Taking It Easy

We left our hotel around 8am and got through heavy traffic and out onto the I40 heading east.  About 30 mins out Gary realised he had left the battery camera charging at the hotel.  So we headed back and got it - nice to see Flagstaff again.

Back onto the I40 at 9am we headed the 58 miles to Winslow, Arizona.  Gary wanted to stand on a corner just like in the Eagles seventies hit single Take It Easy!

Well, I’m a standing on a corner
In Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me

We found the corner easy enough - it is quite a tourist attraction with shops on two of the corners selling nothing but Standin' On A Corner souvenirs.  Gary was surprised that we were not the only ones there for the same purpose as us.  There was at least 15 people there at one time - all Baby Boomers just wanting to see that small part of music history.   On one of the other corners there is a wall with a mural showing the girl in the flatbed ford.  This wall was part of a large building that had burnt down a few years ago.  The wall was propped up with timber beams and looked ready to fall down, a safety fence kept the public at a short distance.

Winslow itself looks like a town well past its use by date.  It may have been a major city once when it was on the old Route 66 but life, and the interstate, seem to have passed it by.  Nice place to spend an hour or so but happy to be on our way.

The I40 then took us on to New Mexico.  it was aound this time that the enormity of the challenge ahead of us started to hit home.  We`actually started to have second thoughts.  It is pretty barren sort of country.  We started to pass the time counting Walmart trucks.  Trucks are plentiful in the US.  Transport is a major industry and these 53 foot rigs are everywhere.  We counted 31 coming the opposite way over a 5 mile distance - the same period there was just 21 cars.   The lack of people is also a concern - if there are 300 million people in the USA where are they all????   Gary eventually figured out that the people must have been in the back of all the trucks.

We eventually got over our second thoughts, thanks mainly to a diverse countryside, some good music on the iPod and the Walmart trucks.

We spent the night in Albuquerque.  A part from being damn hard to spell, Albuquerque is a big place. Must be the size of Perth, over a million people.  The I40 goes right through Albuquerque so there was some traffic congestion but we had a nice hotel and a pleasant meal - no Denny's tonight. 365 miles today - which included a bit of backtracking.