HANGIN' AROUND

Welcome to our latest home. We really like this park in spite of its drawbacks. One is the way it was laid out. All the spacious pull-thrus are on the wrong side of the road! I guess the engineers and architects who designed the place never hooked up an rv! Every pull thru is on the right side and therefore all hookups require running cords and hoses under the rig! There is one dumpster--at the head of the campground next to the dump station. There is one bath house--at the top of the hill. Let me explain that the campground is an oval with the road running around the outside. Inside the ground is open space. There is plenty of room to put the bath house and dumpster so they would be centrally located, but that is not the case. Other than that we have no complaints. We don't mind wind, and don't mind watching where we walk when we go outside.



Every day, especially during our evening walks we see jack rabbits bouncing around the campground. They are fun to watch.

Note the spacious sites, the wrong way hookups...

While we are waiting for our replacement spring, we are taking advantage of this beautiful weather to explore Winslow. Yesterday we headed downtown to play tourist and do a little geocaching.

Every time we pass this corner someone is taking pix! We are facing a store across the street called Standin' On The Corner. It is chock full of Rt 66 kitsch. (Note to our cyclin' friends, there is a wide selection of biker stuff in there!)

We visited the rest stop on the east end on 66, then on to

The official welcome to Winslow. We visited the garden and found a cache!

Being hungry by this time, we got our chops ready for bbq ribs at Bubba's in Holbrook, per the recommendation of friends Paul and Marsha Weaver. We took old RT66--which is I40 at this point. That white haze on the horizon is smoke from the Wallow wildfire.

Arriving very hungry on Holbrook (20 or so miles from Winslow) we were dismayed to find that Bubba's no longer existed beyond the sign. In its place was a defunct pizza joint. We drove around a while, stopping at a steakhouse which was only open from 4pm to 10pm. We finally decided on Joe and Aggies Cafe. Right off the bat we were told they were out of our favorite diet cola. Ok, we drank water and ordered what turned out to be very mediocre food. Cross that off your list of places to eat! Back on the road we came across this place. Shades of Pixar's Cars! I had to get a pic for grandsons Simon and Jack! But first a pix for our biker friends.

Ok, how many of you are telling your ages saying you remember staying in one of these (or wanting to really, really badly?

Tow-Mader!

When Duane was a boy he went traveling the west with his granny for several summers. He remembers stopping by a bunch of roadside stands to peruses Indian made jewelry and cowboy related articles. In honor of Grandma, we stopped here. They had lots and lots of petrified wood for sale.

We still had more caches to find so we drove north on 87 (past the campground) to a nice little county park called the Little Painted Desert. Who knew this beautiful spot was hidden out here? You can't see it from the road! We took our pix, got our eyes full of this wonderfulness, and found our cache before heading back toward Winslow and more caches.

Signing a log.

A visiual cache. We toured this old hotel. The original did NOT burn down. It was abandoned by the railroad, rescued, rebuilt and the lobby turned into a gallery for local artists. We walked the halls looking at all the different pieces on display: hand woven Navaho rugs, paintings, furniture, decorations. Wonderful stuff. There are outdoor gardens open to the public, too.

This is the main door. In the old building, this was at the back, as the front opened toward the railroad tracks on the opposite side. This was built to accomodate the train passengers, of course, by the railroad. This was the original home of the famous Harvey Girls.

Duane loved the handmade ironwork, lots of which was original. This gate leads to the tracks. It would have been the front of the hotel.

Another cache found!

West of the hotel gate, there is a city park space along the tracks for quite a way. The train cars above and this totem were part of this long park.

Remembering to always look where you walk is a good habit to develop when visiting the desert. One day we found this little (they don't get very big) Hopi rattlesnake crawling about 3 feet in front of our front steps. When it saw us it curled up by our fire ring for pictures. I was very excited. In all our rambling around Deming NM looking for rocks, around the national parks, and campgrounds, I kept looking for snakes. I saw none. I was going to have to call this trip a bust if I didn't see even one! At last I can go back east happy!

A little rattlesnake info FYI. Unlike the movies, which only use very big snakes for dramatic effect, most rattlesnakes you may encounter will be small and their rattling will sound like a little dry leaf scraping along the ground in a light breeze. It has to be very quiet for you to hear them. Most of the time you will never see them, unless you are watching where you put your feet, but often not even then. For the most part, rattlesnakes will rattle and warn, but not often strike, unless you insist on aggravating them. Rattlesnakes need to be coiled to strike. Small snakes strike a distance of about 1/4 of their body length, larger ones up to 1/2 or so. We were in no danger of being bitten, but we still kept a respectful distance and everyone went on their merry ways happy.

Stop shuddering its only a picture!

Louise and Duane