Spring Road Trip: Northern Arizona

The Route

When you get cabin fever in April, there’s only one thing to do.  I planned an almost 800 mile journey through northern Arizona, a “big loop” that took in desert (all kinds, and both “painted” and otherwise), rim rock and canyons, high country and forests.  My route was from Phoenix, northwest on *US93 through Wickenburg to Kingman, northeast and east from Kingman on Old 66 as far as Seligman, then I-40 to Williams.  That ended day one.  From Williams on day 2, north on SR64 to Valle and the Grand Canyon National Park, then out of the park at Desert View and on to Cameron, Tuba City, Old Oraibi and the Hopi mesas, then south on SR87 all the way back to Phoenix. 



Interstate

*Note: Some international readers who have not visited the United States may not be familiar with our highway nomenclature:  An "I" preceding the number indicates a controlled-access "expressway" or "freeway," an "Interstate."  This is the "fast" road to take between points A and B. and equates to an "M" motorway in the UK. Drivers here often call it the super-slab, " which term is not generally complimentary. 

US Highway

A "US" highway prefix indicates a federally-maintained main highway, can sometimes be divided but just as often isn't and is equivalent to an "A" road in UK.  It runs through towns and cities, so it adds time to your journey, your average speeds and elapsed times will be slower, although not always significantly.

State Highway

Finally, an "SR” (at least in my writing) means it is a state highway, as opposed to a federally-maintained highway, or in application, a “lesser” route.  This is similar to a “B” road in the UK.  We also have county roads, which are more local in nature.  In its heyday, "66" was a US highway, these days it is a state route where it still exists; it is not complete and continuous anymore, although you can locate and drive many portions of it.

On maps (see the graphics!), an Interstate highway is identified with a blue, red and white "shield," a "US" route by a black and white shield, and a state route with that state's choice of sign -- often some motif involving that state's flag or geographical shape.  In my state, for example, we use a sign shaped like our state's outline, in black and white.  Now back to my story...

The purpose of this trip was the driving itself – but that’s not to say there weren’t interesting things to see and do along the way. My original plan was to meet some friends in southern Utah for a day of visiting, but that fell through for the present.  So instead, since I was not willing to stay home and was really excited at the prospect of doing some driving (which I haven’t been able to do for a while), I thought this would be an ambitious alternative for a two-day adventure (in reality, it was a day and a half).

SR51

10:30: There are two ways to get out of my end of Phoenix to the northwest – one, use Grand Avenue and beat your way through traffic for 25 miles until you get out of the business congestion of Peoria and Sun City, or you can drive north about 15 miles and take SR74 west past Lake Pleasant and across the desert to its junction with US60 west of Morristown.  I usually go that way – so this time I took the more congested route.  Call me crazy.  But I drove the Loop 101 out to Bell Road, then used that to go the last miles to Grand Avenue (US60). 

Up until the 1970s, Grand Avenue and US60 was the main route from Phoenix to Los Angeles.  It was very common for us to leave Phoenix in the evening, and drive to Los Angeles overnight to beat the summer daytime heat. The stretch of I-10 from Brenda (out by Quartzite) into Phoenix was the very last section of I-10 to be completed, so we had to use the old two-lane blacktop out to that point in far western Arizona.  From the northwest end of Phoenix, this old two-lane road is still a preferred route for me, since it is more scenic and the pace is slower.  I followed that as far as Wickenburg, where my route for this trip (US93) split off toward Kingman and Las Vegas.

Hassayampa Rest Area and Palo Verdes

11:00: On the highway southeast of Wickenburg, the Hassayampa River makes a brief above-ground appearance in a “wash” on the south side of the highway. The Nature Conservancy has created a lovely little rest area there.  The Hassayampa is an underground river for most of its length, and you only see water in most of it when it rains heavily. I used to stop here on my way back into Phoenix from central California when I was driving trucks – and I would run out of “steam” (and driving hours) just before reaching home.  It was a great place to stop for a nap.  The river creates a very green and lush riparian habitat for a brief distance in this very special place – like an oasis in the Sahara -- and it is always quite unexpected in the otherwise arid Sonoran Desert environment that you’ve been driving through.

Horse Shoe Cafe

12:00: I stopped to eat in Wickenburg at the Horseshoe Café.  It is a typical small-town restaurant (in terms of menu), and plays on the “old west” theme in an “old western” town.  The fare was almost completely fried foods.  I got a salad and a burger and onion rings – it was all good as far as it goes, but the portion sizes were very large and I wasted a lot of the food.  There’s no way I can still eat the typical “American-sized” portions a lot of places serve.  I guess that’s a good thing, as I abused myself in that regard for so many years.  The salad could have been the best (at least healthiest) part of it – a large plate of iceberg lettuce and onion, and some other things, maybe carrots…  But they did not spin the salad or otherwise dry the greens after washing them – so the result was that it was very watery on the plate.  So C+ for the first lunch of the road-trip.

US 93

13:00 – 15:00: The Highway of Death. The next leg of the drive was on one of the most dangerous highways in the United States (US93 between Wickenburg and I-40).  There are others like it in the country, but this is one of the worst – and still is on the sections that have not been divided and widened.  A few years ago, the state highway department erected little white crosses at each location along this road where a person was killed in a crash.  Each death got memorialized with a cross. They took many of those crosses down a few years back as part of the recent (and still ongoing) modernization and widening of the highway, but before they did I had someone else drive while I sat on the passenger-side and counted those white crosses.  Perhaps erected over ten or fifteen years, there were at least 337 of them along this 100 miles of roadway. 

There are several things that contribute to the extremely unsafe nature of this highway.   First, (before the current improvement project) the road and its foundations were designed and built in the 1930s.  It was designed and constructed for automobiles with expected highway speeds of 40 or 50 mph, maximum.  It was narrow and shoulder-less, with very little thought given to grades and banking in terms of safe driving. They built the road, but it was up to each driver to drive on it safely – a novel concept, eh? It’s what I call “personal responsibility.”

