Getting our kicks on Route 66

I won't start today's entry with a number - 591 isn't as impressive as 907 is it!!! I will say welcome, though, from Flagstaff, Arizona, and from Route 66, the infamous American "mother road". Another driving day is in the bag, and very soon we'll have a rest from all of these driving shennanigans, but there's a little something called the Grand Canyon to get to before that!!

Thankfully for the sanity of all concerned, it was a later start to the day than usual today. Bed was arisen from at 8:00am, and the road wasn't properly hit until 9:30am, as we had nature helping us out with our timings today. It still figured to be a reasonably long drive today - after all, 591 miles is the best part of 1000 kilometres, to help those with a more metric bent to their reasoning - but we were set to cross two time-zones today, as mentioned over the past couple of days, to give us a chop-out on the time side of things.

I slept surprisingly well last night, considering the venom that spewed out onto this page about hotel over-charges last night. Normally when something like that happens, I find myself thinking about it in bed all night, and it normally annoys me to the point where I wake up and can't get back to sleep thinking about it. No such worries last night thankfully, but the first thing I did was make the call when I woke up this morning to the Courtyard Marriott in Florida. It seems that the over-charge was actually a credit hold set by the hotel, as they do to everyone to ensure they check out at the right times and don't nick off with any of their stuff. The adjustment had been made by them yesterday, and when I again looked at the Travel Card statement on-line tonight, all was well!!

The drive today headed out over three states - Texas, where we started, New Mexico, which took the brunt of today's drive, and Arizona, where we are now. We did just over 60 miles in Texas, and a bit over 100 miles in Arizona today, which means that, yep, we saw a lot of New Mexico!!! The drive today also took in a lot of the old Route 66 - in between towns mostly, as Interstate 40 has superceded it in those areas. Texas and the eastern areas of New Mexico advertised their share of Route 66 museums, which I wouldn't have minded stopping and taking a look at, however I don't know if Sarah would have been all that interested, so we pushed on. Sarah's not really all that fond of our long, driving days - whilst she appreciates my passion for wanting to drive across this country, with nothing to really catch her attention, she finds herself a touch bored from time to time. Taking photos of the various "Welcome" signs has taken her attention - the New Mexico "Welcome" sign will be up tomorrow, as the camera is in a state of charge at the moment, preparing itself for an onslaught tomorrow, and the Arizona sign was taken on our original long driving day from Las Vegas to Denver when we flirted with Arizona - check out the entry titled "From Sin City to the Mile High City" for more details.

New Mexico was an interesting state to drive through, and you can really break it off into two segments - the horizontal points of the compass either side of the state's biggest city, Albuquerque (I made myself proud today by doing something that Bugs Bunny couldn't do!! How many of you watched Bugs Bunny cartoons as a kid, and always wondered why he always "forgot to take a left at Alburquerque"?? Well, Bugs's words were ringing in my ears as I-40 approached Alburquerque, and I took the left fork of a freeway junction to head towards Alburquerque, thinking "take that Bugs, I turned left at Alburquerque OK!!". To the east of 'Querque (spelling the whole word is doing my head in!!), the road was flat and pretty much lifeless for the best part of 200 miles. Once we got through 'Querque, though, New Mexico suddenly came to life!! The scenery changed - the Continental Divide made for some fantastic looking contours (which unfortunately the camera-woman was asleep to capture), random casino's started appearing in the middle of what looked to be desert, complete with tumbleweeds (they weren't blowing though - there was no wind and they were too far away from the 75mph legal limit on I-40). Route 66 snaked off here, there and everywhere, and some good-looking desert oases made their way into our viewing site. We allowed ourselves a stop at a place in New Mexico called Grants, about 60 miles west of 'Querque, for a meal at Denny's, a look around Wal-Mart (which again cost me money - I knew it was bad news when we stepped out of the car and Sarah said "Wal-Mart, here we come!!" - for more stuff for Sarah's birthday next week), and then soon made our way out of New Mexico, to drive the 120-odd miles required to reach Flagstaff.

