This is "Cars" country

So, today we spent a little time in Holbrook. On the way in last night, I spotted a store advertizing signage. I was interested in a Route 66 road sign, so we stopped in to see what he had. I got an actual sign from the Mother Road that is in new condition! There are a few around and getting harder to find. We also bought a set of Route 66 coasters; one each from the 8 states that it runs through. Originally the road was maintained by the federal government and when it became too much to keep up with, because of the popularity, each state took the responsibility. From then on the signs had the state name instead of “US” on them. My original is a “US Route 66” sign. Cool!
We had also spotted”The Petrified Wood Company”. Thea is a rock nut, so we couldn’t pass that up. They had the most incredible collection of rocks and petrified wood and fossils and geodes we’d ever seen under one roof. They had so many samples of entire stumps that were polished on the end to show the colors and grains. They had cut into huge geodes, 3 to 4 feet tall, that were brimming with amethyst crystals and they were such a deep purple. Incredible fossils were everywhere! Whole alligators and giant fish…it went on and on! If you are into that sort thing, you should see it firsthand if you are ever down this way. After that we headed down the road to the National Park. When it was first discovered, the area was literally covered with petrified logs. Since then the chunks and pieces have been hauled away by thousands of people over the years and so there are really very few left to see. Even in the park, where it is illegal to pick up even the smallest piece, they are losing about 2,000 pounds a month! The road thru the park is just and asphalt ribbon for 28 miles. It goes up onto mesas and down into dry creek “washes”. As we came down into a rock strewn wash, I noticed a dark shape to my left. It was maybe 16 feet tall and when I looked, I realized that it was a huge creature with its teeth bared and right as it lunged at us, I stomped the gas and heard them clack together as it narrowly missed the back tire on the car! I looked at Thea and said,”Wow, that was close!” She said,”What was close?” Then she said, “When we get to the next rest area, I need you to stop.” How could she have missed that?! Was it real or maybe just my imagination….We found the hiway and headed east towards Albuquerque. As we approached the state line the terrain changed from wide, I mean wide, high plains to rockier rim rock stuff. I felt like The Lone Ranger and Tonto might just ride out of one of the small canyons at any moment. They never did. Route 66 mostly follows closely to I-40 so the sights are the same either way. It doesn’t get much more than a quarter mile away from the hiway. Maybe 20 miles from our destination, it looked like where the movie “Cars’ must have gotten the idea for the backgrounds around Radiator Springs. Check it out. We made good time because like I said yesterday, everyone goes between 85 and 90 mph all the time. We were in need of fuel so we pulled over at Sky City. It’s a casino, truck stop that was just hopping! Most of the people there were Acoma Indians. The place was the busiest place we’ve been so far. We found the restaurant inside and had some dinner. Then we pressed onto Albuquerque to find a room. It seems like a long day. Shoot’n for Amarillo tomorrow.

Oh-my-gosh! It just keeps getting better and better! The further south we go the more things change! The scenery is sooo incredible. We left Kanab and headed south towards the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There is a turn at Jacob Lake in case the road is closed. I think that there are so few visitors that the park isn’t worth opening before May. It was closed. The traffic is very light however, which suits me just fine. At Jacob Lake there were a lot of pines and it was quite beautiful. There was fuel for less than we pay at home way out that far (30 miles from anywhere). Just to play it safe, we fueled up and headed south on alternate 87. We came down from almost 8,000 feet to around 6,000 near the bottom of the grade which opened up onto the most amazing plateau we’ve ever seen. It is so much more when you are really there! We crossed the upper end of the Grand Canyon where it begins at Marble Canyon. The Colorado River is very calm at this point. It is where the float trips begin because there is almost nowhere else to get the boats into the river. While we were standing on the bridge a young lady was waving an antenna slowly around and I, of course, wondered what she was looking for. “Condors”, says she! “In fact there are two coming right now. There are three in the area today, but I am only seeing these two”. Sho-nuff, there they came, bigger’n you know what! They were huge! 7’ wing span and circling like they were looking to lite. They landed down the canyon about 1/8 of a mile together and it was hard to see them against the rocks. The camera didn’t get a good shot of them, but whoa! It was cool! The far side of the canyon which is only a couple hundred feet across is the Navajo Indian reservation. Man is it desolate! We wondered if the people were content or suffering. I don’t know. They have little booths set up along the road to sell blankets and beaded stuff, but we wonder…the busy season will be there soon. We noticed that the closer we got to Flagstaff, the warmer the temperature was getting! Yahoo! Thea has been cold most of the trip so far. We rolled into Flagstaff around 3 PM looking for food. We came into town from the east on Route 66! Strangely, it felt really cool to be re-tracing the Mother Road. We were going to spend some time there looking at property with an eye for a place to get away from the dreary Northwest, when it’s dreary up there. I looked it up on Wikipediea and found that there is a large meth population and there is an unusually high property crime rate resulting from that. We looked at a real estate pamphlet and were shocked at the prices they are asking. We decided to keep-a-going and let them keep their stupid properties. Right out of Flagstaff, the land becomes flat, flat, flat! It seems like you can see the curvature of the earth in the distance! The black asphalt ribbon stretches out in front of you and tapers to the horizon maybe 10 miles away. That’s what it seemed like anyway. Here and there out on the landscape you see little mesas in the distant haze, but that’s all. It’s really very cool! We saw a sign for “The Meteor Crater” and were intrigued. If you tune to 1610 on the FM dial they give you some info about it. We wanted to see it, so we exited and headed out into seemingly no-where. Then in the distance you can see a raised area about a quarter mile across and as you approach you see the visitor’s center. It is privately owned by the family of the discoverer and they have developed it into quite a museum with a theater and paved paths to get a good look into the huge hole. Long ago, a meteor about 150 feet across hit the ground at around 26,000 miles an hour and disintegrated except for a couple pieces that they found about the size of a football and one about the size of a large water melon. They are very dense and therefore very heavy. It was cool to see. Arizona doesn’t observe day light savings time, so it wasn’t as last as we thought, we needed to find a room so we skedaddled down the road. The speed is posted at 75, but you get run over under 85, so we made good time. We went more like 90-95. Even so, my car averaged almost 29 miles per gallon. The roads are so straight and smooth, it was comfortable and traffic was fairly light. We found a nice room in Holbrook which is about 50 miles from the New Mexico border. Tomorrow, we plan to visit the Petrified Forest National Park. It’s only a couple miles from where we are right now. There must be a lot of the stuff because many of the buildings are actually made from big chunks mortared together like huge bricks. You can see the wood grain and the life rings; it’s pretty unique. Not sure how far we’ll make it tomorrow, but we’ll stay in touch.