You see, we didn’t used to have the "Nanny State" that we have now.  In the latter half of the 20^th Century, we drove this road at speeds of 65 and 75 mph (not that this was legal), whether it was safe at those speeds or not (It wasn’t.)  Along with that problem, the drivers on that highway are mostly headed to the gambling and drinking holiday meccas of our area – Laughlin and Las Vegas.  When they get there, they drink and they don't sleep, and most are in a hurry to get there or to get home afterward. So you have impaired drivers from both fatigue and chemicals, and you have a large number of drivers who exhibit great degrees of impatience – resulting in high speeds and unsafe passing. 

When you mix all of those things together on what already was an outdated and poorly designed road (in terms of modern road design, anyway), tragic results are completely predictable.  What remains to be seen is whether the recent improvement projects and widening (& dividing) of the highway will have any positive impact on the death rate on this road.  As it is, even today, I often go a different route to avoid it, or choose a time when some of the other drivers mentioned above are not as likely to be “out there.”  It saddens me whenever I think about it that many Americans are nothing but rank amateurs when it comes to driving.  There are so many unthinking and ignorant fools out there.

Joshua Tree

13:30: The highway just north of Wickenburg passes through one of only about three Joshua tree “forests” in Arizona.  I’ve driven this road so many times, and always enjoy passing through the area and seeing the very unique Joshuas, but I never thought much about why they inhabit that particular stretch of desert. So I looked it up. Noah Aleshire wrote about it on Arizona Scenic Roads and since he said it so well, I will quote his words here:

Running for 54 miles along US Route 93 northwest of Phoenix between the historic mining town of Wickenburg and the tiny town of Wikieup, the Joshua Forest Scenic Parkway crosses the blurred boundary between the Sonoran and Mojave deserts in western Arizona. Hardy creosote carpets the desert, while ocotillos thrust their straight barbed arms to the sky like a spring of thorns, frozen in midair. Saguaro cacti, the signature plant of the Sonoran Desert, thrive at the beginning and end of the drive, and great cliffs and canyons loom to the east and west.

At the heart of the parkway stands one of only three Joshua tree forests in the state. Joshua trees are to the Mojave Desert what saguaros are to the Sonoran – huge, perfectly adapted endemic plants that live nowhere else in the world. On this route visitors can see saguaros standing next to Joshua trees, the breathtaking union of two harsh, lovely deserts. When driving through the Joshua forests, remember that these plants aren’t trees but yuccas, and members of the lily family. Enduring temperatures between 30 and 125 degrees, thriving with oppressively little rainfall and living for as long as 300 years, these giant lilies seem to have little in common with other members of their family, abandoning the grace and fragility of lilies for resiliency.

Instead of thick concentrations, the first giant yuccas stand alone, popping out of the saguaro-dotted desert. Standing like grizzled sentries, Joshuas prefer the slightly higher and wetter parts of the desert, and so mark the edge of the Mojave. Thick, treelike trunks support the many chaotic forks of the Joshuas. The frenzied branches erupt randomly and in ungainly exuberance. Sharp green leaves bristle at the top and shaggy, dried-out spikes from years past cling to the branches and trunk. Early settlers looked at the yuccas and saw a plant brimming with hostile weaponry, calling them "dagger trees." Mormon pioneers, however, looked at the forked branches and saw the Biblical Joshua’s outspread arms. From March to May, the Joshua trees put out clusters of creamy-white blossoms and their lily heritage emerges, inviting pollination from yucca moths.

Most pollinators go from flower to flower to feed on pollen or nectar, thus inadvertently fertilizing them. The female yucca moth doesn’t eat pollen or nectar — she has different motivations. The moth intentionally collects pollen from one Joshua tree flower and deposits it in another, then lays her eggs inside the pollinated flower. By fertilizing that same flower, the moth guarantees that when her larvae hatch there will be developed seeds to eat, assuring the survival of the moths and the Joshua trees. http://www.arizonascenicroads.com/north_central/joshua_forest_article_1.html

The Joshua “trees” are so unique, you can’t help but notice them as you drive along this parkway.  I didn’t know that they inhabited that interface between the Sonoran and the Mohave deserts, where the elevation is getting higher (rising from 1000-1500 feet MSL to 3,000-4000 feet MSL) making the conditions in this corridor “just right” for them. They add to the scenic beauty of this area – which was once rife with “dude ranches.”  They make the area beautiful and perfect for trail rides, hay rides and cowboy campfire suppers, and you can do that today if you want; there’s still a few of those places left.

Heading north through the Joshua trees, you pass Nothing, AZ.  While there used to be a couple of roadside service businesses there, today it truly is “nothing.”  There’s not much left – it doesn’t even look like anyone is living there anymore.  Add it to the list of Arizona ghost towns.  I don’t have “nothing” more to say about it (except that the name fits...)

Burro Creek Camp

14:00: Burro Creek.  As the highway starts to climb you’ll find a little campground along Burro Creek as it passes underneath a high steel bridge.  I decided that on this trip, I would actually drive down the short paved road to the campground and the creek (which I had never done before) – and was surprised to find a lot of water there.  This was spring - there might not be quite so much water in the summer. But it would make a nice place for a winter, spring or fall desert camp.  It’s about 120 miles from my home in Phoenix. There is a fee for camping there – I believe it was $20-something.  The nights here would be much cooler than Phoenix!

Aquarius Mountains, north of Wikieup, AZ

14:30: A few miles up the highway I came to Wikieup – which is not very compact and stretches for a few miles along the highway as it travels through a long valley.  The only place of note (unless you need gas, a tow or a mechanic), is Lucha’s, at the far north end of the community, after you’ve passed everything else.  If it is open when you come by, Lucha's is a good place to eat if I remember correctly and there are some high-dollar curios that you can purchase.  These qualify as art rather than as trinkets, I’ve been told.  I haven’t been there for a long while, so I cannot vouch for that and it was closed this time as I passed so I still don’t know.  By the time you get this far on US93, most of the drive is behind you – the junction with I-40 is only about thirty more miles and then Kingman is just seventeen miles or so west of that.

