Thursday, June 2
Leaving Las Vegas – with relief. The purpose of our trip was to see nature
and Vegas hardly had much to offer of that kind and besides, I’m not really
sure I can find much reason at all to visit this artificial world. Seeing the
lights for the first time is sure to fascinate anyone, but this was our third…
Using
the eminent navigation-system in the M5, we spared ourselves the pleasure of
looking at a Vegas map and it gracefully guided us to highway 93 towards Hoover dam. We stopped
for gas and breakfast at a combined gas-station and Subway Sandwiches on the
outskirts of town at a safe distance from the strip.
Back on the road, we got
down to Hoover
dam that now a days has a large visitor's center and a visitor count to match
unfortunately. When I and my wife were out here in 1989 we took the elevator
from the center of the dam, paid one buck a pop and got to see the entire
power-house with intake penstocks and all. Not so anymore, but the guy who held
the presentation was fun.
93
felt really looong with all high desert
around before we got to Kingman,
AZ. I stopped to top up gas and
stretch my legs before getting on I-40 and the even longer drive to Flagstaff, or possibly
just Williams. We made it to Williams at about 4pm, pulled in the shade of a
motel and picked up the map. We all felt pretty tired and Williams looked much
more inviting than I remembered it. After a little thinking we leaned towards
spending the night there, so I drove up to a gas-station at the end of the
village to get advice as to what motel was nicest in town and the man in the
station pointed us across the street. The room was nice and the air was
pleasantly clear and cool, and with the kids in the motel's spa we relaxed on
the balcony outside our room with a whiskey for me and a beer for my wife while
waiting for our laundry at the Laundromat.
The
eastbound main-street in Williams is also the path of historic route 66, and
300 meters away from the motel a steak-house that had survived from the era
provided excellent, non-Californian meat to a hungry quartet.
Back on the road, we got
down to 