On the road

Don't try this at home

On the road to Flagstaff

Keep the sound off on this (it crackles)

July 28th. A day off in Flagstaff.

I can’t figure out what time it is, every clock tells a different story, the car clock, Betty, my phone, the computer and the bedside clock. I got up thinking it was 09:00 and went to have breakfast only to discover it was 07:00. I made my first ever waffle, not that it’s rocket science. The first job was to go and get Willy’s ‘Dickers’ boots, they cost about a quarter of what they are in Spain and another great thing is they have all the sizes even when I buy a t-shirt, when they say ‘XL’ they mean it. The we visited the Lowell Observatory, I always remember this place from my Collins book of the stars. The telescope here was the biggest in the world for quite a while. Our tour guide was a charming (Dutch?) woman called Maria who regaled us with stories of astronomers and their discoveries. There were quite a few star gazers around, Astronomers do seem to be a special breed, think Patrick Moore, it must be all those hours alone staring at the sky. Time to drop the car off and visit Barnes and Noble, the major book shop chain in the States. Willy picked up some stuff that he’d been looking for including a cool zip-up book cover. I was looking for the books that Pat had recommended but I think Amazon is the best bet. I was also looking for books on sausage making (my new venture), but no luck. Time to hit the town. First stop was Granny’s Closet for the happy hour, two pints, $5. Flagstaff is the summer camp for the Arizona Cardinals football team and there was a local radio station broadcasting from the bar with all the updates of the training schedule – sports analysts will analyse anything, anal being the word. Time for a quick walk around the town. It’s very picturesque Americana, a fine collection of eateries and curio shops, we have to pay a visit to a great retro shop on Aspen St. But valuable beer time is being wasted and Willy is getting tetchy and I’m a little dry. We hit Connor's for more happy hour beers, this time we tried a beer called 'Kilt Lifter' a Scottish style ale. I think we’ll be going back tomorrow, they have a fish race which I feel is my duty to report about, and the barmaids are babes. We went back to Moloney’s for some more pints of Skinny Dip, the barman (Brendon) had been warned of our arrival, it’s nice to feel wanted. That Skinny Dip should carry a health warning especially whe the barman tells us it's much better with fresh orange squeezed in. We visited a student type bar with snowboards and skiis nailed to the wall, this is where we had the shots of Jaegermeister which explains a lot today (the day after).We went back to Granny’s closet for the dinner special – Sirloin steak with all the trimmings for $9, I thought we were well behaved but Willy assures me that although we didn't do anything wrong, we were very happy and the charming Courtney and Kambria looked after us. Then back to the crib for the nightcap and to sleep with the TV on. Bliss.

July 27th. Albuquerque to Flagstaff.