Where the planes were parked

15:30: Having mixed it up with the rude truck drivers for the last few miles into Kingman, I took the first exit and connected with the old Route 66 roadway and turned eastward out of town.  I wanted a good picture of the aircraft boneyard as I passed the airport – but I couldn’t get a good vantage point from which to take a photo of the several jets waiting there for the scrapper’s blade.  There were several old DHL cargo jets waiting for the death blows. 

My interest in this place stems from its role after WWII as the final destination of many of the aircraft that served in the overseas theaters – I knew a pilot, a Canadian and RAF combat veteran, who flew in the Battle of Britain and later with the RCAF, and at the end of the war, he soloed B-17s to the Kingman airport (from Newfoundland) where they were stored temporarily and then scrapped, by the thousands.  Having seen Arizona, this man liked it so much that he chose to live here. When he applied for a US pilot's license, the government refused him, saying he didn't have enough "verifiable experience" to qualify for it (after him having soloed B-17s from Gander to Kingman...).  They issued him a "student" certificate and he flew on that for the rest of his life, as far as I know.  It was just Higgins' way of telling the stupid government to "stuff it."   Anyway, I never saw the stored planes there – they were all gone by the time I was old enough to drive or fly.  But I did get a photo of the area where those old planes had been parked in the nearby desert as I passed by the other day. 

Along Old 66

I always enjoy the famous old highway across northern Arizona – the Mother Road – old US 66.  Route 66 figured prominently in one of our mass migrations as a nation – during the Great Depression, many hard-luck Americans packed up what little they owned and left when their farms and businesses failed. They followed US66 to California from the Midwest and the Dustbowl. Route 66 was the “highway of hope” leading them to the "land of milk and honey." Overall, you may know that the route started in Chicago in the east, and ended on the beach at Santa Monica, California. Even when I was a kid, people still drove it when they moved west seeking better climate or better opportunities -- or both.

Arizona’s stretch of the storied road is one of the longest stretches still intact. It was superseded by I-40 in the early 1960s (and farther east, by I-44) and many waypoints and towns just folded up and died. Those that survived now glory in the road's history and the associated nostalgia, especially among those of my generation. They’ve even put up some facsimiles of the famous roadside Burma Shave signs to entertain those of us who treasure American highway kitsch. You can still see some of the old places that served the people and travelers along the way – the most recognizable are the old gas stations with their distinctive shapes and awning-covered driveways, and of course the old motor courts – or motels, mostly in ruins now.  I wonder if someone could make a killing by building a new, modern motel along this stretch of road, but in the old art-deco "motor-court" style, and with plenty of neon lighting. There are ranches here and there and one of our busiest transcontinental railroads (the BNSF) follows the same route.

Peach Springs

16:30: In between Kingman and Seligman, you pass through the Hualapai Reservation and its capital, Peach Springs. It’s a beautiful stretch passing through a very scenic part of Arizona.  When I was a student, probably in college, I remember reading in a literature class an account of a young school teacher’s arrival by train in post frontier-era Kingman (perhaps 1890s or early 1900s), and her journey by wagon to her schoolhouse in a Hualapai community. It recounted as well the warm greeting she was given by the locals upon her arrival; a new school teacher was a cause for celebration. I wonder how long it took some local cowboy or business man to marry her (?); women were very scarce here at the time.  Anyway, I have tried to find that story again but haven’t been able to locate a copy of it – but I watched along this stretch of road for old schoolhouses.  There is one at Hackberry and I wondered if that was the one where she had taught all those years ago. It might have been the one, but I don't remember now where she was destined. 

I drove along in the late afternoon, stopping frequently to take photos; the light was gorgeous. I was in no hurry at all, running maybe 60 mph, but others were flying past at 70 and maybe even 80+ in some cases.  The only reason to drive this highway is to enjoy and soak up that history (if you’re in that much of a hurry, you’d take the nearby Interstate, right (?)).  I don’t understand why others would be in such a hurry here… you can’t even read the Burma Shave signs at those speeds!  So I just moseyed along.  I did my own speeding later on…

In the middle of Peach Springs, you can stop at the tourist agency and get a permit to drive Diamond Creek Road – which leads to the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  It’s the only place along the entire length of the canyon where you can do that (you can drive to the water's edge at Lee's Ferry, but that's not actually in the Canyon itself).  This road (although unpaved) doesn’t normally require four-wheel drive, although it runs through the waters of Diamond Creek at the end.  Don’t bother if you are riding a motorcycle though – the Hualapai don’t allow bikes on that road. I argued about that, but I lost of course.  I figured if my uncle could get there in a Ford Escort, I could easily do it on a motorcycle. As little as ninety years ago, the road didn't exist even in primitive form - it was nothing in those days but a trail.  Emery Kolb (famous entrepreneur and adventurer at the Grand Canyon) used the Diamond Creek trail to get to the Colorado River when he searched for Glen and Bessie Hyde, a honeymooning couple who disappeared along the River while boating through Grand Canyon on their honeymoon in a home-built scow. They were never found, and their story is laced with intrigue and mystery, and some say perhaps even murder.  One fanciful myth had Bessie living out her last years as a tour guide and boatwoman on Grand Canyon's commercial  raft trips.

The road to Hualapai Hilltop and Supai

East of Peach Springs a few miles, you’ll pass the junction of Indian Route 18 – the road to Hualapai Hilltop. If you’ve planned ahead and made reservations with the Havasupai Tourist Agency, you can drive about 60 miles north on Indian 18 to Hilltop.  From there you can hike about 10 miles (each way) and visit the Havasupai on their reserve and see the cold beautiful turquoise blue waters of the several falls on Cataract Creek below the community of Supai; and swim in them.  Don’t hike without reservations – they won’t let you stay if there’s no room and there often isn’t.  When that happens, those folks are forced to turn around and hike the ten miles back to Hilltop. But if you’ve planned ahead, it’s a great Arizona memory to experience and have. I’ve been down there about ten times. If you'd like to read about that, just follow the link!