Southern Utah is beyond beautiful!!!

Today was an amazing day! Saying WOW even louder doesn’t say enough! We headed South on hiway 28 from Nephi and got into some incredible geology. It was wondrous! I am having a hard time describing what we saw. Keep in mind that this whole day was at between 4,200 and 7,700 above sea level. The mountains around us were as high as 11,000’. It looks like it was a plain that got dug out by glaciers and then the melting ice created rivers and streams that eroded the softer rocks and soils. The colors were different than anything else. Everything was tones of grey through red. Much of it was stacked on top of each other in many layers of sediment with the grey gravel looking stuff down to the red near the bottom. Some of these “piles” are several hundred feet high and the road is cut right through them. At Richfield we found a Subway, (they still have the foot long for five dollar deal going on) and had lunch. I was struggling a bit to breath and asked the lady what was the elevation. We were at 6,600’! Cripe, no wonder!? We were far enough south that even that high they don’t get that much snow. The hills around were much higher and did have some snow left on them. The town looked like it had been there a while and we saw some beautiful old houses and city buildings that were still in good repair. Others weren’t so much. At Panguitch (pan-goo-itch) we turned east and headed for Bryce Canyon. On the way we drove through Red Canyon and we were impressed! The red rocks looked like they were stacked on each other like dinner rolls and were a hundred feet tall. The eroded red soil flowed down around the stacks like you’d poured out a bowl of red sugar. We grabbed a baggy full at Corral Pink Dunes because it was so red and sooo fine (texture-wise). We pulled into the Bryce Canyon tourist info center, but first they wanted a week’s pay just enter the dang National Park boundary! Well, if you know me, you know I think we pay enough taxes already and all we wanted was to take a quick look. We didn’t get the quick look, we got the quick turn around and left. That’s OK, We seen pictures before in the brochure. Not too much further we found the little town of Kanab where we shut off the car. It wasn’t a long day of driving, but it was bee-you-tee-ful! Tomorrow we’re off to see if the road to the North Edge of the Grand Canyon is open. Then it’s onto Flagstaff. O boy!