Sunday morning in Albuquerque is like Sunday morning anywhere, empty streets with a few lost souls trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the night before. We headed West with a few stops picked up from the internet. Laguna was supposed to have a ‘Muffler Man’ the giant lumberjack statues that dot the west. But no. Laguna is like a town in the hills of Almeria or Murcia – adobe houses, a church, a post office and every yard with its obligatory abandoned car. Nondescript rubble, is there any other kind, filled in the gaps. We headed on to Grants, another town on ’66 where we had a late breakfast/lunch, I out-ate Willy for once. Some classic (I know I use this a lot, but I haven’t got my thesaurus with me) roadside cafes and motels, most of which are abandoned. We drove along the slab to Milan and then rejoined I-40 until Gallup, where we drove up and down this roadside town. It’s a great mix of the old and the new and it’s a survivor, there’s a big rail-head here, so that’s where all the endless trains come from. We started getting hints of desert, vast plains and scrubland, treeless buffs and gullies, quite spectacular western scenery, but I have to keep my eye on the road. As I said before, everyone tools along at about the speed limit, in this case 75 M.P.H. (just over 120 K.P.H.) so I slide in and out of lanes, letting a truck pass, bursting past a caravan, just keeping the fabric of west-bound traffic together, well, doing my bit, though I think, the car being King, the locals have the edge. I saw a sign for ‘Indian City’ a gift shop/trading post of old, selling Navajo jewellery and blankets. I realised it would be the perfect place to pick up some stuff for the ladies, it’s good stuff, so I told myself as I parted with the food and drink budget for the next two days but we’ll have to wait ‘til Christmas to find out, won’t we ladies? We then stopped off in another essential ’66 stop – ‘Stewarts petrified park’, it’s a very bizarre collection of shop dummies in various poses, petrified tree-trunks, an ostrich farm and a shop full of gems and polished stone some, or most of which was rather expensive, but I got out for $20. As we approached Flagstaff the scenery changed again, to a kind of mountain feel, with pine trees and mountains. As we drove around we could see that this place is a resort, both in winter with the snow and in summer with trekking and the Grand Canyon up the road. We checked in to another ‘Super 8’ and headed off downtown for a beer. Sunday night in Flagstaff is like Sunday night anywhere, the bars were empty but the ‘vibe’ in the town is very good, people saying hello as we passed, though it might have been out of fear what with the giant Willy ambling along and tubby trotting(?) along a few steps behind. We found another ‘Maloneys’ and set ourselves up with food and some more excellent local-ish brew. This one was called ‘Skinny Dipping’, but I desisted on jumping into our indoor heated swimming-pool. Meanwhile, Willy came up with a brilliant idea. As we are a day ahead of schedule he suggested we have a rest day tomorrow and hit the Grand Canyon on Tuesday. So tomorrows blog will contain details of a day off in Flagstaff, Arizona. We are on holidays, lest we forget.

July 26th. Amarillo to Albuquerque.

We checked out of ‘Motel 6’ and headed down the road to ‘Waffle House’ for breakfast. A small classic diner with waiters easing around, carrying pots of coffee or plates of food. At the business end was the short-order cook with a battery of waffle irons and grills in front of him as he effortlessly filled the constant stream of orders. We had orange juice, hash browns cheese and with bacon on the side and a few cups of scalding coffee, all for $15 – yummee. Back on the road again, we drive through wide open plains and then drop down onto another undulating landscape complete with obligatory bluffs, still fairly green but with the reddish earth peeking through here and there. One of the things that strikes me every day is the stream, every half hour or so, of trucks carrying military equipment painted in desert colours, heading East, just to remind you that there is unfinished business being taken care of. The first stop was Adrian, the halfway point on ’66 exactly 1139 miles from Chicago and Los Angeles. As we made a detour to Memphis and Dallas we passed the halfway point a while ago, but hey, lets celebrate. Next stop was Tucumcari a stretch of ’66 just off the main highway but wonderfully preserved, there are a few closed down motels and garages but there is a classic collection of roadside Motels and shops and quite a few people buzzing around as well, locals and travellers. We went on to Santa Rosa to visit the ‘Blue Hole’ apparently a 100 ft. deep, crystal clear swimming hole but there were no signposts (something which I’ve noticed, some curiosities are not signposted, shops, motels and restaurants are) and Betty didn’t know where it was, so instead of driving around for half an hour we headed on to Clines Corners, a place which cropped up in several books as a trading post and stop-off point. It still is but the Indian section is dwarfed by a shop containing enormous amounts of tack, some of which I will gladly show you on my return to Madrid. We then drove through some heavy rain which I can only assume was the leftover from Hurricane Dolly as she spent her forces meandering upstate. We arrived in Albuquerque (founded by the Spanish and named after the cork-producing town of the same name in Extremadura, Spain, a region where a lot of the Conquistadores came from). We checked into the cheapest motel yet - $50, but it’s within striking distance of the action, which takes place on Central and 4th. We weren’t allowed into the first bar, the gorilla at the door said something about Willy’s Ramones t-shirt but I think it had more to do with the fact that the mono cellular life-form had never seen a Spanish passport before, mind you, the conditions of entry were daunting – No known felons, no guns, no knives, no gang colours, no bandanas, no baseball caps on backwards… Just as well I suppose, so we took our custom across the road to Maloneys, a great bar with enormous beer mugs , close on a litre. As usual, loads of staff making sure that everyone was well attended, if this bar were in Madrid, there would be a third of the staff, embittered and grumpy, skiving off for cigarette breaks and with little or no table service, but I won’t go down that road. I noticed the doorman was ‘carding’ everyone as they came in and passing the card through some sort of scanner, as I had already had two buckets of ‘Fat Tire’ ale, a very pleasant brew, I decided that we were the best of mates so I asked him what that (the scanning) was all about. He said that because the legal age for drinking is 21 (you can die for your country at 18), a lot of people had forged IDs and the law were very strict on underage drinking. Apparently in this part of the world they are prone to fisticuffs and car crashes after a night on the sauce, now where does that remind me of…We left Maloneys and said goodbye to our new best friends, the barmaid was excellent – I saw her refuse a guy on no uncertain terms – it was only when we got out onto the street that Willy pointed out a long string of snot stuck to my t-shirt, I’d had a sneezing fit and thought I’d cleaned it all up, so much for credibility. We went up to a square where every Saturday there is some kind of ‘Summerfest’, a soul band was just finishing and all the food stalls were shutting up, it was still quite early, don’t ask me what time. Most of the stuff on offer was Mexican and South American which reflects the population mix here. We got a Pizza and back to the ranch for pizzas, beers and Saturday night live, though I must say the latter escaped me.