Back on Route 66, a few more miles and you’ll pass by Grand Canyon Caverns.  I don’t usually stop – but it’s worth a look if you’ve never seen it before.  I took the guided tour through the cavern once when I was staying at their motel the night before a hike to Supai.  Seligman is about twenty miles farther.  I always look for the building that housed the Texaco station that Andreas Feininger photographed back in the 1940s – and on this pass through town I think I might have finally spotted it.  It is no longer a gas station, if what I saw was the correct building, but I saw a block building that might possibly have been the one.  Seligman doesn’t look a thing today like it did in 1947 when Mr. Feininger took his famous photo.

Seligman, 1947 by A. Feininger

16:05: The last few miles for the day were along I-40.  I encountered some extremely rude (and dangerous) truck drivers along this stretch of highway, which should not surprise me at all.  I remember when many drivers were “knights of the road” and were true professionals. I see many these days that don’t even come close to that – I suppose that mirrors our society in general.  The national CDL licensing standard was supposed to increase skills and professionalism in the field – how ironic that it seems to have had the opposite effect. Rudeness has become very common – even considered admirable by some. 

The trouble is, when you are in control of where a thirty-five ton truck is pointed, that rudeness is dangerous and often kills innocent people.  A 72,000 lb semi, for example, driven at 65 mph, is carrying the equivalent of over 700 tons of "crash force." My suggestion to other drivers is to give the jerks plenty of room so they can’t surprise you. Some of them think absolutely nothing about changing lanes in front of a vehicle moving 75 mph while they are only doing maybe 25 mph on a grade, and they don't care at all if you wind up in the ditch, or dead.  Never drive in close proximity to a truck – if you need to pass, do it carefully and as quickly as you can.  There’s more than one good reason for that.

18:35: I arrived in Williams, my destination for the night, at about 6:30 PM.  I had a reservation at the Canyon Motel and RV Park.  It was among the least expensive places in town and was still highly rated in reviews that I read.  I found it satisfactory in most regards, although I did not like the bed – it was obvious it was fairly new, but it was not very comfortable – one of those foam mattresses I think, given its consistency and shape.  The place was clean though, and inexpensive compared to some other places around town.  One of the attractions is that they have several old railroad cabooses that you can rent as motel lodging – which might be fun, especially for kids.  Or train buffs!  My biggest gripe was that they mounted the televisions high on the walls – next to the ceilings.  I had taken a DVD player and a couple good western movies – and I couldn’t connect the player to the TV because the wires weren’t long enough to reach the TV way up there by the ceiling!  I asked for a different room, because I had really looked forward to the movie-fest, but they didn’t have any others available.  I was hoping there was still a room or two with a television “mounted” on a table; alas, there was not.  So anyway, I was a bit torqued about that.

Canyon Motel Respite

I got settled in, fooled around with my laptop computer and wi-fi trying to upload the day's photos to the Cloud, failed at that, finally thought maybe I’d better go find something to eat before everything closed up.  In Williams, I always seem to end up at Rod’s Steakhouse for supper.  I don’t find Rod’s as good as it used to be, but it’s still OK; the service was friendly at least.  As with most everything else in Williams, it is over-priced.  The merchants in the town are fairly vigorous about fleecing the tourists.  About the only thing I found in Williams besides my particular motel that I thought was totally reasonable was breakfast at the Route 66 Diner (east end of town).  There, I got a decent bacon and eggs breakfast for about $7 plus tip.  I could complain about how my eggs were cooked, but they obviously didn’t care and I ate them anyway, so why bother.  I am very picky about my fried eggs… 

20:30: My dinner at Rod’s was a generously-sized slice of prime rib of beef, even though it was the smallest cut.  I think it was called the "princess" cut... They served it at the right degree of doneness, but it was still very heavy and dry (too lean).  I shouldn’t complain about a piece of beef being too lean – but the fact is that prime rib needs to be a little fatty for the flavor.  I ate some of it, sliced the rest into thin strips and took them out in a box for my next day’s lunch.  I bought a package of pita breads at the local grocery, snatched some mayo from the deli and had pita-pocket prime rib sandwiches for lunch at a picnic area in Grand Canyon National Park.  And served that way, there was nothing to complain about.  About ordering the “ladies’ cut” of prime rib?  The server raised her eyebrow at me in disdain, but I told her that I really was a macho-man, just not a very hungry one at that specific moment.  Even worse, I was cold, and there was no way I was going to drink coffee that late in the day – so I ordered hot tea.  And with that she knew in her mind that I really was a big wuss; there was no redemption after that.

Before going to bed, I tried to watch a DVD program on old ghost towns on my PC, but got sleepy very quickly, gave up and went to bed.  I awoke at 0800, got myself together, got everything EXCEPT my Bluetooth earpiece into the car; didn’t find out about that omission until I got a call from the motel once home.  They wanted $15 plus shipping costs to mail it back to me, so I invited them to keep it.  Which is what they probably wanted all along.  I've already replaced it with one that cost me $12.

09:00: I got my breakfast, then headed up the road toward the Grand Canyon.  This is another stretch of road where everyone seems to be in a hurry – the tourists who rent cars (and probably many of the locals as well) think the proper speed for SR64 must be about 95 mph, because that’s how fast a lot of them go.  At least on that road, there isn’t much else to see until you get to Tusayan, so maybe I can understand their impatience a little more than I do when it's on Route 66... and except for the unsafe passing. They are in such a hurry to get around you that they don’t care how safe or unsafe it is.  It’s a good road for loss-of-control single-car wrecks and head-ons and like US93, lots of fatalities.  These are the same folks you'll see later at the Grand Canyon overlooks -- they look at the expansive vista of one of the Seven Wonders of the World that's laid out before them for all of ten seconds, toss their empty plastic water bottles on the ground and drive on at high velocity to the Park exit. Then they tell all the folks back home they've "seen the Grand Canyon" and how they weren't very impressed.

