We’re on the road again and desperately trying to find Route 66, which is proving far more difficult than anticipated. It seems to have simply been paved over by Interstate 40, and all the signs for the route lead to dead ends or Indian reservations. The mountains have transformed into gigantic mesas, huge faces of red rock layered across the horizon. We still aren’t in the desert proper, but hopefully we’ll find some of it by the time we reach Flagstaff. More updates to come.

12PM Mountain

We’re closing in on Arizona, and if the image is any indication, we’ve hit the west. We’ve also encountered one of the things we were warned about by the mother and son from Houston; safety corridors. Something unique to the area, they are stretches of road where everyone is required to turn on their headlights. After a Google search, I discovered these are in fact zones with excessively high fatality rates. A comforting explanation.

We’re about 50 miles south of the rocks, on the very edge of the plains. It’s quite the odd dichotomy, look out the left window and all you see is green and spots of darker green, and to your right is this massive continuous wall of red spectrum rock. We’re headed along what your gps would say is Route 66, but in reality is just I40, and a collection of other new sections of various highways. Somewhere remnants of the old route do exist, and we’re determined to find them, but so far this proved much easier said than done. At this point we’re really just trying to make it into Arizona. More updates to come.

We just crossed into Arizona, and realized we had entered pacific time a state early. Reason being, Arizona chooses not to observe day light savings.

Currently we are witnessing a very odd phenomenon, rain is falling in clumps. Every 30 seconds or so a large cluster of water droplets hits the windshield. Some almost seem to be marble-sized rain drops, just exploding into a cluster on impact. Either way, it’s quite strange.