Overtaking a house

You should keep the sound turned off as it's all crackly

July 25th. Vernon to Amarillo

Got up early and went for a walk around Vernon, a curious place which may or may not have seen better days. Most of the shops on the only main street were closed down, a gym with a boxing ring was up a side street and going up this side street I came across the residential area, a lot of the houses were boarded up and some of the vacant lots were littered with broken bottles. The houses that were still being lived in were making an attempt to cling on to some kind of normality, some had given up and were acquiring the collection of tell-tale junk that spells indifference – broken-down cars in the drive, plastic flowers planted in the garden, old car seats as sofas on the front porch, abandoned toys and overgrown gardens. We set off for Amarillo and the landscape is changing oh so imperceptibly, flatlands and fewer trees, cattle ranches and open spaces. We passed through some pretty towns, Childress, Memphis (not the Elvis one) and Claude with their shops, banks and people going about their everyday business. There were antique shops, a curious concept this in the States. Anything over three years old is considered an antique, well maybe I exaggerate but most of the stuff wouldn’t make a jumble sale although there were a few pieces of kitsch I wouldn’t mind having. We hit Amarillo and checked into a ‘Motel 6’, one of the cheaper chains but it’s good, clean and suits our needs though there is no fridge so we had to finish all the beer in the cooler. We then decided to visit some of the sites, most famous of which is the Cadillac farm where some chap – A millionaire called Stanley Marsh offered the space to a San Fransisco collective to come up with something, so they buried a row of Cadillacs nose down in a field. They have since been spray-painted by everyone and I think it’s the only thing that holds them together. We then stumbled across a wonderful bar and grill called ‘Applebees’ at 5630 West Amarillo Boulevard and we tucked into some delicious burgers and quaffed a few beers. It’s well worth a visit, a classic sports bar with great food, wonderful cocktails being concocted by Mike, the general manager and the charming Elena behind the bar looking after us. In fact we didn’t want to leave and debated abandoning the car along with the Cadillacs and chaining ourselves to the bar but sense got the better of us and we (I) dropped the car back to the motel and we walked about a mile to ‘Cadillac Jim’s’ a local Texan steak house and bar. When we got there the bar was in full swing with a band pumping out classic rock (‘More cowbell’ they roared at one stage), though they did mention Dan Fogelburg I don’t think they played any, the place was hopping with the Friday night locals, out for a bit of devilment. I realised that this is probably the furthest I’ve ever been from the sea – strange the ‘Amarillo effect’. We didn’t make it to 6th Avenue which is on old 66 and where all the biker and cowboy bars are, but Albuquerque awaits