Planes of Fame at Valle - a Stinson Reliant

10:30: About two-thirds of the way to Tusayan, at the junction of US180 and SR64, you pass through the small community of Valle  (pronounced “valley”).  For me, the only thing of real interest at Valle is the Arizona branch of the Planes of Fame Air Museum, which has moved into a new building in the last few years and the collection is in better shape for the most part than it was the last time I stopped there.  Many of the aircraft look like you could jump right in and go flying. They have three transport-category aircraft there, including a very famous one that played a role in a disagreement between a famous five-star general and his Commander-in-Chief, and there is also a now-very-rare Martin 404.  You don’t see too many of those anymore.  The big C-121 is looking fairly ragged, and I hope they are working to bring it back to an airworthy condition again.  Like the Martin, it's one of only a few remaining examples. Inside the Museum, there is much of interest for any aviation-minded person, including at least one type of airplane that I have piloted myself; it is rather distressing to me that aircraft that I flew (not that many years ago) are now considered museum pieces. I spent most of the time I had set aside for Grand Canyon National Park at the air museum.  I don’t regret it, I can get back to the Canyon anytime I have the time – it is a “destination of choice” for me so I will, as long as I don’t get rubbed out first.

The Big Ditch

12:30: I arrived at Tusayan (the service community at the south gate to Grand Canyon National Park) about lunch-time, so I drove into the Park and found a place to eat my picnic along the East Rim drive.  This took longer than I thought (finding a picnic spot) because more and more of the overlooks are closed to private vehicles now – in order to get to them you have to use the transportation provided by the National Park Service and its contractors. But I finally succeeded, ate my lunch and then drove off down the road.  I stopped at the major overlooks and communed with the vistas, the ravens and one back-country hiker, skipped my customary stop for oohing and awing at Desert View, and went on out of the Park toward Cameron and points northeast. From here on, it was mostly scenery and driving, which is always good for me. I found a small stretch of an older now abandoned SR64 alignment alongside the present road as I pulled off the highway for a photo of the Little Colorado Gorge.  Not in very good shape, but still drivable where I was.

Old Road

14:20: In Cameron, I stopped for gasoline and a Coke, and gave away my entrance ticket for the National Park.  They cost twenty-five dollars and are non-transferable, but I paid in cash and they are good for seven days – so I found someone headed toward the Park to give it to.  Call me a bad man.

Near Hotevilla and Second Mesa

On Indian lands now, driving north on US89, the colors of the Reservation lands were very vivid.  Later in the year, as everything heats up, especially during the middle of the day, the colors get washed out in haze and yellow sunshine.  But this time of year, the sky is Arizona blue, and the colors of the landforms are clear and bright and full of contrast.  This is when people know exactly what you mean when you call it the “Painted Desert.”  It was so beautiful.  I turned right on US160 toward Kayenta, and stopped a few miles down the road in Tuba City.  “Tuba” wasn’t a brass horn, but a leader of the Navajo people quite a few years ago.  I stopped long enough to grab some fast food, as there wasn’t much ahead of me for about 160 miles or so – except highway.  Not even a gas station.  But I drove along, enjoyed the beauty of the land, stopped for photos whenever I saw something dramatic and finally reached the Hopi villages.  I was looking for a refreshment stop but didn’t find one.  I contented myself with my McNuggets and some now-warm bottled water, and drove on. 

Near Teas Tos, on the Dinetah

Coming down off the Hopi mesas, the road stretched out in front of me for mile after mile.  At this point, it was about 60 miles to Winslow and nothing much between the two points (see photo) except the Dinetah and a few sheep and cattle here and there.  There was not any traffic on the road to speak of, and I really didn’t expect to see any law enforcement units on that afternoon.  I increased my speed (slightly, only slightly), set the cruise control and turned up the tunes!  I drove that 60 miles in about 45 minutes.  And for all my pissing and moaning about other people speeding, I enjoyed it.  As I approached I-40 the last few miles, I slowed it down and motored stately into Winslow.  The most interesting thing for me at Winslow is the airport.  It was surveyed and planned by Charles Lindbergh in the 1920s as a fuel and service stop for the early airliners.  They had to land frequently for fuel and oil, and the flights took so long, for the passengers' comfort as well.  Winslow was one of the stops along the way from the mid-west to California. 

Crossing the Mogollon Rim

17:00: From this point, it was all about getting home by a decent hour, so I kept on going.  The road south of Winslow goes fairly straight across the Colorado Plateau (scrub vegetation, no trees) for quite a distance, then after you get into the forest again, you come to the edge of the Mogollon Rim.  This escarpment stretches across central Arizona for several hundred miles; it separates high Arizona from low Arizona, and its “top” is covered in Ponderosa pines, at least wherever they haven't been burned down by "outdoorsmen" and their often unattended or unextinguished runaway campfires.  Don't call me bitter...

I stopped at Long Valley (just south of Clint’s Well) intending to get some soup, but the restaurant must have had a slow day and they had just closed their doors a little early.  They didn’t want to sell me any soup.  But I wasn’t all that hungry anyway, having eaten several things I got at that McDonald’s earlier along the way and I headed on down the road and down the switchbacks and off the Rim.  It was getting dark, so my last couple of photos were taken along that stretch right around Long Valley before I ran out of daylight for photography. 

20:00: I stopped in Payson long enough to squeegee my windshield (beaucoops bugs), then drove on.  There was a long stretch of road work that slowed me down around Mt Ord, but after that it was clear sailing into Mesa and Phoenix. SR87 between Payson and Mesa is almost like interstate super-slab, so normally it is a pretty quick drive.  I arrived at the end of my driveway with 780 miles on the clock at about 21:30, a couple of hundred dollars less wealthy – and wishing I’d had a couple more days to roll.

Chevy Malibu on the Indian Nation

Keep it between the fence-posts and the shiny side up! I am road-Bob!

Green Chile Beef Burro Mix, pressure cooker

Green Chile Beef

This is a mild green chile beef for Norte Americano  tastes.  You could ramp it up with some jalapenos or ground red pepper if you like it spicier, and add more of the other spices as well if you like the flavors stronger.

