TotSW: Transition to Flagstaff

All too soon, it was time to move on from the Mojave.  Clearly the universe thought we ought to stay:  as we approached the freeway, it was clear that there was a horrible line of non-moving truck traffic as far as the eye could see on the main road.  At this point, I had one rogue bar of cell service, and was able to check conditions on my phone -- I40 was closed a bit to the east due to a crash, and had been for over an hour.  No way we were getting in that horrible line of non-moving trucks, so I looked for an alternative.

The obvious choice was to cross the freeway and take a paved road that paralleled the freeway for most of the traffic mess, but alas that road was closed because there was a bridge out.  The only other choice was to turn around and follow an unnamed dirt road across the desert north of the freeway to a junction with Old Route 66 near the town of Fenner.

The road was benign at first.

However, as is the way of these things, it got lumpier and lumpier as we started to hit washes that needed to be crossed.  By the time we got close to town, all our attention was focussed on routing the truck up and down 8 to10 foot sandy embankments of said washes.  Chad happily engaged all of the truck tricks to make that happen.  

Eventually we made it back to civilization.  At this point, we could have hopped back on I-40, but following Old Route 66 for a bit longer was clearly going to be more jolly than getting in the line of traffic.

We crossed the Colorado and headed into AZ.  After admiring Topock Marsh,

we found ourselves on the "Route 66 Back Country Byway" to Oatman -- a funny old mining town that has reinvented itself as a tourist trap whose present claim to fame is the burros roaming freely down the main road.

One has to slow down to not run over the burros...or the tourists.  Fortunately, we were already in slo-mo mode for the day.

One should always pick the routes designated as back country byways; in this case, the road wound its way up past Oatman on the steep and spectacular route over Sitgreaves Pass.  We stopped to take a break at the top (unfortunately past the most spectacular part of the road).

The landscape definitely now looked like Arizona to my eyes.

At a certain point, we did defect to the main highway because we were getting tired of sitting in the truck.  We rolled into Flagstaff mid-afternoon, got cleaned up, and then walked into the old town area to find some dinner.  Dinner critera:  Chad wanted a brewpub with a good beer selection, kid wanted dessert.  I wanted food that I didn't have to cook over a campstove.  Fortunately, this is easy to achieve in Flagstaff.   (Featured below: happy teen with caramel pudding in a mason jar)

On the way back to the motel, we walked by this intersection, which has always struck me as being an intersection so very full of potential -- I remember it from when I lived here before the kiddo was born.  There are so many choices of things to explore from here!