Sun 3 Feb - Kayenta, AZ

Super Bowl day today. American football. Baltimore vs San Francisco 49ers. See if we get to today's destination Kayenta in time for some TV.

Time to leave Sedona area and we headed off around 8am on a cloudy day and went north thought the Oak Creek Canyon on a climbing, very windy road to this vista point. Amazing views and a serious drop in temperature to just over 0 degrees as we are now at close to 2000 metres elevation.

The road we drove up.

Its only about 20 miles further north to Flagstaff and it does not get warmer as Flagstaff is an alpine town. The mountains are evident from everywhere in town.

 

Flagstaff is an old railroad and timber town on Route 66. It's still quite prosperous and they have done well to preserve the historic centre with a mix of a transport hub. We took a break at this diner (where typical of diners we seem to visit the espresso machine is "broken" - happened three times so far on this trip).

Photos of Flagstaff below.

We laughed to see that the Vagina Monologues is followed by a show called Leftover Salmon at this old lovely theatre in Flagstaff.

Definite route hub. And Route 66. We did drive a bit on Route 66 in Flagstaff and also later in Winslow.

Downtown Flagstaff including some great murals.

 

Lots of cargo still travels by train on this line and as we travelled we saw lots of freight trains and had to wait for this long one.

The road heading east from Flagstaff is heavily used by trucks and is flat and mostly straight. The terrain is unfortunately not terribly interesting.

We were heading east instead of north deliberately so we could visit the best preserved meteor impact crater on earth, called the... Meteor Crater.

It was amazing. A short film and a museum explained it all. It's quite young - 50,000 years old - so not responsible for the ice age and end of the dinosaurs. A meteor 45m in diameter created this hole of more than 1,500 metres in diameter and 200 metres deep. It hit at 26,000mph. Wow.

That's Hans waving on a lower observation deck.

The mandatory self portrait...

Di looking a bit worried about the fact the deck overhangs this drop.

Below is the biggest chunk of the actual meteor recovered. It was found about 20km away from the impact hole. We love that you can touch this space rock, which consists of 93% iron and weights about 660kg. Heavy stuff.

The view of the surrounding terrain through a hole in the wall at the Meteor Crater's Visitors Centre.

They offered a one hour hike with a guide around parts of the crater's rim that would have been very interesting, but we didn't feel that we had the time as we had a fair bit more driving to do. Next time...

Another 20 miles further east on I40 is Winslow, Arizona and they made an effort to highlight The Corner mentioned in the Eagles song "Taking it Easy". It was pretty much the only thing that we could see going for Winslow and of course it had to be done... Apart from being on the mural behind, there was even a flatbed Ford parked nearby. Standing on the corner...

They also highlight that this is Route 66.

The rest of the town looks to have suffered and we could not see much to make us stay longer, so after the mandatory photographs, we were on the road again.

We head north using an artistic impression map towards Kayenta, perhaps not the best tool... The terrain is quite interesting but the road is pretty much straight.

We think the artists map sent us the long way round because we did not reach Tuba City for lunch until 3pm. A few towns were mentioned on road signs but turned out to be villages in native America Hopi tribe reservations. They were sh..holes in a dead terrain. No trees, no grass and nothing but run down shacks and dumped old cars. No evidence of commercial enterprises, except for "art", nor of people being "house proud". So different to Montezuma's castle.

 

We reached Kayenta just before 5pm in time to see the end of the 1st quarter of the Super Bowl. We watched in the restaurant for a while, but were back in our room for the 2nd quarter and half time show.

Looking at the menu for the restaurant, we noticed that all drinks were non-alcoholic. After enquiry, the whole of Kayenta is apparently dry, no alcohol to be sold anywhere. Probably true for the whole reservation.

The sunset view from our room at Hampton Inn - the most upmarket hotel we stayed in so far but in the middle of nowhere.

 

We watched the Super Bowl on and off, but Hans just can't get himself to understand the rules. Furthermore, there are far too many breaks to make the play flowing and interesting for him.

 

Super Bowl half time show with Beyonce was good followed by a dramatic start to the 3rd quarter with Kobe Jones from Baltimore running the ball the full length of the field for a touchdown. He was seriously fast. Then half the stadium lights went out! For about half an hour. Heads will roll at New Orleans stadium for that.

 

We had dinner in the restaurant downstairs called Reuben Heflin where we try a bit of Native American food, including Indian Fry Bread. Interesting, but perhaps a bit blend.

Lazy evening viewing the end of the game which was won by Baltimore in the end.

 

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