Great American Road Trip - Day 9

Today was an absolute blast!

We left the Wigwam Motel in good time this morning, and headed out on the road.  We made a quick stop at the classic Route 66 landmark: the 'Here it is Jack Rabbit'

The Here it is Jack Rabbit trading post opened in 1949 and is home to the 12 foot tall fibre glass Jack Rabbit.  Although the Rabbit is not original, we definitely had some laughs taking pictures with it.  The bill board on the road is original from 1949.

From here we headed down the highway to Winslow Arizona...  

...where we enjoyed the view of standing on the corner.  (Incase you don't get the refrence - it's the corner referred to in the song 'Take it Easy' by  the Eagles)

Just around the corner we found a Peter Toth totem pole park.  Peter Toth travelled around the country creating totem poles to honor the First Nations people who are local to the area.  

The park also housed an old Santa Fe rail car...this is very similar to the we are staying in tonight.  

We continued out on the open road enjoyng the view of the flat lands with the view of the San Francisco moutntains in the distance.  

We found ourselves at a deserted road side attraction in the middle of no where which claimed to be home to the worlds largest map of Route 66.  The map was slightly delapitated, but it was neat to see none the less.

Continuing on the road we could see some of the land elevated in the distance.  This would eventually become the ridge of the best preserved meteor crater in the world.  We entered the meteor crater park and did a little tour around the rim and learned about NASA's research at this site, and about the rocks in this region.  We learned that this is in a high altitude desert at about 7,000 feet.

After another picnic lunch, we continued on the road still driving towards the Mountains and stumbled upon a little ghost town called Two Guns.  This town was at one time home to a zoo, which proudly displays that they had mountain lions.  It was quite eerie to walk around the abandond buildings and to see the cages which one time were home to animals.

One thing that we concluded on today was that Route 66 is very much like the worlds largest museum of Americana.  We found ourselves down the highway at another abandoned trading post called Twin Arrows.  There was also an abandoned diner - it is so strange to see these places in the middle of no where.

Driving up, and up, we found ourselves in a completely different environment as the trees became more dense, and the road curving and turning.  I actually had no idea that we were going to be driving into the mountains...and then weave ourselves down again on a scenic byway. 

We enjoyed a late afternoon swim at Slide Rock state park.  Unfotunately, all of our pictures from this are on a different camera, which I will load up later! But take my word for it - it is awesome!!  It's basically a mountain river that runs down the mountain, and the rocks of the stream are completely eroded and smooth creating a natural water slide.  The water was super cold...but it was a blast.

We made our way from the park to our hotel, which as mentioned...was an old train car.  The park was cute and so was our room!

We found out that there was a party downtown, and a classic car show, so we headed out for dinner at Twisters Soda Fountain (who happned to be the hosts of the party).  We were exhausted...so we didn't stick around for long before heading back to our hotel for a good nights sleep!