. Perfect - although a somewhat contrasting experience to the visual features provided by downtown Holbrook which is another MUST - SEE main street on Route 66.

This little town features another fine selection of Route 66 diners and motels - with one standing out from the crowd - the Wigwam Motel. (Strapline - "Have you ever slept in a Wigwam?"

Still operational today - all the rooms are concrete wigwams. It was opened  in 1950 and is still owned by the same family today. Even more impressive is the fact that the family's own collection of classic American cars from 1940's pick-ups to Beetles from the Seventies are parked outside the Wigwams making this into a Route 66 shrine. Great photo op which I couldn't turn down. The Wigwam motel became a chain and there is another in San Bernardino, California which I will look out for.

After the Goldberg Variations I moved on to Handel's Concerti Grossi - Concertos number 5, 6, 7 and 8. (I always feel that Handel was a bit of a rock'n'roller of his time and this stuff just lifts you up). Handel got me through to beyond Flagstaff as I peeled off towards the Grand Canyon - a small 120 miles diversion from Route 66.

As I turned off the freeway to head up to the canyon - I felt something more grandiose was required on the music front and so headed towards one of the most breathtaking natural sights in the world listening to Beethoven's 5th.

The road to the Grand Canyon is rammed with curio stores and souvenir shops vying for attention and about ten miles out there is a plethora of motels. I had thought about staying the night here - but this is Saturday in the summer and another 93 million people had also decided to visit the site with me. At 25$ a shot for each car entering the Grand Canyon National Park - someone is making some good money on the back of a natural landscape!

I had visited the Grand Canyon also as a small child and could remember being terrified of the heights. As I drove towards it I tried to recall how big it was...
I failed.

When I arrived by the side of the canyon I parked up and took my camera to the "edge". It is vast. It is more than vast - it is gigantic, enormous, colossal.

It is impossible to describe the scale, the grandeur and the stunning views - just as it is impossible to describe the extent to which I suffer from fear of heights. I managed not to lie down on my front or crawl - which I often end up doing when very high up and very scared, but I did start to get dizzy and feel sick. So I rattled off some photographs from what I considered a safe distance from the edge (the drop is about 5,000 feet or around 1,700 metres - and it is straight down) and got back into the car. Relief!

 I recalled the same fear from my childhood when we had come here before as a family.

The only place I can remember which is as impressive from a physical and natural perspective is Meteora in Greece with the monasteries perched on top of huge rocky mountainous "pilons" reaching for the Heavens.

If you ever get a chance to go to The Grand Canyon - do it. It is extraordinary.

The return to Route 66 was Beethoven's 3rd and dusk was starting so I thought it was time to pull up for the night.

I knew that one of these days luck was going to be against me - and today was the day. Five motels in Williams - all no vacancy. I headed out of town and hoped....

As it was starting to get properly dark I spotted a Best Western and charged to it.

I waited patiently at reception while four Dutch guys tried to get directions from Mabel the receptionist to the nearest steakhouse in Williams. (The whole town is only a mile long - but it took them 12 minutes to clarify this).

While I was waiting I noticed a family unpack their luggage from a pick-up truck. It was all in dustbin bags with the kids running riot around the reception area. Then a drunk woman covered in tattoos arrived to join the early evening crowd in the lobby. I was beginning to get just a little concerned about the clientele here - but if I'd only known where I would end up....

In the meantime, I was getting bored, pissed off and uncomfortable in about that order and eventually butted into the Dutch Dinner Directions Debate and asked if they had a room. The Dutch were stunned into silence as Mabel let out a huge laugh and looked at me as though I were the moron - instead of her entire clientele - and informed me that they had been fully booked for months. So much for a "No Vacancy" sign on the door like everyone else...

The last chance was in the form of a really miserable looking [End of] Days Inn. I hadn't thought that the Days Inn in Clinton, Oklahoma could be surpassed in crapness.... But how wrong I was. Oh yes. Terribly wrong. And worse - they had just one room left - at the extortionate price of $120 + tax!

I took it.

I was tired, hungry and fed up with driving. That was my only excuse.

The hotel was ghastly and full of misfits, morons, miscreants, deviants, the deranged and the  generally disturbed .... plus me.

The room smelled awful, and the air conditioner - when you could get it to work - made it smell worse. The toilet was yellow - and that was not its original colour. The carpet was sticky and crunchy in equal measure. The floor above waspaper thing so I could hear the guy above me fart and change TV channel (which he sometimes did at the same time) and the bed was itchy. Apart from that it was five star....

Dinner at "Dennys" which is just across the yard from the motel - I didn't want to go further away because I was worried that one of the deranged deviants will steal my bags from the room, plus I may bump into the Dutch Dinner club in downtown Williams and I didn't think I could stand another detailed discussion on the directions for their not-so-distant domicile during dinner...

"Dennys" is crap. Really. No other word springs to mind. Faced with a choice of biscuits and gravy, classic diner meatloaf and gravy or a cholesterol infested bacon burger - I opt for the latter and sit and watch my fellow diners. Very depressing.

A local girl comes in and sits at the bar. She's probably around 21 or 22. She's very fat - but that's not remarkable. She has piercings all over her face and tattoos on her arms which are rather difficult to distinguish one from the other. She is wearing a top so tight her chest is falling out of the top and she has a flopped-out, badly-dyed black mohican which has fallen over one side of her otherwise shaved head and nestles above her very large hearing aid.

As she sits down, one of the bartenders - who must weigh about 300 pounds - comes wobbling over. He rests his very large and wobbly face and his five chins in his hands and leans on the bar and asks the girl what she wants to drink.

She orders a Cosmopolitan and I nearly choke on my bacon burger. A Cosmo! The drink made famous by the TV series Sex in the City - a series about trendy and sexy women living in New York. A drink synonymous with style, flair, sex and status.

A drink now being ordered and consumed by Brenda Slobovich from Williams, Arizona - centre of nowhere in particular (and twin town of Clinton, Oklahoma - I'm sure of it). I guess it shows the power of TV in terms of influencing the masses. It certainly doesn't make Brenda more attractive, sexy or appealing. In fact it just makes her sadder and more depressing.

I watched Brenda and Brendan Burgerchops - the greasy sumo barman - making eyes at each other and I could feel my dinner about to make a swift return to the table - so I got the check and got out. I hope to God that Brenda never has sex - apart from the stomach churning imagery, we really don't need that kind of DNA spread - and I am sure she will never visit a city, but in the meantime, she can certainly carry on drinking Cosmos with Mr. Burgerchops and live in hope - another kind of American Dream . . .

Back to the splendour of the [End of] Days Inn just before a massive thunderstorm strikes and I worried about the possibility of the very heavy rain breaking the not so heavy window in my room. Not that the noise level could get anyworse - just that a new level of discomfort could actually be achieved in a room that has already plumbed new depths....

Anyway - this post will go up tomorrow as there is no signal for any wireless device in Williams - and possibly large chunks of Arizona.

If I get out of here alive and without having contracted any fatal diseases, I will be facing the choice of going to Utah for a diversion, hitting Vegas or heading on through to California and using a day or two to enjoy the Pacific Coast before I fly to New York....choices, choices....

I quite fancy having some drinks with the Mormons, so mileage permitting, that may be the choice with a brief stop in Vegas on the way back to Route 66....

We'll see....

In the meantime, it's time to get some sleep - if I can block out the noise of the rain and Harry "Windypop" Fartmeister my upstairs neighbour....