3 LB BEEF ROAST OR STEW, LEAN, TRIMMED

OIL for frying
LG ONION, CHOPPED
1 TB CRUSHED GARLIC
1 TB ANCHO CHILE POWDER
2 TSP PAPRIKA
2 TSP MEXI OREGANO
1 TSP CUMIN
½ CUP BEEF STOCK (OR BEER)
2 CANS ROTEL TOMATOES
1 CAN DICED GREEN CHILES
4-5 charred green chilies, sweated, peeled and cut into pieces.
SALT/PEPPER

PREP:

TRIM AND CUT THE BEEF INTO SMALL-MED PIECES. Place in single layer in heated frying pan with a little oil. Brown quickly on one side (don’t turn the meat while browning), place in pressure cooker. I used a 10 or 12 inch cast iron skillet; it took 4 batches to brown the meat.

Brown the onion with the garlic, chile powder, paprika, oregano and cumin.  Place in pressure cooker.

Add the ½ cup liquid and the tomatoes (undrained).

Seal the cooker and bring to pressure.  Cook under pressure for 15 minutes.  Let the cooker cool slowly (about 25 minutes) until pressure has completely dissipated.

Add the green chiles, canned and fresh.  Cook at low temp uncovered until cooked down some and thicker – 30-45 minutes.

Serve in burritos.  May add cooked diced potato to the burro if desired, or egg.

Harrison Ford Saved Lives by Crashing Plane on Golf Course!

Ryan PT

Nonsense.  What is the strongest human instinct?  Bingo if you guessed "survival."  When an engine fails, (or some other malfunction that requires immediate action), a pilot's training kicks in -- and hopefully he or she has been trained well and the checklists and responses practiced.  One of the first things you do in a light aircraft after an engine failure is to determine what the best potential emergency landing site is -- within the gliding distance you have available.  Harrison Ford picked a likely one, and he made the wise choice to land on it apparently without any equivocation (which was probably also very important -- it's no time to be wishy-washy). 

Then you fly the airplane, without getting distracted from that most important task. Those who say that he "saved lives" by not hitting any place (like a building) where people could have been hurt show a complete lack of understanding of pilot training and flying realities -- you don't hit things like that because you get killed doing it.  And that's not in anyone's flight plan.  You want to get down safely, and you also don't want to prang up your flying machine (which is notoriously fragile and expensive). Picking a place on the ground that is hopefully smooth and good enough to get down on in one piece is primary - so you can walk away from that "perfectly good landing."  Worrying about people on the ground is by human nature, secondary.  So what I'm saying is, if you missed it, Mr. Ford was saving his own butt and more power to him.  Only if your chosen landing spot is on the other side of a crowded playground that you didn't initially see would you worry about "collateral damage."

Harrison Ford's piloting qualifications:  When I first saw the reports on Mr. Ford's forced landing, there were those whose first thought (and comments) were "what was he doing flying that pre-WWII vintage aircraft and was he qualified to do so" (?)  The first two letters in that aircraft's type are "PT."  That stands for PRIMARY TRAINER.  That's what raw newbies fly.  *What we might call "whuffos," to borrow a moniker.

Harrison Ford is no novice. He reportedly has hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours (I expect) of flying time in complex fixed wing aircraft (as well as others).  When I saw that question posed in a Hollywood-type tabloid article, as if his wealth and status might have gotten him into a situation that he couldn't "handle," I laughed out loud.  You could teach an 8-year old to fly a PT22 in 6 hours, 30 minutes.  That little airplane is slow, forgiving and built like a brick house (strong where it needs to be strong).  Maybe even overbuilt. Properly maintained, it could still be flying in another 50 or 100 years and it is simple enough to be rebuilt like new any time it needs it, hub to tailskid.  Back in the olden days, people built airplanes like this one in their own little shops. Actually, they still do.  And I'm not exaggerating, I have known men who did.  Think Orville and Wilbur and their brethren and sisteren. 

So, the lessons here are: (1) don't give any credence to what aircraft incident witnesses say about ANYTHING because they don't know what the hell they are talking about 99% of the time -- and -- don't let ANYONE write about aviation news unless they actually know something about the topic, because they invariably make fools of themselves with their sensational ignorance (and then people like me make fun of them). 

Harrison, keep the shiny side up and call me anytime buddy, I'd love to go flying with you.

*Whuffo.  Greenhorn, without knowledge in the topic at hand. "Whuffo you do this, whuffo you do that?"  Asker of dumb questions.

"Sense of Adventure, Positive Attitude, Determination to Succeed." (Chicago City Council Resolution on Bessie Coleman, 1992)

Elizabeth Coleman, Aviator

On a cool crisp morning in my youth, I launched myself from Deer Valley Airport in Phoenix on my first “long distance” flight.  It was a short journey  over about half a day, through several hundred miles of Arizona, Nevada and California.  Of everything I remember about that flight, it was the freedom of it, and the sense of empowerment, that remain with me today.  For those moments, I was the only one in control, I was responsible for every outcome. In flying over several decades since then, those feelings of freedom, responsibility and accomplishment are among my most enduring impressions of the joys of flying.

Can you imagine how important (or exhilarating) that experience would be for someone from a non-privileged background - where freedom in general, and more specifically, freedom of opportunity, was an almost unheard of thing?  Bessie Coleman, remarking on that sense of freedom experienced in flying, said that she didn’t see any racism or experience prejudice while at the controls of her airplane. In flying, she escaped those things for that time that she was in the sky (that were so otherwise common not only for black people, but also for women).

I had been thinking of some way to honor Black History Month. I thought of writing about Rosa Parks, or the Buffalo Soldiers.  But I ran across the story of Elizabeth Coleman (or Bessie, as she is known to history).  She was not only one of the earliest female pilots; she was one of the first black pilots.  She was also part Native American (Cherokee) and so she may have been the first Native American aviator as well.  But above all, Elizabeth Coleman was a winner and the real story is about what she went through to accomplish what she did. 

Life wasn't very easy, and obstacles were thrown in front of her all of her life.  She was raised in Atlanta, Texas, which is about 22 air miles SSW of Texarkana. While it is reported she had a poor but “happy childhood,” her father left the family while she was still a child. Like most poor children in her circumstances, Elizabeth helped with her siblings and worked hard, both in the home and outside of it. Bessie’s young life consisted mostly of school, watching after her brothers and sisters, chores and church.  The entire family picked cotton whenever it needed picking (they were sharecroppers). 

