| We
drove North from Carlsbad for four hours and saw three cars on the road
. . good driving. We were able to pick up four radio
stations, one in Spanish, three with Rush Limbaugh . . after the first
hour, the car started veering sharply to the right so we had to turn the
radio off! We went thru Roswell and stopped to visit with any aliens
we found . . not as many as the National Enquirer would have you believe.
We stopped at Fort Sumner for Lunch. We ate at a little diner that listed to Port in the front of the building and to Starboard in the back...must have happened when they took the air conditioner out and left a big hole in the wall. Made for an interesting walk back to the restrooms. The town's biggest claim to fame is that Billy the Kid was killed here. (perhaps falling down going to the potty?)
From Fort Sumner, we drove up to Santa Rosa, where we drove Route 66 where ever it still exists. I-40 cover it up most of the way, but in some places Route 66 still survives as an access road and in others it wanders off for a while. Not long enough for us. We are hoping we see more of it as we drive from Albuquerque to the Grand Canyon . . more tomorrow . . .
Saturday, Apr 6 We drove into Arizona and took a scenic route which took us thru the Navaho and Hopi Nations. Very pretty scenery but nothing in the way of services. For lunch, we stopped at a Trading Post / Grocery Store which had only very basic stores. Ended up with two packages of peanuts, a bag of potato chips and two diet Pepsi's ("No Coke"). We declared that to be "Lunch" and ate while we drove from Mesa to Mesa across the desert. Pretty backwards country. It had started raining around 10:00 and it rained on us the rest of the day. The desert is incredible in a rain. The scenery that was brown and gray before the rain, turned to green, yellow and occasionally, red in a matter of hours! We drove thru the Painted Desert (in the rain) and into the East entrance of the Grand Canyon. When we got out at the first stop it was COLD . . It had snowed earlier and the temperature was 37! We put on an extra layer of clothes and coats, got some coffee to keep warm and walked out to the rim of the Canyon.
We drove around the rest of the South Rim without stopping and checked in to our hotel. It's a nice hotel (Holliday Inn) but I am not too sure about a hotel that feels the need to post signs to not drink out of the toilet! (I suppose it says more about their guests than it does about the hotel?)
We are just outside the park the first nite but the second nite will be right on the Rim at the El Tovar Lodge. We plan on spending all day Sunday exploring the Canyon. Sunday, Apr 7 Much better weather today . . excellent as a matter of fact. We moved into the Hotel in the Park just after lunch . . this one is more up scale . . no prohibition on drinking from the toilet here! Spent the day walking the rim of the Canyon and enjoying the scenery . . it really is spectacular!
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Photo of the Canyon at nite: |
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| Tomorrow . . on to Hoover Dam | ||
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