Radar speed traps don't get...
Radar speed traps don't get much more blatant than this one on the western outskirts of Kingman, AZ. What a scam!
We faced the morning with both anticipation and a hint of regret. It's always is good to get home after a long trip, yet we felt a bit of let down that this adventure was coming to an end. No matter what route(s) we'd follow, we were looking at covering at least 800 or so miles in one final sprint. We were using our last changes of clean clothes, so tarrying for one more day would mean either re-using the least used of the dirty clothes, a laundry stop, or buying an additional change of clothing. Plus that would mean getting home late on Sunday and having to be back in the office on Monday. Yuck!
If we'd had the blessings of one additional day, we'd have headed south from Albuquerque on I-25 to either Socorro (about 80 miles) or Las Cruces (225 miles, and only about 35 miles from both El Paso and the Mexican border). The Las Cruces route would put us on Interstate 10 west to Tucson, north to Phoenix, and west again into Los Angeles. Ho hum. The Socorro route, at least on the maps, looks very promising. U.S. Highway 60 west is designated as a principal, but not multi-lane highway. And just in the New Mexico part, weaves through the Magdalena, Gallinas, and Datil Mountain Ranges and portions of the Plains of San Augustin, and then it skirts the northern fringe of the Gallo Mountains. Once in Arizona, the possibilities are almost endless, with several roads going through the Sierra Ancha and Mazatzal Ranges, the Apache Sitgreaves, Coconino, Kaibab, and Prescott National Forests, plus the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, Camp Verde, Prescott, and Sedona (just to name a few) before heading north to Flagstaff and I-40 or south to Phoenix and I-10.
Yah know what? Sounds to us like a good week's worth of prowling in a Corvette on some highly entertaining and scenic roads. Time to start planning another road trip!
So, it was I-40 west out of Albuquerque, retracing our eastward route from 11 days and what seemed in some respects a lifetime before. Actually, the run across western New Mexico and the Painted Cliffs region of eastern Arizona was interesting as it allowed us to see the often-colorful mesas and other geological formations in the morning light and an entirely opposite perspective from our prior passage.
By the time we'd passed through the Petrified Forest National Park and neared Holbrook, we'd decided to check out the sights on I-40 through the rest of Arizona and well into the Golden State. We passed through Winslow, but didn't have time to check out either the Homolovi Ruins State Park (just a few miles east and to the north of Winslow) and a huge array of small to large Anasazi pueblo ruins or Meteor Crater (20-some miles west and slightly south of Winslow), the mile-wide/500-foot deep crater left by a meteorite impact an estimated 50,000 years ago.
After running another 60 miles and an elevation gain of over 2,100 feet, we pulled into Flagstaff, a beautiful small city that's surrounded by the ponderosa pine forests of the Coconino National Forest. Flagstaff is bisected by both I-40 and an intact, 15-plus mile stretch of Route 66. We gassed the C5 on the east side of town then followed old Route 66 through central Flagstaff and past the 1926 Tudor Revival-style railroad depot, which now houses the Flagstaff Visitors Center. Old downtown, which radiates out for several blocks in all directions, is filled with historic buildings that date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Flagstaff would make an excellent central point for a series of day trips that would offer both exciting driving and matchless scenery such as the Grand Canyon.