Old Timer Garage

After a good night’s rest, we load the car for our third day of travelling through the southwest of the US. As usual, the sky is of a cloudless blue and we won’t complain about it.

The car is quickly loaded and we head to the centre of Winslow. There is a place that is called “standing on the corner” which is actually a crossing on Route 66.
A painting on the wall, a big Route 66 sign on the ground in the middle of the road crossing and a couple of old pickup trucks that I am quick to take pictures of.

We walk around and I end up next to the railways when a freight train passes by. Some freight trains in France can be long but they can’t be compared to the ones in the US in any way. Plus as they don’t go very fast, it takes forever when you are waiting for one to finish passing before you can cross the railways. I am starting to understand why people speed up when they see a train coming up. And to top this up, like in the movies, the trains honk their horns pretty much constantly.

Back at the car, we drive towards the outskirts of Winslow to find a place to have breakfast. We very quickly get to a Denny’s and park the car in front of it. And we are in luck because there is also a gas station next to it and we need to refuel the car.

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The breakfast won’t be free, far from it. Off the top of my head, I think we paid something like 75 dollars for the 4 of us but there was so much to eat that we won’t have to stop for lunch today. Huge pancakes with fruits and cream, orange juice, coffee, hot chocolate and fried potatoes. It is sweeter than a French breakfast but it will keep us energised all day.
While we wait for our breakfast to be served, my brother goes to refuel the car and I take a few pictures of the cars that are parked next to us outside the restaurant. One Hummer, a Challenger, a few RVs…

 

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Then we head out towards Petrified Forest.
On the way, we go drive through several small towns and in one of them, I spot on the right hand side of the road a motel with a few old cars parked in front of it. It wasn’t planned but in a split second I am already on the brake and stopping to take pictures of the classic cars there.
There is a bit of everything there: Impala, Studebaker with its bullet nose, the Cars movie tow truck and even a VW Bug converted into a campervan. On some of them, the paint is so faded that people keep writing their name on the cars with their fingers. We won’t do it but we spent a good half hour there admiring the cars.

Back on the road, we are once again on endless straight lines through the desert. Nobody in sight in front of us nor behind. We stop from time to time to take a picture of the scenery and we don’t even bother to park the car. We just stop it in the middle of the road, get off the car, take pictures and then get back in the car and carry on.

 

I have already said it, I love to drive but I must admit that I am also enjoying these long straight lines and the automatic car with cruise control. There is pretty much nothing to do and that leaves me to enjoy the scenery as well as if I wasn’t driving which I couldn’t do if there was traffic or if the road required more concentration.

A little later, we go through a small town and while passing in front of a store, I think that I might be able to find a pair of shoes to replace the ones I left in the bin of Saguaro National park two days ago. I will come out of this shop with a pair of 150 dollar cowboy boots. I think that I would have been better off buying them in Mexico at the beginning of our trip but at the time, the 80 dollars seemed to be too expensive to me. These ones are nice so I just cough up the money and stop thinking about it.

 

In the end, we arrive at the entrance of Petrified Forest national park after having gone through several small villages lost in the middle of nowhere. It makes me wonder what these people are living off of. There is no city close by and the surroundings are very much desert so not an environment where farming could be considered. Houses there look more like sheds than real houses built from materials that look like recycling. A huge contrast for some of them with the brand new pickup trucks parked in front of them… surprising.

Once inside the park, we regularly stop to admire the scenery and take a few pictures. There are areas to park the cars all along the road and we don’t pass on the opportunity to stretch our legs a little.

 

During one of those stops, we get to the actual petrified forest. Hundreds of trees or rather trunks of trees laying on the ground, completely converted into rock and for some of them neatly cut in several places a bit like chalks.

These visits are well organized, you pay the entrance to the park, you are given a map with all the stops to be made and an explanation of the points of interest.
If it wasn’t before, this time it really is a desert. Just a few very small dry bushes but absolutely nothing else as far as the eye can see.

Just before getting out of the park, we cross once again the Route 66 where two signs on the ground show that we actually are on it as well as an old rusty car lost in the middle of the desert. With the light from the sun setting in the background, the pictures are gorgeous.

 

Once out of the park, we head towards Flagstaff for the night. We will spend the next two nights there because Flagstaff is at about an hour away from the Grand Canyon which we are going to visit tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. The hotel prices next to the Grand Canyon were completely prohibitive so we were better off driving one hour to get from and to Flagstaff in the morning and in the evening than staying next to the Grand Canyon. Besides, this enabled up to visit Flagstaff which is a very nice little town in the mountains.

But this will be for tomorrow with of course more classic cars.

To be continued… here: 8- Grand Canyon – part 1

 

 

 

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