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We set off early from our motel to the sounds of Apollo 440's 'Stop the Rock' and then had to stop after a few miles as we espyed the famous corner in Winslow that had been made famous by the Eagles in their track 'Take it Easy'. So, both the Brickster(ret) and I stood waiting for a 'Flat Bed Ford' and then 'Took it Easy'. Very Relaxing.
Onwards then towards injun country and with Brick of the Yard at the wheel we made rapid progress along the 66, particularly as he had brought along his own 'Blues and Twos' which he had 'liberated' from a previous employer. Vehicles just seemed to move aside as we bowled along but some also overtook so perhaps they weren't the right type of blue after all.
We entered the town of Holbrook which is home to the famous Wigwam Motel which actually has concrete wigwams that you spend the night in. Great.
We motored on and Ade noticed a signpost for our next destination, a coffee shop, and entered the slip road at, in this writers eyes anyway, a stupid speed only to come to an emergency screeching and thoroughly dramatic halt when he realised that the road had disappeared, literally. The bridge we required to reach the coffee shop had been stolen and no one had decided to let traffic users or regular coffee fans know of this. We then both laughed out loud at this potentially calamitous situation and decided to put on the eighties favourite 'Gold' by Spandau Ballet to re-set ourselves.
We gave up the coffee idea and headed for the Petrified Forest which is a massive open expanse of desert with rocks that were once trees. However, we decided to pull into the visitor centre as mer collegue felt it important that we had someone in a Baden Powell hat and bigger shorts than my very own to confirm that this was indeed the case. Once confirmed, and also being told how to tell the difference between 7 million year old and 11 million year old petrified rock trees we headed back to the car and aimed for the Painted Desert.
As we entered the Painted Desert Wizzard's 'See my Baby Jive' was seriously testing the car subwoofer and we reflected that the range of colours facing us from the desert vista together with this 1973 hit just seemed made for each other. This ia a memory I will never forget. We both went on to test the battery capacity of our cameras with various images committed to SD card and video tape.
We needed refreshment and so headed for the only water hole available within the desert which offered us fridge magnets, tea shirts, coke and hot dogs, and we settled for the latter. Whilst we ate I noticed none other than Fergal Sharkey, lead singer with the famous New Wave band The Undertones who had a major hit in 1979 with 'Teenage Kicks'. I wandered over and asked him how he was doing and he let me know that he was now a painter and was looking for inspiration of colours for his next piece. I was unclear whether he meant he was a decorator or not so didn't push the point.
After taking a fairly good photo of the retired PC and myself we suggested he head for the Petrified Forest, for which he thanked us.
We headed on to Chinle which is in the Navajo Territory. This means that it is in effect run by the Native Americans who are in charge of all community responsibilities, including the fact that there is no alcohol available for sale!
We checked in to our well specced hotel and immediately worked around the dryness of this brave nation by simply filling our room fridge with bottles of Corona beer. Bonus!
There appeared to be a social event going on outside our room on the green with lots of indigenous singing and chanting by the locals that seemed to be well received by local dignitaries, so we decided to do the only thing we could do in the circumstances and headed for the local Subway outlet for a meatball sandwich combo meal.
It's the first and probably last time that a Native American with full pony tail has offered me the choice of olives or no olives and I took it in the spirit it was meant, which was one of mystery and suspense.
We finished our meal, sagely noted that we were considerably outnumbered should this nation wish to rise again and so headed back to the sanctuary of our injun run hotel to plan for the next day.
- comments
Tony Have you two tried the Rocky Mountain Way at all?
Roverstu Tx for the tip Tone. We had been looking for the Hershey highway but Ades sat nav can't seem to pick it up