on Route 66!!!
Yayesssss!!! Greetings from Kingman, Arizona. We arrived relatively early and secured a place to stay directly on historic Route 66. Martin Milner even stayed in a room at this hotel. See? 
It's very cool and I'm having a wonderful time now that I'm finally out of California. Nothing personal, in fact, I was really tempted to detour through my old stomping ground of Los Angeles, but three nights in a state is enough for this trip of trips. Also, at $2.45+ for a gallon of gas, I couldn't afford another night here. Not terribly surprising, as soon as I crossed the Arizona state line, gas dropped immediately to the more common $1.99/gal. Let's just hope that holds for the rest of the journey.
Today has been rather uneventful, but pleasant. We stopped at the airpane graveyard in Mojave, CA, but was rather disappointed that we couldn't get very close to the planes. We were also disappointed to find that the planes there were only old commercial jets--no military planes. It was the only real bummer in an otherwise pleasant day.
Shrugging that all aside, I have to admit I slowly fell in love with the Mojave Desert. Earlier in the day it was harsh and hot with an unforgiving sun that beat down and dried up everything, yet as the sun set, the colors changed and the landscape came alive. Shadows gave depth where there wasn't depth before, and the light changed by the second. By the time the sun had set, I was planning on building a winter cottage overlooking some of the beautiful vistas I drove past. I was lucky enough to see two trains on the horizon moving slowly toward each other, and then see them merge into one long snake that shrank in size for a while before it started growing on the ends again as the trains passed each other. VEEERY cool.
I was also very surprised at all the windmills in the desert outside Barstow (I'll add the correct town name when I'm not at a public computer terminal and have access to my atlas. My apologies to any locals.) Wind energy at work! Gotta love it.
Overall, it's been a beautiful day, and for the first time in days, I feel like we've got the wind at our backs. Judy seems a tad tired of the road travel, but is soldiering through like a trouper. We're going to be taking a few more short breaks throughout the next few days since we've got a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time.
Tomorrow is Albuquerque. I hear the ballooning festival was going on earlier this week, and I hope it's still on tomorrow when we get there. We'll see.
By the way, does anyone know what happened to the Wild West? We haven't seen a single western wear store or trading post yet. Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember driving out west when I was a kid and seeing one on every freeway exit. Now that I'm in the market for some turquoise jewelry, I can't seem to find anything. I'm hoping Arizona or New Mexico will be more western-wear friendly. Regardless of the result of my turquoise hunt, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find me a BIG silver belt buckle somewhere in Texas. Yee ha!
Wish me luck!
Read the post from October 14 (New Mexico)
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