I woke just before dawn. It was Saturday, August 23. The breeze was crisp as I sat up and put on a sweatshirt. To the east, clouds were being broken up by the oncoming glare of the Sun. Breakfast was an apple and a can of V-8. I’d read that the camp had showers, but I couldn’t find them anywhere, and I was too impatient for to wait for the park ranger office to open. I pulled out of camp just as the Sun was rising.

Open range cattle

New Mexico sunrise

Satori with Holbrook dinosaur

Here I is

Between Holbrook and Winslow, I pulled off the interstate to visit the Jackrabbit Trading Post. Made famous by the iconic "Here it Is" sign and jackrabbit silhouette, it's a fairly large general store on the old highway. I made a pit stop and looked through their Route 66 memorabilia. They sold booze, too. There was a giant jackrabbit statue out front, but there wasn't anybody else there to take my picture astride it. I bought a refrigerator magnet.
 

Down the road, I turned off the interstate. I planned on going through Winslow, but there was something I wanted to see first. Just a couple of miles north of Winslow are the Homolovi Ruins, a 14th century Anasazi site—except I found out they don’t like using the word Anasazi anymore. The Hopi prefer they be called the Hisat’sinom. Again, there was nobody at the gate when I drove up, so I dropped my $5 fee in a slot and drove on. It was a state park, but mine was the only car on the narrow roads. It’s a lonely place, with hardly any signs. There were a handful of campers in the small campground. I went to Ruin Site I, my car the only one in the parking lot. Through a small gate, I walked along an unmarked path over the crest of a hill. There were no signs, no marked paths, only some little flags on wires. I found a couple of walls, build with mud bricks, half-buried in the ruddy soil. Some mounds, and scattered bricks on the ground. It must be frustrating for archaeologists, I thought, to find something like that and know it was the site of some ancient center of culture, but to others it just looks like a pile of bricks. I looked through some more rocks, but my gas tank was getting low, so I skipped the visitor center and headed on into Winslow.

A little over an hour past Flagstaff, I pulled off the interstate again and got back on Route 66 at Seligman, “the birthplace of historic Route 66.” I spent most of the next hour driving the original route, the trail bypassed by the interstate. Once I got past an old pickup, I was alone on the old 2-lane asphalt, its surface cracked and patched from decades of use, streaked with varicose veins of tar. There were Burma Shave signs on the old road! They looked pretty new, so I don’t know if they were vintage signs, or new signs put up by historians. One said, “Train’s approaching /Whistle screaming /Pause! Avoid that /Rundown feeling.” It was a lonely drive, but the landscape was thrilling. I headed northwest, off the beaten trail, into the land the interstate forgot. This was traveling! When getting someplace was full of mystery, danger and adventure. I couldn’t stop smiling. A ridge of mountains off to the east followed the road from Chino Point past Rhodes Canyon, pointing towards Blue Mountain. This was the view thousands of travelers saw before 4-lane superhighways passed them by.

I arrived in Kingman just before 4:25 Arizona time. That’s where I left Route 66 behind me and turned onto Highway 93—which put me back on Interstate 40, but not for long. I soon pulled off the interstate and started a long, slow slog up Highway 93 towards Las Vegas, 100 miles away. To the east, Chernum Peak and Packsaddle Mountain loomed as I zoomed out of Arizona. To the west, the Black Mountains cast their shadows across the wide Detrital Valley. The sun was bright on my left shoulder.

On the Nevada side,  I pulled off the highway and turned towards Lake Mead. My destination was the Boulder Beach campground. The park ranger charged me $5 to get into the park. At the campground, I put $10 in an envelope, and I had a place to sleep for the night. The campground was fairly empty: 150 campsites, and I counted about 5 other people. Tall eucalyptus trees shaded the campsites. I found a spot about 30 yards from the bathrooms, but completely hidden by trees and bushes.

I made myself at home. I got out my camp chair, ate my last two hard-boiled eggs (still good) and relaxed with a beer. The wind whispered through the eucalyptus trees, and was unfortunately still quite warm. The distant mountains caught the last drops of sunlight as the Sun crept below the horizon. I called in a voice post to my LiveJournal and relaxed. In the distance, I could hear the sigh of the highway. As darkness fell, I could see other vehicles wandering through the campsite, finding places to roost. None came near to me. They may have been boaters from the marina heading home. Boulder Beach wasn’t technically on the beach, but you could see it plain enough. Dusk fell, and overhead I could hear jet planes headed for Vegas or points beyond. The breeze died down, then started back up again from across the lake. I decided I liked New Mexico beer. I settled down for the night. By my calculations, I’d traveled 499 miles that day, traveling from sunup to sundown.

Broken Arrow to Albuquerque

Las Vegas to Beatty