Elizabeth walked 4 miles each way to school and apparently she went every day because she completed through eighth grade. She went on to post-secondary education in Oklahoma, until her savings ran out and she was forced to return home.  She had been especially capable in mathematics. The college she attended specialized in agricultural education and the training of teachers (for the “colored” schools only of course).  Those times, roughly around 1910, were at the height of Jim Crow segregation in the USA; black folks were “equal” - as long as they kept to themselves.  All that aside, what Bessie Coleman wanted and strove for was to “amount to something.” [1]

She left Texas for Chicago with hope in her heart.  While the racism and limitations blacks experienced in the south were present there as well (if in less blatant forms), she also found opportunities.  She lived with her brothers and she became a manicurist in local barber shops.  She heard the stories of those who had returned from service in WW1, and having learned about flying, she decided to become a pilot; among the stories told to her were about how French women were "superior" to American women because they were allowed to fly!  But for Elizabeth, the problem was how?  No one would teach her – she was not only female but she was also black in early twentieth century America.  White flight instructors wouldn’t teach her.  Male black pilots wouldn’t either. But Elizabeth Coleman wouldn't take no for an answer, at a time when that attitude could have gotten her beaten or worse in some areas of this country.

Nieuport Type 82

Flying is how she had decided she would “amount to something,” and so on the advice of a knowledgeable friend and mentor, she went to France, where she could obtain the training she wanted.  She saved her money, she got local financial backing in addition, she learned French. Then she went to France and took her flying lessons at the famous Caudron Brothers' school.

The Caudrons held a place in French aviation much as the Wright Brothers did in the USA - they were among the earliest pioneers. Like many American pilots in WW1, she learned to fly in a French Nieuport (like the one in the photo). The Nieuport had a pesky tendency to shed its wings during flight. It took Bessie 7 months. She earned and was granted a pilot's license from the prestigious Federation Aeronautique Internationale (the FAI) in 1921 – the only woman among her classes' graduates and the first black woman ever to earn a license from the FAI.  She had learned enough about aviation and piloting - in French - to obtain that license, even though she had barely a basic ability to speak or understand that language.  She was 29 years old (although for some unknown reason she lied about her age). She continued with more advanced training there, recognizing that in order to be financially successful in aviation, she’d need additional skills. She was the very first American of any race or gender to obtain the FAI's international flying license.

On her return to the US, she was greeted with a good amount of attention and publicity and became a “media sensation,” although it wasn’t all flying and roses from then on (though there was a little of that)…

When Coleman returned to the US in September, 1921, scores of reporters turned out to meet her. The Air Service News noted that Coleman had become “a full-fledged aviatrix, the first of her race.” She was invited as a guest of honor to attend the all-black musical “Shuffle Along.” The entire audience, including the several hundred whites in the orchestra seats, rose to give the first African American female pilot a standing ovation.[2]

She carried herself with a certain amount of swashbuckling “dash,” she was beautiful, she was charismatic and she was a great speaker.  She appeared in airshows (in the then-new "barnstorming" business) and she harbored dreams of opening a flying school of her own – open to all.  She quickly obtained a reputation as an expert and daring pilot. She thought briefly of a movie career in California, although she ultimately declined those offers because of the predjudice she encountered there, which she couldn't tolerate.  Elizabeth Coleman not only rose above prejudice, she actively fought it.

All during this time, money was a problem – she struggled to work for or get funds to buy airplanes, suffered set-backs when she crashed them, opened a beauty shop at one point (to amass money to open her school), gave lectures; she was an "eloquent" speaker.  She was broken and injured in flying crashes and she kept going. She fought racial barriers as well as gender barriers at every turn. [3]  She would refuse to perform – either flying or speaking – unless her audiences were desegregated, or if blacks were not allowed into the venues where she was to fly or speak. While she achieved a phenomenal level of success for someone as limited in means and opportunities as she was, those limitations finally did catch up with her.

Bessie Coleman and a Curtiss Jenny

On April 30, 1926, Bessie and her mechanic took her just-purchased “Jenny” for a test flight.  The Curtiss Jenny was, even then, considered a rattle-trap and a bucket of bolts -- and the one she bought reportedly wasn't even in that good of condition.  But it was what she could afford. During the flight, a forgotten or misplaced wrench got entangled in the control linkage, and the airplane apparently inverted and dove to earth with "jammed" controls.  Elizabeth was not wearing a safety harness (she was stretched up in her seat, trying to observe the ground at the time) and she was thrown out of the plane as it fell – 2,000 feet to the ground. The mechanic was also killed in the ensuing crash.


Thousands of mourners attended services and memorials after her death.  She had been a pilot for only five years. Her flying achievements all took place before Charles Lindbergh made his flight to Paris, and before Amelia Earhart made her famous flights.  What more might this driven and talented young American have accomplished had she lived beyond the young age of 34?  How much of aviation's early history might have had Bessie Coleman's name on it?

As it is, she has become an enduring symbol of personal courage, integrity, talent, intelligence, motivation, confidence, enthusiasm and perseverance in the face of extreme adversity and continual obstacles.  She never quit; she is a lesson in success, despite encountering difficulties in the pursuit. She had all the best qualities we revere.

Elizabeth "Bessie" Coleman was an inspiration to countless black would-be aviators – male and female alike -- helping them stand in the face of not only racial injustice but gender inequality and according to William J. Powell (himself an influential and accomplished black aviator of those times) “the barriers within” themselves.[4]   I wonder how many of the Tuskegee airmen were inspired by this intrepid young woman as they faced the same kinds of difficulties or externally imposed obstacles? And Bessie Coleman is also an inspiration to me.

In the intervening years, libraries, airport facilities, streets and schools have been named for Bessie Coleman in cities and towns across our country.  There are scholarship awards in her name, and the U. S. Post Office has issued stamps which bear her likeness. She was listed as No. 14 in Flying Magazine’s 2013 list of “51 Heroes of Aviation,” and she was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 2006 – the highest honor in American aviation.  In the end, Bessie Coleman did indeed "amount to something."

