Long Arizona Detours

On Sunday, we drove a lot - in fact, we drove way too much.

The plan was to go across Arizona, from Holbrook to Needles, with two minor detours. Without the detours, the journey is already 300 miles long. With the detours, it increases to 400 miles. And they weren't any ordinary detours, they were the slow moving windy mountain detours. We left that morning at 7am and didn't arrive at our destination until after 5pm. Noa had 2 separate naps and watched the same Teletubbies DVD 4 times - poor girl!

Having said that, it was the detours that really made the day. The first one had us leaving the Interstate at Flagstaff, heading south through Sedona, Jerome and Prescott, then back up to the Interstate at Ash Fork. Sedona seems to be a posh desert retreat town surrounded by large red rock formations. Very Arizony. In my opinion, a town I would highly recommend visiting more than Sedona is a small town called Jerome. We just drove through, as by then we had realized that we were behind schedule. Jerome is an old mining town that is basically on a steep slope. To drive through it, you had to zig-zag your way through very steep roads. But as with all nice towns so far, everything is way too touristy for our liking.

The second detour was the last part of our trip and is the only part of our whole trip that we spent considerable time driving on the OLD route 66. Of course, we pick the toughest part to do this. Between Kingman and Needles, route 66 goes through the mountains and through a very small town of Oatman. The Lonely Planet we bought in Europe recommended this route for the real feel of the "Mother Road". If real feel means narrow, badly maintained, steep, no guardrails with sharp drop-offs, then it was real. Probably not the best road to take with a 24 foot RV. Normally, Margreet is pretty relaxed when I drive, but she was definitely white knuckling it. Most of this part of the trip was done below 20 miles per hour, very slow, but hey, we're still alive. The town of Oatman, again very commercial, but kinda neat to see.

Note: I'll post some pictures of this trip in this same blog tomorrow morning (Tuesday in LA) because I'm knackered and off to bed.