We spent 3 days driving The Mother Road. The first night’s stop was in Weatherford, OK. The second night we veered a little south, off the interstate highway to visit some family in Clovis, NM. That drive, Oklahoma through the Texas Panhandle, then southwest to Clovis, was nothing special.
The evening we spent in Clovis was interesting. We arranged to finally meet up with a nephew (now aged 38) and his sweet family whom we’d lost track of when his dad, Randy and Lynn’s younger brother, abandoned him after an acrimonious divorce. The brother led a self-inflicted hard life and died of a drug overdose in 2013. He’d been estranged from his son since the son was about 3 years old. Though we tried, early on, to stay in touch with him, the mother wanted nothing to do with our family.
Through Facebook we knew where the mother was, and years ago, when we saw that she’d moved to Missouri with her husband, I reached out to her again. Randy and I drove to Columbia one day to meet her and her husband for breakfast. We reestablished a now fairly cordial relationship with her. That allowed us to find her son when his father died and the funeral director, upon finding that he had a son, refused to let anyone else sign official documents regarding his death. It was awkward because, with good reason, the son didn’t give a rip about his long absent father. In the end he did sign off, authorizing Randy’s oldest sister to take care of all the details, but he had no interest in knowing our family. When he married a wonderful woman and had 2 children, it was his wife who was very friendly and open to our family. That’s how, when I let her know we would be close to where they are now living, he finally agreed to meet us for dinner. It went well considering the history, and the door is now open, which is a blessing to us.
The drive from Clovis back up to I-40 was full of flat, flat desert-like country and long, long freight trains. It appeared beautifully desolate to me. The trains astonished us. Randy thought they were between 1 and 2 miles long, pulled by 3-5 engines, some with another 3 pushing engines at the end. One particularly long train even had 3 engines right in the middle. We’d never seen anything like it in the areas of the country we’ve lived.
We spent the night in Gallup, NM where they apparently roll up the sidewalks at 5 pm, even on a Saturday night. We got settled into the hotel about 4:30 and Randy and I wanted to head for the historic Route 66 district. The hotel clerk told us we’d better hurry as everything closed at 5. We thought surely there would be a few things open, but we were wrong. The district we drove through was a sad, sorry reminder of what an interstate does to a once vibrant town. Granted, we only saw the part of Gallup through which Route 66 ran, but there were multitudes of buildings boarded and shuttered. We could tell the buildings once must have been vibrant roadside motels, restaurants, bars, souvenir places along the historic route. Why they don’t tear them down and offer the opportunity for new growth and vitality, I have no idea. It was kind of depressing.
The next day our destination was Winslow, AZ, a town on historic Route 66 made most famous by the song Take It Easy, written by Jackson Brown and Glen Frye, and recorded by the Eagles. You know the one. Its most famous verse says…
Standing on a corner in Winslow Arizona, such a fine sight to see; It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me.
It might be that that single song is responsible for the life Winslow enjoys today. Almost the opposite of Gallup, there were scores of people walking around town, taking pictures standing on THE corner, dancing to the live music in the park, shopping in quaint shops in the downtown area, and eating in places like the one we chose, The Relic Road Brewing Company. We had a lot of fun and spent the time in the brewery reminiscing of our youth which coincides with the heyday of Route 66 and (we like to think) the best music of all time. It was a real, feel-good experience.
Before we arrived at Winslow, though, on the interstate highway about an hour from Gallup, we pulled into the Petrified Forest National Park. And, wow! Just wow! If you ever have a chance to visit the Petrified Forest, which is also home to The Painted Desert, don’t pass it up.
It’s hard to put into words the geology of this area of the country. Again, desolate describes it, but it’s so starkly beautiful. The natural pastel and neutral colors, so different from the greens and blues of the vegetation and seas and skies of the majority of this country, are unique, soothing, and I think, magnificent. The views, standing on scenic overlooks in the Painted Desert, are mind boggling. I am reminded of what I felt standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon so many years ago. It’s so vast, and so unusual, that it seems surreal, more like a matte painting than a place where you could actually descend into and walk through. To infinity and beyond describes it accurately for me.
We drove the entire 28 miles through the park and stopped at about 6 “attractions” along the way. The Blue Mesas were incredible, and the Crystal Forest stunning. Petrified wood is fascinating, and much of it in the national park has turned to quartz with spectacular colorization. We walked a trail through the Crystal Forest that was about three quarters of a mile long taking lots of pictures along the way.
That whole Petrified Forest National Park area was, they say, once underwater as part of a vast floodplain and river system. It’s easy, looking at it today, to envision it as the bottom of a dried up river or lake. Now, incredible visual delights formerly hidden because they are covered by water are visible. It makes me wonder what we’d see if we could drain the oceans and look at the topography of the ocean floors. The whole park is truly stunning,
Then, if the wonder and beauty of The Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest weren’t enough, we began the drive to our destination that night, Sedona, AZ. For us Midwesterners, that drive was dazzling. More on that in the next post.
P.S. We’d been through this area before, but we were young and always in a hurry. Things look different, feel different, though the lens of life experience. It’s a really good reason to enjoy the journey of getting older.
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