---

[1] Texas Roots (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.bessiecoleman.com/Other%20Pages/texas.html

[2] American Experience. Fly Girls; Bessie Coleman (1892-1926). (n.d.) Retrieved from http://www.notablebiographies.com/Co-Da/Coleman-Bessie.html

[3] Bessie Coleman; Pilot; (1892-1926). The Biography.com website (2015). Retrieved from http://www.biography.com/people/bessie-coleman-36928

[4] Bessie Coleman (Wikipedia).(2015, February 26) Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bessie_Coleman&oldid=648941490

Bourbon Chicken

Bourbon Chicken w/cucumber salad

I used to eat lunch at a food court in the Arizona Center, a business and shopping complex at 4^th Street and Van Buren in Phoenix.  There was a Greek/Mid-Eastern themed outlet there that served this dish every day – once I had this for lunch it is all I ever ordered when we went there. It's gone now, along with the food court. This may not be exactly like their dish, but I think it must be pretty close. I always got it with a fresh cucumber salad.  So…

5 or 6 boneless skinless chicken thighs
8 oz soy sauce
¾ cup bourbon
1 cup packed brown sugar (you could sub honey)
2 tsp ground ginger
4 TB dried minced onion
1 tsp garlic powder

Slice the chicken into pieces, not too small, not diced.  Make the marinade and divide in half.  Place one half of it in a Ziploc bag with the chicken and marinate in the refrigerator overnight.  Take the other half, simmer it for about 20 minutes to cook off the alcohol in the whiskey, then thicken with a bit of cornstarch mixed with a small amount of cold water. Store this in the refrigerator until time to assemble the dish.  Make your cucumber salad… (it needs to sit a while to develop its flavor).

Drain the chicken pieces somewhat, then stir fry them quickly in a bit of olive oil, just until done (toss out the marinade the chicken was soaking in).  Do not overcook the chicken.  Heat the 2^nd half of the marinade you prepared earlier.  Drench the chicken (after cooking) in the heated sauce.  Serve over rice with a nice cucumber salad on the side!

Cucumber Salad

1½ cucumbers, peeled and diced
½ small to med red onion, diced
¼ cup cider vinegar
¼ cup water
1/6 cup sugar (this is 34 grams, or one half of a 1/3 cup measure)
Salt/pepper
1 clove garlic, cut into pieces

Mix the dressing (everything except the cucumber and onion) and let it set for about 20 minutes.  Then toss it into the vegetables and refrigerate for several hours before serving.  A really nice addition at serving time is some diced ripe tomatoes.

Note:  This dish can be prepared with chicken breast, or tenders, but it is a better dish with the thighs.  If you use white meat, it just requires care not to overcook the chicken.  Cook only a few minutes -- just enough that the pink is gone.  Again, it is a better tasting dish when using the thighs!

Food too salty?

Yesterday I made a Yankee style pot roast - you know the kind, a chuck roast browned and

Classic American Comfort Food

simmered, with roasted potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, mushrooms and a rich gravy?  Oh yeah.  I found the recipe online and because of the ingredients used to season the roast, the finished product (mostly the gravy, not the meat) turned out to be very salty.  It was too salty for me, and my Mom couldn't even have tolerated one bite.  But everything else about it was perfect.

A lot of old fashioned cooks probably know this trick -- I was not sure it would work, but I remember someone saying that potatoes soak up salt.  You can salt and salt and salt the little buggers but it just disappears into that starchy potato-ness without much effect.

So I stored the gravy from the roast separately (from the meat and vegetables, after cooking), and tonight I put that into a saucepan and added a peeled and diced russet to it.  The gravy was very thick (almost completely a solid after it cooled), so I also added a little water.  I brought it a boil then simmered it for about 30 minutes.  I added a little more water to keep it fluid, and after thirty minutes or so of cooking and another 30 minutes or so of sitting there resting, I fished the potato chunks out of the gravy with a slotted spoon, leaving as much of the gravy in the sauce pan as possible.  Then I rinsed them with a little bit more water, swished that around amongst the tater chunks, and poured that "gravy-rinse" back into the gravy in the pan.  I then tossed out the potatoes -- along with all that sodium they'd soaked up.  The remaining gravy is perfect -- all that lovely beef flavor intact and not salty at all.

You could use this same idea with other liquid foods that are overly salty, whether accidentally or otherwise.  I was happy to be able to figure out a way to "save" that gravy - it's just not Yankee Pot Roast without it.

Buen Provecho!

Cowboy Canned Supper

Use these...

Back in the olden days, cowboys often had to throw dinner together with whatever they had. Heck, I remember times when all there was, was an old burlap sack and some muddy water to make soup outta (you had to boil that a long time, which by then you might coulda rode inter town fer a steak.)  So this recipe here was for days when the chuck wagon had a bit of a surplus for Cookie to work with.  It ain't much, but it'll make you lose your appetite. 

2 slices bacon, chopped
1/4 cup or so chopped onion
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 garlic bulb, chopped
2 wienies or hot links, etc, sliced thin
1 can pintos
Salt and pepper to taste

Start by frying up the bacon until it is about halfway to crispy.  Then add the vegetables.  You can use others just as easy -- green pepper, or chilies, whatever suits you, but keep it simple.  Simple is better.  Fry those and the hot link slices (add the meat about half-way through) over med-low heat until the onions and celery are tender.  By now, the bacon should be all the way crispy.

Next step is drain off most of the bacon fat, but leave a little bit for flavor.

Dump in the pintos with their sauce and a touch of liquid smoke if you like it, or maybe a dash or two of pepper sauce, and simmer until it cooks down a little.  Salt and pepper to taste and serve it with cornbread or biskits.

This'll serve one hungry, or two skinny. Like I said, you won't be hungry no more after you-ins eat this.

This recipe came from this old guy here... he war ugly, but he wouldn't lie to ya none.