Grand Canyon and Route 66

  Well, we decided we had to do some of the Route 66 (just south of I-40) on Wednesday as we're traveling east.  We unfortunately chose an exit about 50 miles too soon...it was really a pot-holey, desolate road!  We eventually got back to I-40 and it was almost as bad, except with lots of trucks.  We mentioned the enormous amount of commerce taking place on this route----probably 50% or more of the traffic is trucks, plus many rail tracks and very long trains traveling each way.  A note about the truck drivers:  you may have noticed on long hauls, truckers tend to race downhill to gain momentum and then try to coast and use their momentum up the next hill...DON'T GET IN THEIR WAY!

We had lots and lots of wind (40 mph gusts) and rutty roads and 300 miles to go, so it was a long day.  Interesting to see how the desert dwellers live and how few people live along these 300 miles in such a populated state.  Lots of the houses (?) were boarded up.   We didn't get to the RV park soon enough for me!

What a charming, unique town Williams, AZ is!  We will spend more time tomorrow roaming around the town, but had a great dinner out at the Red Raven last night and then the Grand Canyon today!

As those of you who have been, know, it's GORGEOUS!  I had never been before but Jeff had done a raft trip down the Colorado 35+ years ago, but hadn't spent any time on the rim.  We went to all the normal tourist stops and enjoyed the beauty of it all.  Really amazing beautiful colors.  I found it calming yet it made me alarmingly aware of the ease of stepping off the edge given the strong winds, super long drop and lack of guardrails or ped protection from the edge.  We were looking through a book in the gift shop that was about the deaths that have occurred in the Grand Canyon...so many that just step off inadvertently!

Tonight we went out for dinner again (this is very unusual for us...I purchased and froze fresh fish (salmon, halibut, cod) before we left along with homemade soup I froze, plus some hamburger and flank steak all in the freezer!  So super treat to go out twice in a week!  We went to a  nostalgic route 66 restaurant "Twisters" and had hamburgers...Jeff had a butterscotch malt---he was in heaven!