When we crossed the Arizona border, I told Sarah to grab the camera and have it ready, given that Arizona had given us such a spectacularly scenic show when we briefly visited it the first time around. Unfortunately, nothing photogenic reared it's head - there were a couple of Indian reservations that we passed, with billboards galore advertising that they flog off hand-made Indian artefcats (we're talking American Indians here, not the Indians that, back home, come into me every single day with a resume asking if we have a job for them, thinking that we are a cleaning company - resume's that get thrown straight in the bin for reasons I would prefer to explain in person), fireworks and petrol a good 15 cents dearer than servo's in the main towns!! The 120 miles went fairly quickly, and soon enough we were rolling into Flagstaff, and turning off I-40 for our first drive down the real, designated Route 66 - which lasted all of about half a mile before we arrived at the Howard Johnson Motel (HoJo's, yeah!!) and ended the day's driving at about 4:45pm local time - meaning that if you take our stop in Grants out, which went over an hour, our cosmetic travel time was only about six hours (with the time-zone shifts in effect)!! Still, that's not too bad - sure, I'm tired now as my body clock is telling me it's almost midnight when the red LED display next to me says 9:44pm, but that will reset itself overnight - and besides, this is the time zone we will be in for the rest of our trip now - 17 hours behind Melbourne time (which should give me a chance to check out the Eastern Football League's video streaming of our Match of the Day tomorrow between Balwyn and Noble Park - check it out at http://www.efl.org.au from 2:10pm Saturday Melbourne time) for all taking note.

Dinner tonight was very nice as well - the HoJo's has an adjacent restaurant called the "Grand Railroad Cafe", which is made up in the style of an old American diner, with Route 66 and the train line right outside the window. As I tried (and failed) to work my way through a typically American version of a chicken parma (cheese slices on top of a crumbed breast fillet) sitting on a mountain of spaghetti and marinara sauce (tip for the uninitiated - marinara sauce here in America is simply just plain old tomato pasta sauce - marinara pasta sauce in Australia is a seafood-based sauce normally swimming with all varities of crustacea), it was pleasing to sit back and watch the cars go by on the Mother Road, thinking that the same thing was an American institution as little as twenty-five years ago.

We have to start thinking about returning to the rat race soon too - Sarah's Mum, Trish, who has been a frequent and appreciated "commenter" on the blog during our trip, as has my darling Mum Christine, left a message to say that she's right to pick us up from Melbourne Airport Saturday week, so that's one hurdle crossed!!!

Whatever you do, bookmark this blog and set your alarm for about this time tomorrow - maybe check it out after the Balwyn/Noble game - as we will have pictures from our day at the Grand Canyon, which both of us are really looking forward too. The phrases "breathtaking", "awe-inspiring" and "great place for a wedding proposal" have been thrown up by various people who have already seen the Grand Canyon, so I will confirm all of those tomorrow - except maybe the last one, I've been warned against that for the time being!!! Then, after we've done the Canyon in it's entirety, it's again time to Viva Las Vegas - and this time, no expense has been spared, as we've booked a Deluxe King Suite at the Venetian Hotel and Casino, right on the Las Vegas Strip, for the three nights we will be in Sin City - it's sort of a "thank-you" to my darling for persisting with all of the driving that we have done. Mind you, there's still two "driving days" to go for the trip (tomorrow doesn't really count, as it's only about four-ish hours from the Grand Canyon's South Rim to Vegas), and both of them are Sarah-approved drives - from Vegas to San Francisco on Monday so we're in Frisco for her birthday on Tuesday, then the trip from Frisco back to Los Angeles on Wednesday down Highway 1 - the US version of the Great Ocean Road. Which means that I need to get my beauty sleep (off-topic for a minute, I slipped that into conversation not too long ago - can't remember with who, but I'm tipping it would have been football-related - and my correspondant, who for the life of me I can't remember their identity, told me if I needed a beauty sleep, I'd have to sleep for a month!!) so that I can report in tomorrow night in decent fettle. So it's good night from Arizona then folks, and we'll be back bright and cheery tomorrow, with photos aplenty, and stories to tell. Open wide, come inside...it's Shaun and Sarah's American Adventures, in it's last week of receiving top billing in these parts!!