Arizona Trip
Day 3: Saturday, 9/17/11
miles traveled: I forgot to check
destination: Grand Canyon, AZ

Leaving Lake Havasu, we got to Kingman, which is on Interstate 40.  If we stayed on I-40, we'd have a straight shot to Williams (the Gateway to the Grand Canyon) and then onto the Grand Canyon.  But why stay on a boring interstate when historic Route 66 is calling?  :-)

The landscape across historic Route 66 is phenomenal ... ancient volcanic activity has created massive lava flows that go on for MILES.

Miles and miles and miles of small rocks ... it looks for all the world as though thousands of dump trucks have unloaded gravel. 

Tom has a custom GPS database of every single quilt shop in the USA.  Isn't he a terrific guy? :-)

In Kingman, we toured the historic part of this very sleepy town and found a pawn shop right across the street from the quilt store.  Eureka!  Both of us have something to look at!  The quilt store is Connie's Quilter's Hide-a-away and is a charming, charming store.  Connie wasn't there, but we got to chatting with one of the employees and a couple of the customers.  They advised us that there was a lovely quilt store in Seligman that we just HAD to visit.  I had no idea if Seligman was on our itinerary but Tom had a ace up his sleeve. :-)

At Connie's, I bought some Route 66 themed fabric with the intent of making a table runner and coordinating placemats (... someday ...).

 Kingman is also a major railroad town.  There was a full-size Santa Fe engine on display.

 But we had to move along, as Kingman was only the beginning of the day's travels.

Historic Route 66 is a very rural road ... well paved but rural.  There are a lot of sleepy little towns, some no more than a building or two.  After we had passed through Hackberry, we saw something amazing ... Burma Shave signs!  Honest to goodness!  Now, I know about them because Tom has mentioned them but here!  Here was Real Life Burma Shave signs!  We didn't realize they were there until we missed one sign .. "Violets are blue/ Roses are pink/ Who drink and drive / ......   arrgghhh!!  we missed this sign!!!  But we got the next one:  "Thirty days/Hath September/April, June/and the speed offender.   Burma Shave!"   and the last one we saw, "If you don't know/whose signs these are/you haven't driven/very far! ... Burma Shave!"    We were very amused!  (Alas, no pictures ... the signs simply appeared as if by magic, with no rhyme nor reason to their placement.  There was no time to get the camera ready to photograph them.)

The landscape here is much more high plains desert than before ... more plants, more growing things .. all due to higher elevations and lower temperatures.  At 2pm and 5200' elevation, it was a comfortable 73 degrees.

In the distance, there are miles and miles and MILES of volcanic tabletops.  Many of them have had their sides eroded away, exposing their sides.

At the end of historic Route 66 is Seligman .. definitely a touristy town.  There is every sort of schlocky, "worthless" Route 66 memorabilia you could imagine.  We didn't stop; we were on our way to the Grand Canyon!

After Seligman, the road started to climb .. eventually to 6000', where we started seeing Real Trees.  :-)  We turned northwards at Williams ... which is nicknamed the Gateway to the Grand Canyon.  Williams is a delightful, *working* town ... very viable and lively.  Tom started to park at a sidewalk slot ... I was wondering why, since we were *almost* at our destination.

Then I looked out the front windshield and saw ... another quilting store!  What a guy! 

While he occupied himself at the local watering hole, I perused the contents of Quilter's Mercantile and had a lovely chat with the owner.  After buying several patterns, we were once again on our way.

We finally arrived at the entrance to the Grand Canyon.  OMG .. the admittance fee was $25/car!  But to our astonishment, there was no one at the kiosk, so we (and all the cars behind us) simply tootled on in.  We had reservations for 2 nights (9/17. & 9/18).  We found our campsite readily enough, got it set up and because there was food establishments there, we decided to "eat out" for dinner.

Whilst at the Canyon Cafe (cafeteria style eating .. good food and plenty of it), we found out from an employee that there was free WiFi available at the Cafe and also at El Tovar (a 5-star hotel/restaurant ... wayyyyyy above our pocketbook and inclinations).  Sadly, the connection at the Cafe didn't work; the employee told us to go to El Tovar, since they had a separate server.

We relocated to El Tovar's lobby and .... hallelujah!  the connection was good.  I had previously written the verbage for the previous day's adventure and had previously worked on the photos.  *Unfortunately*, El Tovar's response time was dismal.  Everyone in the world must have been streaming videos because it took FOREVER to upload my 500 pixel photos.

In this instance, "forever" was 2 hours and 15 minutes.  I was dyin'.  Tom was incredibly patient ... he hung around, checked out the hotel's bar, read the newspaper, engaged in conversation with other patrons.  Finally .. omg, finally .. I was able to upload the last photo I wanted to the blog and was able to log off.

The downside was that I hadn't written anything about that day's adventures nor worked on any of that day's photos (the stuff you are reading & seeing here).  That would simply need to wait until I had a better connection.  (which eventually meant that I wrote it the next day (Sunday) and was delighted to discover that the errant server had been fixed .. so all of *this* content was able to be uploaded, albeit a day "late".)

We returned to our campsite and even though it was 11pm, we had our campfire.  After all, what good is camping if you don't have a campfire????  We broke out a bottle of nice wine (BV Wineries, coastal estates) and enjoyed the night's solitude.

It was peaceful and quiet and wonderful.  We love camping.  Especially if it's in the forests.  In fact, you might say that if it's NOT a forest, it's not "real" camping. :-)

Tomorrow: more Grand Canyon.