Arizona, New Mexico & the Grand Canyon Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Aaron Anderson [11]
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ROUTE 66’S ANGEL
Angel Delgadillo, the barber of Seligman, remembers exactly where he was when shiny new I-40 replaced Route 66 as the USA’s primary east–west vein at 2pm on September 22, 1978: standing in front of his house, watching the town he had grown up in start to die. Angel made it his mission to stop Seligman from becoming another Route 66 ghost-town. Aside from transforming his barbershop into a tourist-attracting gift store, in 1987 he successfully lobbied state legislature to preserve Arizona’s section of the highway.
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The railroad town of Williams has all the charm and authenticity of “Main Street America.” Route 66 slices through the town’s historic center, which is a pastiche of Victorian-era brick houses harking back to a proud but bawdy frontier past and 1950s motels from the Route 66 heyday, some still sporting original neon signs. In a 1930s gas station, Cruiser’s Café 66, you’ll find Chevy fins dangling above racing-car red and inky black booths, while the ceiling is sheathed in shiny tin. Dogs are allowed at the outdoor tables. Have a drink at the World Famous Sultana Bar. Back during Prohibition, boozers on a mission would steal down to the basement for bootleg liquor and gambling.
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ROUTE 66 READS
John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath is the classic novel of travel on the Mother Road during the Dust Bowl era. Woody Guthrie’s Bound for Glory is the road trip autobiography of a folk singer during the Depression. Several museums and bookshops along Route 66 stock Native American, Old West and pioneer writing with ties to the old highway.
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Route 66 runs concurrently with I-40 when it barrels into spirited Flagstaff, a cultured college town that still bleeds Old West at its heart. East of here mountain views soon flatten into relentlessly featureless prairie. Fortunately, there are a number of worthwhile spots to break the monotony of the journey. First up is Meteor Crater, located about 35 miles east of Flagstaff. The wooly mammoths and ground sloths that slouched around northern Arizona 50,000 years ago must have got quite a nasty surprise when a fiery meteor crashed into their neighborhood, blasting a hole some 550ft deep and nearly a mile across. Today the privately owned property is a major tourist attraction with exhibits about meteorites, crater geology and the Apollo astronauts who used its lunarlike surface to train for their moon missions.
“Well, I’m standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona…” Sound familiar? Thanks to The Eagles’ 1972 tune Take It Easy (written by Jackson Browne and Glenn Frey), lonesome little Winslow is now a popular stop on the tourist track. Pose with the life-sized bronze statue of a hitchhiker backed by a charmingly hokey trompe l’oeil mural of that famous “girl – oh Lord! – in a flatbed Ford” at the corner of 2nd St and Kinsley Ave. Up above, a painted eagle poignantly keeps an eye on the action, and sometimes a red antique Ford parks next to the scene. Spend the night at the oh so fine La Posada Hotel. The Mary Colter–designed 1930s hacienda features elaborate tile work, glass-and-tin chandeliers, Navajo rugs and other details that accent its rustic Western-style elegance. Grab modern Southwestern fare at the excellent hotel restaurant.
Wild West fans will love Holbrook. Once one of Arizona’s most wicked towns, it