Well, here we are in Nephi, Utah. It’s about right in the middle of the state. Today was especially incredible. We slept well and got started towards the Utah border. Up until today, everywhere we have stopped has been very (!) windy and cold. Most of this trip since we crossed over the Blue Mountains (they really are blue!) has been between 3 and almost 5 thousand feet above sea level. No wonder it’s been sooooo cold. The hiway to Salt Lake follows a wide valley right between the Wasatch Mountains on the East and some other beauties on the West. These mountains just keep going and going. It is so cool that they are right there! The slopes start right at the hiway and go to 3 to 4 thousand feet of snow capped peaks only a mile or 2 away! It’s incredible! We stopped at a rest stop right after we crossed into Utah that had some info about the area. When the glaciers melted this huge valley filled with water until it overflowed into the Snake River. When it melted back enough the lake started to evaporate and it formed the Salt Flats and what is left is the Great Salt Lake. At the highest point the lake was 20,000 square miles of surface water. Whoa!
We couldn’t pass by Salt Lake City without seeing the sights. It was snowing when we got there. We toured the Tabernacle, not the Temple; the public is not allowed in there. The Tabernacle is where the huge choir sings. The acoustics are phenomenal! They demonstrate that with a young lady speaking in a normal voice and you can gear her clearly any where inside. She even dropped a pin and it sounded like a nail dropped on a hardwood floor. The architecture is also amazing. They build most of those buildings by hand. The city near the Temple area is mostly those carved stone structures and it is something to behold.
After the tour, we went to the Hall of Records. Thea found out much information about her dad’s side. She already had a good idea about some of them and that sped up her search. She found a step sister of her dad’s that he probably never knew about. She found her great-great-grand father in the census records. He fought for the North in the Civil War. His name was Sealy Kaster and was born in Pennsylvania in 1812. I located ( and have copies of) the census from 1880 and 1900. I didn’t know much about my dad’s side and found his dad, Sherman R. Beaty (born in 1887), his dad who was William R. Beaty (1845) and his dad who was also a William Beaty. I’m not sure of his B.D. William R. had 4 brothers and sisters, Henry, Robert, Winchester and Sarah. Winchester and Sarah were twins. It’s really the tip of the ice berg and we didn’t even get started on my mom’s side. They have many records of even the Hungarian relatives. I think I’ll look further into all this. They gave us a couple tools to continue the search. It’s truly fascinating!
We wanted to push on so we joined the rush hour headed South. The speed limit is 75 mph and we were just keeping up at 85! We got passed a few times like we were parked! Holy C*#p! Tomorrow we are taking another scenic hiway that will go past Brice Canyon and we’ll cross the Grand Canyon at Page which is the dam that forms Lake Powell. I’m betting it will be another day full of wonderful sights! Stay tuned.

Welcome to Idaho, April 15

Greetings from Twin Falls Idaho! We didn't get to Salt Lake City because it would be another several hours. This is far enough today. We did see Hamley & Companyand it was very impressive. The Saddles were amazing and the art upstairs was beautiful. There were many large and bronze statues with one of Billy the Kid, Doc Holiday and my favorite was Wild Bill! The thing was that the prices were way beyond reasonable. Way beyound...We drove over Dead Man's Pass in the Blue Mountains with the temperatures hovering about 31 degrees and snow swirling in the lanes. No slipping we did! Literally hundreds of trucks going both ways and many of them were triples (three trailers). The traffic was spread out so we still moved right along. The scenery was awsome. I think the terrain was most noticeable. Very similar to Eastern Washington excepth the valleys were emense; maybe 15-20 miles across. We arrived in Ontario; it's right on the Idaho border and it felt like we were in Montana. The sky was huge!

We sailed through Caldwell, Nampa and Boise. There was alot of traffic and I wanted to get at least to Mountain Home. We stopped for lunch and fuel in Mountain Home and still had a few travel hours left in us so we pressed on. We turned off I-84 at Bliss to take hiway 30 through the hills. It's designated a scenic route. There's a good reason for that; it's amazing! You are driving along a huge flat river valley and realize that there is another plateau above you on both sides. We came to "Thousand Springs", which is where there is water falling out all along the eastern edge of the valley about half way up. It's a section at least a half mile long. The water starts way back on the plateau and flows down through the volcanic rock and out through the fissures. Very cool! Never seen anything like it, not even in National Geographic. I'll try to add the picture we took. It might not do it justice. We turned at Buhl and came East to Twin Falls. The time changed to Mountain Time back there somewhere so we lost an hour. It was definately time to stop, so we found the Motel 6 and shut off the car. Tomorrow we might not drive so far, but that remains to be seen. There are not that many choices in Northern Utah, but at Nephi we can get off the interstate and and take 28 South and drive through some beautiful places. That might be a little ambitious....so we'll keep you posted.

Monday, April 14

We stayed with Jake up at the cabin after we left the Corvette down town at the vehicle storage where he keeps his Fairlane. We had planned to install a double door that Jake found on Second Cup of Coffee. It’ like the want ads on the radio. Someone had them custom made and then never used them! They are brand new, solid fir with full glass in both. We needed a shorter than standard door to be able to open in. He paid maybe a fifth of what they are worth. Thank You God! Turns out we needed some more lumber to frame in the hole we needed to cut in the wall. We decided to get ‘er done after church on Sunday. It took a while, but things went well and what difference it makes! It was too late to take off, so we stayed Sunday night as well.
Since Jake was our ride to the car, we got up with him at 4:15 AM this morning. (Not used to that!) We ate breakfast in Wenatchee and headed South to the Tri-cities and onto Pendleton, Oregon. We toured the woolen mills and had a pleasant lunch in town. We still want to visit Hamley & Company;”displaying the best examples of custom saddles, horse tack and western wear” this side of the Pecos! Can’t miss that! Then it’s over the Blue Mountains and South through Boise and maybe as far as Salt Lake City tomorrow. It doesn’t look that far on the map. We’ll see. Much more to come!