Leaving Arizona

Getting our kicks on Route 66

Route 66 was once a famous US highway, running all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles but has since been rendered redundant by much more convenient interstate highways. It lives on only in the sentimental memories of song writers and in small sections of it that still remains such as at Williams, AZ. Sadly, along with the demise of Route 66 also came the demise of many towns that were located on it and relied on the through traffic for survival. Some of these towns fell off the map entirely while others, such as Williams, still ekes out a living by selling fridge magnets and coffee mugs.

It is also conveniently located for exploring the Grand Canyon and that is where we based ourselves. But once the Grand Canyon was explored  and photographed, we got back in the car and made our way to Las Vegas. I'll leave Las Vegas for a next blog entry because it's getting late and we need to get out of this hotel room and paint the town.

En route here, we did make a slight detour though to first pass through Sedona. I remember Sedona from earlier visits to Arizona as a quaint little town, nestled between gorgeous Mesas and Buttes in the red rocks of the Verde Valley. When we got there this time I quickly realised that it's nothing as small as I remember it but it still is as quaint as I remember it and the stunning landscape has not gone anywhere.

As stunning as the setting of this town is, as weird its people are; They all seem to be crystal obsessed, earth worshipping, dreamy hippies. But I'll tell you this, these hippies can make a mean sandwich and after we bought a lovely vegetarian sandwich with every dressing known to the Vegan world, we were off west and eventually crossed the Hoover dam to find ourselves in Nevada and reach Las Vegas in time to hit up the night scene.

360° Panorama of the Sedona landscape